Apple has quietly tightened the rules governing its App Store to close a loophole that allowed software developers to harvest data about your friends and sell it for profit.
The change is designed to stop third-party developers from building databases of information on the people in your address book.
Apple silently pushed-out the change to the App Store after CEO Tim Cook publicly criticised Facebook for its handling of users’ data in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Cook said that Facebook was ‘beyond’ the point where it could be trusted to self-regulate.
Apple CEO Tim Cook has publicly clashed with Facebook over its data gathering policies. When asked what he would do if he found himself in Mark Zuckerberg’s shoes during the Cambridge Analytica scandal, he simply replied: ‘I wouldn’t be in this situation’
The update to the App Store Review Guidelines were first spotted by Bloomberg.
Until now, third-party applications only had to seek your permission once to gain access to the information stored in the address book on your phone.
This data is used by developers for a number of legitimate reasons, for example, highlighting people from your contacts who have a profile on a social network you may have just joined.
Under the old rules, as soon as you allow a developer to access the information in your address book, you no longer had any control over how that data was used.
According to Bloomberg, some developers used this data for marketing, while others sold the valuable contact information for profit.
Under the new rules, developers will be banned for selling these databases entirely.
Apps will also have to spell-out exactly how they intend to use your data.
If developers want to use the data already gathered from your smartphone for something not originally listed when you granted permission – for example, a new feature included in a recent update to the app – the app makers will need to seek your permission again.
The change should stop any data misuse from developers in the App Store.
However, the new rules do nothing about the data that is already in the hands of third-party developers.
While Apple can ban these individuals if they choose to violate its rules, it does not have control over what they do with the data once it has been obtained from users.
That is the same problem encountered by Facebook, which suffered a devastating breach of trust over data misuse by Cambridge Analytica earlier this year.
The changes to the App Store guidelines were silently rolled-out over a week after Apple held its annual developer conference WWDC, where the technology company debuted a number of user-facing features centred on privacy
Amongst these were new built-in tools in Safari designed to stop a practice known as ‘browser fingerprinting’ which allow advertisers to track your activity around the web based on your computer’s system configurations. The feature will be available in latest macOS 10.14 update
The strict new App Store rules were rolled-out without fanfare, less than 10 days after Apple announced a slew of privacy-focused features for its operating systems during its World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC) in San Jose, California.
Apple did not mention the App Store Review Guidelines changes on-stage.
‘One of the reasons that people choose Apple products is because of our commitment to privacy,’ senior Vice President of Software Engineering Craig Federighi announced on-stage.
Apple CEO Tim Cook has also made a number of thinly-veiled jibes at Facebook and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg following the scandal which saw data from 87 million users shared with political data firm Cambridge Analytica.
Speaking at Duke University in North Carolina last month, Cook said: ‘We reject the excuse that getting the most out of technology means trading away your right to privacy.
‘So we choose a different path: Collecting as little of your data as possible. Being thoughtful and respectful when it’s in our care. Because we know it belongs to you.’
Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg responded to the comments in a rare public spat between the two Silicon Valley giants.
‘Mark and I strongly disagree with their characterisation of our product,’ Sandberg said on-stage at the Code Conference in May.
Facebook and Apple have clashed in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. CEO Mark Zuckerberg branded Tim Cook’s comments on his approach to data privacy as ‘glib’
The social network was forced to post a warning message to users who had their private data harvested by political data company Cambridge Analytica
Political data firm Cambridge Analytica, which counted the Brexit and Trump campaigns among its customer base, used data from 87 million Facebook users to help target its advertisements to voters.
The data was obtained from an interactive personality quiz designed by Cambridge psychology professor Aleksandr Kogan.
The app vacuumed up not just the data of the people who took it, but also – thanks to Facebook’s loose restrictions – data from their friends, too, including details that they hadn’t intended to share publicly.
Zuckerberg said this results in the data of some 87 million people being harvested, however, since the company doesn’t have logs going back that far, he said, it can’t know exactly how many people were affected.
Facebook later limited the data apps were able to access, but it was too late in this case.
Kogan sold the user data harvested by the quiz to behaviour research firm Cambridge Analytica – a violation of Facebook’s terms of service.
Facebook has announced sweeping changes in the weeks after the scandal broke, limiting the amount of data that developers can access from the platform.