[gesman]

Every business based on a single point of failure - single customer or single platform is overexposed to risk. That’s what happened.

Do what others suggest to beg Tim Cook for mercy. Hopefully someone will help you to reinstate your app.

Step 2:

Rethink your business model. It will happen again. Possible change - provide app building services to others. You have expertise. You can deliver. You’ll have multiple customers. Your business won’t rely on apple or Facebook of YouTube mercy.

[threeseed]

> Do what others suggest to beg Tim Cook for mercy

Why bother ?

This app is capturing website history which would be invaluable to third parties. Given the current environment (with Cambridge Analytica and Facebook) there is no way any normal, sensible company wouldn't crack down on apps like this given half the chance.

It sucks for the guy if his app isn't sending data to third parties but you can't blame Apple for not trusting him.

[AznHisoka]

“This app is capturing website history which would be invaluable to third parties.”

Foursquare is capturing location history, which it admits to selling to third parties.

I’m waiting for Apple to remove them from the app store.

[threeseed]

If this guy was a larger company with a good reputation and documented privacy policies like Foursquare has then it's quite possible his app wouldn't have been removed.

But the fact is this VPN app looks awfully similar to those dodgy apps we saw on Facebook which were pretending to be some useful app but were secretly selling your data to third parties. And since he is just a small time app developer we (and by extension Apple) can't completely trust that he isn't doing that.

[dvfjsdhgfv]

They won't do this for the same reason Googl won't remove Pinterest from SERP in spite of them violating their ToS.

[imhoguy]

Not sure of capabilities of the app in question, but with HTTPS used nearly everywhere, there is not much value from the traffic other than some domain name or usage timing patterns.