Stefan Mileschin

We thought that was the point of the App store?

Fruity cargo cult Apple is finally getting around to checking its app store for privacy stealing software.

Jobs' Mob was a little embarrassed to discover that, despite its much advertised exhaustive checking process for apps, it failed to spot that one popular virus checker was sending data to China.

This led to an inquisition of apps at the app store, and several new iOS apps have been caught indulging in a similar offence - collecting and selling users data such as GPS coordinates, WiFi network IDs and more.

Desktop apps, curiously all from security service provider Trend Micro, have been caught collecting browser history and information about users' computers.

Apple has pulled Trend Micro's apps from the store although Trend Micro still has some apps, both for desktop and mobile listed.

The apps are Dr Antivirus, Dr Cleaner, and Dr Unarchiver, all under the developer account Trend Micro, Incorporated. Until removal, all products were top-sellers, with thousands of positive reviews that averaged their ratings between 4.6 and 4.9.

The first public report of a Trend Micro product in the App Store engaging in shady activities came in late 2017 when user PeterNopSled told Malwarebytes forum members that "that his Mac was taken over by Open Any Files: RAR Support" and it did not let him open Word or Excel files.

So far, none of the Tame Apple Press has thought to level any blame at Jobs’ Mob. One of the reasons that developers are happy to give Apple a huge cut of their products is that users feel safer buying from the App Store. The reason they feel safer is because Apple was supposed to test software to ensure that it does not phone home or send data somewhere else. This recent fiasco shows that Apple has either not been doing that or has not got the smarts to do it properly. Either way it is not earning its cut of the profits.

https://fudzilla.com/news/mobile/471...hone-home-apps