“Apple Inc.’s refusal so far to approve the Indian government’s anti-spam iPhone app is infuriating regulators, potentially harming the company’s efforts to sell more products in the country,” Saritha Rai reports for Bloomberg.
“The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has been trying unsuccessfully to get its Do Not Disturb software included in the App Store. The program lets people share spam call and text message logs with the agency, which uses the data to alert mobile operators to block the spammers,” Rai reports. “Apple has said the app violates its privacy policy, according to the regulator.”
“‘Nobody’s asking Apple to violate its privacy policy,’ said Ram Sewak Sharma, chairman of the Delhi-based telecom regulator,” Rai reports. “Sharma, who banned Facebook Inc.’s Free Basics internet access program last year, said there hasn’t been a resolution after half-a-dozen meetings with Apple. While Apple’s policy allows it to share user data with affiliates and strategic partners, the Indian government’s Do Not Disturb app only requires a limited, pre-approved level of data sharing, said Sharma, who has a degree in computer science from the University of California at Riverside. Apple’s policy states that sharing data with any other entity isn’t allowed.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote last month:
TRIA bureaucrat R S Sharma clearly doesn’t understand how iOS works or why it’s important for Apple to protect users’ privacy. If users want to share phone numbers and other sources to block, then they can do so on their own. No third-party app should be able to access such data willy nilly. It’s blatantly insecure – which is why it’s no problem for Google to allow in Android and also why Apple will never allow it.
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Apple accused of ‘anti-consumer’ behavior by Indian regulator – August 8, 2017