Make approach for an additional antitrust investigation into large tech. Step ahead Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS), which has opened an official probe of Apple — following a criticism lodged in March by safety firm Kaspersky Labs.
Kaspersky’s criticism to FAS adopted a change in Apple’s coverage in direction of a parental management app it presents, referred to as Kaspersky Safe Kids. Discussing the criticism in a weblog publish the safety agency says Apple contacted it in 2017 to tell it that the usage of configuration profiles is in opposition to App Store coverage, despite the fact that the app had been on Apple’s retailer for almost three years with out it elevating any objections.
Apple informed Kaspersky to take away configuration profiles from the app — which it says would require it to take away two key options that makes it helpful to oldsters: Namely, app management and Safari browser blocking.
It additionally factors out that the timing of Apple’s objection adopted Apple saying its Screen Time characteristic, in iOS 12 — which permits iOS customers to observe the period of time they spend utilizing sure apps or on sure web sites and set time restrictions. Kaspersky argues Screen Time is “essentially Apple’s own app for parental control” — therefore elevating issues concerning the potential for Apple to exert unfair market energy over the shop it additionally operates by proscribing competitors.
We’ve reached out to Apple for touch upon the FAS investigation. The firm referred Reuters to an announcement it made in April about its coverage in direction of parental management apps, following different complaints.
In the assertion Apple says it eliminated a number of such apps from the App Store as a result of they “put users’ privacy and security at risk” — calling out the usage of what it described as “a highly invasive technology called Mobile Device Management” (MDM).
But Kaspersky claims its app doesn’t, and by no means did, use MDM.
Following complaints and a few press consideration to Apple’s parental management apps crackdown), the corporate seems to have softened its stance on MDM for this particular use-case — updating the App Store Review Guidelines’ to permit utilizing MDM for parental controls in restricted circumstances.
Kaspersky additionally says that the Apple Developer Enterprise Program License Agreement “clarifies that the use of MDM-profiles and configuration profiles in applications for home users is only possible with the explicit written consent of Apple”.
However it argues that Apple’s up to date guidelines and restrictions nonetheless “do not provide clear criteria allowing the usage of these profiles, as well as information on meeting the criteria, which is needed for obtaining written consent from Apple to use them”. Hence it’s not keen to drop its criticism but.
It says it’s additionally persevering with to arrange to file an antitrust criticism over the identical difficulty in Europe — the place a separate competition-related criticism was lately filed in opposition to Apple by the music service Spotify.
Kaspersky says now that solely official written affirmation from Apple — of “the applicability of the new p.5.5. “App Store Review Guidelines” for Kaspersky Safe Kids for iOS” — will keep its criticism.
Russia’s FAS has proven itself to be comparatively alacritous at dealing with large tech antitrust complaints — most notably slapping Google with an order in opposition to bundling its companies with Android again in 2015, a couple of months after native search large Yandex had filed a criticism.
It took the European Union’s competitors regulator a number of extra years earlier than arriving at the same conclusion vis-a-vis Google’s competition-blocking Android bundling.
