Apple Fails To Block Porn and Gambling 'Enterprise' Apps (techcrunch.com)

Facebook and Google were far from the only developers openly abusing Apple's Enterprise Certificate program meant for companies offering employee-only apps. A TechCrunch investigation uncovered a dozen hardcore pornography apps and a dozen real-money gambling apps that escaped Apple's oversight. From the report: The developers passed Apple's weak Enterprise Certificate screening process or piggybacked on a legitimate approval, allowing them to sidestep the App Store and Cupertino's traditional safeguards designed to keep iOS family friendly. Without proper oversight, they were able to operate these vice apps that blatantly flaunt Apple's content policies. The situation shows further evidence that Apple has been neglecting its responsibility to police the Enterprise Certificate program, leading to its exploitation to circumvent App Store rules and forbidden categories.

Comments

Microsoft fails to stop porn and gambling apps

[Anonymous Coward]

See how stupid this headline is? That's how stupid apple is for not allowing anyone to run whatever they damn well please on hardware they own and paid for.

Re:Microsoft fails to stop porn and gambling apps

[DarkRookie2]

M$ can do this thou.
At least thru their own store. Prolly in Windows in general if they wanted to.

Re:Microsoft fails to stop porn and gambling apps

[Shaitan]

"When you buy an iOS device you know this, and a lot of people delightfully take this trade-off so they are more comfortable that their app that they download isn't going to cause undue harm to their device, their information or their finance."

Which has nothing to do with gambling, porn, piracy, competition, and censorship in general. Verifying the apps are safe, stable, and virus free is a completely separate debate because it doesn't require blocking any of the aforementioned content. And Apple is more than happy to violate your confidence and allow malware/spyware with a company logo on it for your employer.

Re:Microsoft fails to stop porn and gambling apps

[Shaitan]

It's porn and gambling, there is no crime here.

Re:Microsoft fails to stop porn and gambling apps

[LostMyAccount]

Realistically, isn't the larger problem here that gambling, porn and other fringe businesses are kind of sleazy from an honesty perspective?

Re: Microsoft fails to stop porn and gambling apps

[Shaitan]

On the contrary, crimes are invented just to keep the corrupt elements at play.

Re:Microsoft fails to stop porn and gambling apps

[Shaitan]

No the larger problem here is your phone manufacturer usurping your right to decide what is sleazy and dishonest or even to be sleazy and dishonest. Their job is to produce a phone, not prevent someone from calling their buddy to buy a joint. How is it any different with your apps? The issue you raise is one for the users mother, spouse, or priest.

Where there are crimes around these things the sleaziest elements really come from the fact that arbitrary natural human behaviors are outlawed and therefore don't take place in the light of scrutiny and judgement. How is porn or even prostitution innately more sleazy than considering 'good provider' or 'has the right father' in your list of criteria for marriage? It isn't, it just threatens to reduce the artificial scarcity of a valuable commodity contrary to the interests of about 60% of the population. Because of that we have a sex slave trade, criminals, and social outcasts running these industries.

Re:Microsoft fails to stop porn and gambling apps

[nukenerd]

Tim Cook is an ideological nutter. He thinks it's a sin not to ban things he disagrees with

Does he make an exception for gay porn ?

Re:Microsoft fails to stop porn and gambling apps

[jythie]

Apple is not usurpring anyone's rights, they are exerting their right to make a product as they see fit and consumers are exerting their right to purchase or not purchase based on the advertised functionality.

Re:Microsoft fails to stop porn and gambling apps

[ceoyoyo]

"As a tech guy, I would love my Phone, to be able to install any App I want."

It can. You just have to compile or sign it yourself. Apple used to charge $99 a year for that ability, but it's been free for a while.

Re:Microsoft fails to stop porn and gambling apps

[Miamicanes]

Actually, the problem is even bigger than determining what's "sleazy". When you're talking about a large, publicly-traded corporation that has to worry about shareholder lawsuits if the board does something that causes share prices to (even temporarily) dip, they become UNBELIEVABLY risk-averse and institutionally-allergic to anything that might be even SLIGHTLY controversial unless the government either gives them a clear, unambiguous safe harbor or outright requires that they do something.

Large corporations aren't just sociopathic... they're also blindly puritanical, even when their own customers neither demand nor WANT them to be puritanical, simply because in America, anything that involves sex is guaranteed to be 'controversial' SOMEWHERE, and a large public corporation with legal exposure to every jurisdiction in America simply can't risk getting dragged into an obscenity lawsuit by some bible-thumping sheriff or prosecuting attorney in B.F.E. fly-over country looking to score political points with the local electorate.

Apple painted itself into a corner... it decided that all IOS content must flow through it, but by doing that, it made itself legally liable for that content. In contrast, Google can be as puritanical as it likes (and the norms of American corporate governance demand) with Google Play, while freely allowing the existence of alternate marketplaces like MiKandi Market.

Making things even more complicated, Apple demands that all payment processing be done through Apple as well. In the US, most credit card merchant banks won't approve or allow businesses that are "adult oriented" (being intentionally vague, and have been known to throw their ban hammers at companies selling breast pumps to nursing mothers because... well, in America, breasts are bad, unless you're cutting off the nipple with a rusty knife, in which case the violence adequately cleanses it of any prurient sexual overtones and makes it OK). So if Apple DID allow porn, there's no way someone could have paid content without violating Apple's terms unless Apple went out of its way to find payment processing companies that will handle adult content... and then, Apple would risk having some merchant bank pull a ban-hammer on THEM if the bank determined that the mere existence of adult content tainted EVERYTHING on Apple's store.

Long story short, in America, there's exactly one way for a platform owned & operated by a large corporation to openly allow adult content... allow users to install content from anywhere, and keep them at arm's length from anything officially associated with the large corporation itself.

Re:Microsoft fails to stop porn and gambling apps

[Shaitan]

You are speaking of Apple as if it a private company with rights. It isn't, Apple is a publicly traded company and the consumers who pay it's rent for it and the shareholders who are its landlords have a right to make demands of it. Apple has no right to moral judgement. The problem is those consumers are doing just what you said, buying on the basis of advertised functionality and Apple isn't advertising censorship in specs. Since they have a near monopoly censorship is a very big issue indeed.

Some companies do that to make different classes of product for higher profit but in this case Apple is leaving money on the table for.... oh right, there is no upside. And in a case like that Apple may ultimately have to answer to shareholders as well.

Legal weed, decriminalized hard drugs, no nipples.

[eggstasy]

Makes perfect sense to have lots of drugs, alcohol, tobacco, violence but have no tolerance for nipples.

Huh? WHy is Safari installed

[DarkRookie2]

...designed to keep iOS family friendly.

Safari come installed by default yes? You can get to porn and gambling really easy on that.

Re:Huh? WHy is Safari installed

[Shaitan]

Shush or they'll start adding mandatory filters.

Of course not

[stealth_finger]

You don't get as much money as they have by doing the work. You skip the work and just collect the cash.

Re: Legal weed, decriminalized hard drugs, no nipp

[Anonymous Coward]

Effing murican hypocrites. Tits and nipples never hurt anyone. Drugs and guns on the other hand ...

Re:Legal weed, decriminalized hard drugs, no nippl

[stealth_finger]

Makes perfect sense to have lots of drugs, alcohol, tobacco, violence but have no tolerance for nipples.

Only female nipples though. Big no no.

A Walled Garden is a Jail

[jevvim]

And the warden knows that not all contraband is the same. But, still, you can't have the image that the rules aren't being enforced at all.

The gambling & porn apps will get a new EAC and move their users over; it's the hassle that they should have been planning for. Two of the apps in the article's table have multiple web presences, suggesting that some have planned for it.

For Facebook & Google, it's a PR issue. Apple may have scored points with the public for putting out this "we're protecting you against the big guys" story. It would look unseemly for Facebook or Google to directly point out the other contraband in Apple's jail -- nobody like a snitch.

But then the articles and commentary will come from people with ties to Facebook or Google, such as someone who "was the Lead Writer of Inside Facebook, ... covering everything about the social network", that "has moderated over 120 on-stage interviews" but lists only three: Edward Snowden, U,S, Senator Cory Booker, and Mark Zuckerberg.

I'm just saying, a little birdie told me...

Not very practical to police all enterprise apps

[SuperKendall]

I don't think it's very practical for Apple to really police enterprise apps, due to the way they are distributed and who can possibly be running them. Lots of companies rely heavily on the aspect where you do not have to keep track of each and every device and people can easily install company apps on personal devices...

I think where Apple could improve things though is in the initial application for enterprise developer programs. At the very least, it seems like it would not take too much more effort to block one issue mentioned in the article - registering for an enterprise dev account with a stolen DUNS number. There should be some way that Apple could ask the main contact info for any given DUNS number to confirm they had indeed asked for such access... That wouldn't stop everyone but it would probably stop the worst cases.

Re: Legal weed, decriminalized hard drugs, no nipp

[Shaitan]

"Tits and nipples never hurt anyone."

ROFLMFAO

I don't think any of the above should be outlawed or censored in any way but you've got to be kidding with this. Behind every fight, war, ambition, and dispute there is at least one fine pair of tits. If it weren't for competition to get laid we'd all be content masturbating in caves and eating whatever thing we killed that day raw.

Porn wants to be free

[PopeRatzo]

Mr Cook, tear down this wall.

Re:Porn wants to be free

[magusxxx]

Cook: "Wouldn't be prudent."

Who the hell needs a dedicated app to watch porn?

[nuckfuts]

I have an app called Safari on my iPhone. There is quite a bit of porn accessible with it.

Apple doesn't police enterprise apps

[Dog-Cow]

I've worked for a company that uses an enterprise account for internal testing. Apps signed with enterprise profiles are never seen by Apple.

Gambling upsets me! Someone stop it now!

[rv6502]

"Apple has been neglecting its responsibility to police"
How is it their responsibility? Are they officially the (thought) police now? If there is a crime report it to the actual police. If not then it's not their responsibility.

Spoon manufacturers have been neglecting their responsibility to police people eating too much ice cream.

aw triggered prudes are so cute

[iggymanz]

Real humans like vices that upset me, waaaah!!!!

Just think, email, browser, movie player, picture viewer, document viewer can be used FOR PORN. or TO ARRANGE GAMBLING OPPORTUNITIES. Why does Apple and google allow these perversions?

Re: Legal weed, decriminalized hard drugs, no nip

[b0s0z0ku]

They're unlikely to have died from seeing a picture of the relevant organ, though. Which is what we're talking about :D

Re:The word is "flout."

[Woeful Countenance]

Yes! People should cease flaunting their ignorance by flouting the conventional definitions of words!

Re:not in appstore

[b0s0z0ku]

So check apps for malware/bad behavior, don't censor them for non-violent content. Papa does NOT know best.

Re:Not very practical to police all enterprise app

[b0s0z0ku]

So if you have a company, you should have to pay Dun & Bradstreet for permission to develop internal apps? Fuck your idea.

Re: Legal weed, decriminalized hard drugs, no nip

[Shaitan]

'What kind of person says "I have no self control so I'll blame everything I do on others and make THEM change to accommodate me"?'

I don't recall saying anything about making others change or accommodate anything. I'm just making the observation that most all violence and ambition ultimately comes down to the innate and not self controllable male desire for appeal to females combined with the innate female emotional instability with regard to contentment.

Females are never content and men always want females that results in ever moving and shifting goals and social norms and a constant competition and chase to meet them. It is not exactly a new or secret theme. The greeks told the tale in the form of Helen of Troy.

Pay who now??

[SuperKendall]

So if you have a company, you should have to pay Dun & Bradstreet

Maybe you should have looked into that a little more carefully? Since a DUNS is free and all?

The purpose of the DUNS number is to have an entity that keeps track of legally registered businesses. So yes in fact, I do think Apple should make sure there is some understanding of who is requesting the open-ended ability to distribute applications on the platform. It's just that they also should verify who they are talking to really belongs with that DUNS number.

Let be just close by saying I think we can all agree, you should shut your pie hole if you don't understand the subject at hand.

Re:Pay who now??

[b0s0z0ku]

It's not "free" to do the legwork and jump through hoops like a trained circus monkey for permission to do something that's permission-free on platforms that don't treat their users like wayward children.

Re:Pay who now??

[SuperKendall]

It's not "free" to do the legwork and jump through hoops

It takes literally minutes and no effort beyond remembering where you wrote down your EIN; I have one for my business.

I would say I understand where you are coming from, but supporting the technological destruction of the non-technical is really not a concept I can get behind.

Looks like you ignored the advice about your pie-hole. Talk about ignorant monkeys... I guess time to delete your account out of shame and start up another.

I'll let you have the last response since ignorant monkeys like to chatter on and fling shit.

Re: not in appstore

[gnasher719]

Because these people use an âoeenterprise licenseâ. You can get the normal developer license and publish on the AppStore, or you can get an enterprise license and distribute _within your company_, whatever you like. But only within your company.

drop the apple store only / have an adults only ar

[Joe_Dragon]

Apple needs to drop the apple store only / have an adults only area.

Will they ban HBO as that as nude in it.