Windows Marketplace For Mobile Kill Switch Details

An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft recently gave more details on Windows Marketplace for Mobile during the Tech Ed New Zealand 2009 session titled 'Distributing and Monetizing Applications through Windows Marketplace Mobile,' led by Loke Uei Tan, Senior Product Manager on the Windows Mobile Team. Geekzone covered the event in good detail, but one of their points caused a lot of uproar in the blogosphere: 'If an application is approved but later removed from the marketplace it will then be automatically removed from all mobile devices.' That sounded a bit ominous to Ars Technica, so they checked in with Microsoft. 'In the vast majority of instances where an application is removed from Windows Marketplace for Mobile, users of this application will continue to be able to use these applications on their phones,' a Microsoft spokesperson told Ars. 'In the rare event an application from Marketplace exhibits harmful behavior or has unforeseen effects, Marketplace has the capability to remotely uninstall these applications. While we hope to avoid this scenario, we will make refunds available in such cases.'"

Comments

Re:Woah. That was me!

[Kalriath]

Troll? Nice. If that mod was actually present, they'd actually know that it actually was me. Well, if you knew who I was anyway.

Still, it seemed the presenter thought that he was asking if the app would be removed from sale, not remote nuked from devices. Anyway, pleased to hear that this isn't necessarily the case- the response seemed to indicate that the nuke would occur for any app Microsoft removed.

Bear in mind folks, that Apple can do, and have done, the same thing as well.

Re:Woah. That was me!

[AuMatar]

http://consumerist.com/5035528/jobs-confirms-iphone-kill-switch

Jobs himself confirmed the capability is in the iphone. I don't know if they've used it, but they can.