[cheeze]

On the flipside, this app looks like it was kind of a hack to get working. "Tunnel all of your traffic through our VPN to get tracking of social media use." It doesn't surprise me that Apple would want to offer first-party support.

[geegoo]

Yep, it didn't seem like a viable business model. It's also a major security concern since it's not specifically selling a VPN solution, so the laymen user might not comprehend how the app works despite the app attempting to inform the user. I personally think it's naive to claim Apple copied their idea, since this was already something iOS and Android had support for from their related power management stats tracker.

[nrmitchi]

Agreed, I came to say something similar. I'm typically rather sympathetic to stories like this, but this implementation seems very much like a sledgehammer approach that Apple correcting was very much in the best interest of their users.

[hestefisk]

Agree with the sentiment here. Whilst I have all the deepest sympathies for the guy, it does seem like a hack to tunnel it through a VPN to get it working. One could argue, the right approach would be if Apple opened up the hooks to measuring app usage for any 3rd party app, but I don’t think that will happen any time soon.

[scarface74]

You would actually trust a third party app to track your usage?

Apple actually had to lock out Twitter and other apps from logging what other apps were on your phone for analytics.

[lostmsu]

Not only I've done it for years, it was also social, e.g. my friends could see it. The app doing that used to be called Wakoopa, now defunct.

IMHO, it was great!

[scarface74]

If this is the same company, you couldn’t possibly be okay with this?

https://wakoopa.com/

[lostmsu]

They dropped the original product long time ago.

[threeseed]

a) Facebook used app usage data to acquire and crush competitors.

b) Advertisers could use it to personally identify you.

c) Criminals could use it to blackmail you e.g. using Tinder app whilst married.

[AlphaWeaver]

This is because this would have been the only method to "block" access to the apps. Apple provides no API for other apps to "moderate" the opening of other apps, like Screen Time can do. This is a workaround because they were working in the sandboxed environment that is iOS.

[stefan_]

I have an app on Android for ad blocking that simply runs the VPN server locally. Works perfectly fine. Of course that means all the juicy data isn't flowing through your startup, on the upside you won't wake up one day with an angry mob asking the attorney general to federally charge you for hijacking their communication under the false pretense of app usage tracking.

[AlphaWeaver]

Oh definitely, I 100% agree. I'm not an expert enough on whether that's possible on iOS but I'm no supporter of them using the VPN argument as an excuse to siphon and sell the user data.

[scarface74]

Yes. You can run a VPN locally and just configure it in settings.

[em-bee]

and you won't have a large network traffic bill, making your app more profitable.

[xrd]

I'm not 100% committed to this idea, but VPNs all offer some trade-off between value and security, right? And, it seems weird that Apple, the company that continually finger points at Google and Facebook as invasive of privacy, would not support user choice here.

Their OS should permit VPNs and businesses running through VPNs, or they are in many ways doing the same thing that Google is doing with its changes to Chrome that break ad-blockers. In other words, they are removing options for users that want to have insight and control into their Internet usage.

[scarface74]

Apple does “support VPNs”. There is a setting for it.

Settings -> General -> VPN.

But the article even said the company got the idea from Onava. A company that tracked your app usage and sold the data and that was bought by Facebook.

[xrd]

So, I'm unclear what happened here. They were exploiting a hole in the VPN setting of iOS? If it was a bad-actor VPN, then I support Apple doing what they did. If it was Apple not liking the business model of a VPN that competes with their own new OS-core functionality, then that's another black mark on the AppStore model. This company seems to be asserting the latter, no? Are they twisting the facts?

[scarface74]

Apple isn’t making money off of their implementation. If the company wanted to sell a “VPN” service outside of the App Store, they could do that and just tell the user how to set it up.

Why would you want a third party to control your device?

[nerdjon]

iOS does support VPN's.

However this was a VPN in an attempt to get around a limitation/restriction of the OS.

Especially recently, I have had an issue with user choice. Since I feel like many (Google and Facebook largely, but apps like this on a smaller scale) don't fully communicate to a user what is actually happening to their data. Most of us here are technical and just seeing "all data through a vpn" know what that means, vast majority of people would not.

[rhinoceraptor]

Any reasonably informed iOS developer could have told them that their implementation is seriously at risk of being rejected by Apple.

[megous]

Apple could have just offered the app usage API, because it was obvioulsly lacking.

[scarface74]

An API for allowing third parties access to your personal information is not a ”feature”.

[megous]

Huh? Most useful APIs will allow access to some data/data source.

The whole point of computing is to work with interesting data and process it somehow.

It's up to the user whether he allows the app to both access interesting data and the network, or only allows the apps that can work with the data locally.

Also, this API would be much less sensitive than allowing apps to access contacts list, or whatever, for which the API already exists.

[scarface74]

The application in question had access to all of your communications going to the internet from your device.

The whole purpose of computing is not to have access to all of your private information and to analyze it and sell it to third parties. They even admitted that their business model was fashioned after Onava’s that did just that and was bought by Facebook.

[megous]

I was talking about Apple providing api to get information about screen time of other apps, so that these kinds of monitoring apps don't need such hacks.

[scarface74]

This is also why Facebook bought Onava. Even without access via a VPN, that would have been enough information for Facebook to know that people were spending a lot of time on WhatsApp and to know that it was becoming popular. Would you be okay with that?

[panopticon]

I feel like the novel uses for such an API don't outweigh the costs.

Even if Apple did provide such an API, the app in question also blocked access to social media apps via the VPN. My head would explode if Apple allowed apps to exercise direct control over others apps in such a fashion.

[megous]

Sorry, I don't see it. If some app blocks access to other apps, when you don't want it, you simlpy uninstall it.

[panopticon]

If that answer was adequate, Apple wouldn't have to audit apps to ensure they're not abusing the contacts permission.

The potential for abuse and erosion of user trust seems orders of magnitude larger than the apps we are missing out on by not having such an API.

[megous]

I was writing specifically about (potential) app blocking API.

I'm not sure what user trust you're talking about, though. Apple allowed shady VPN tracking/blocking apps in the past and users used them.

[panopticon]

I was responding generally about either API; my thoughts are similar.

My position is one of a cost/benefit ratio. VPNs have a lot of good use cases (enterprise networking, privacy from shady networks, etc) that outweigh the potential for harm.

Good use cases for apps exercising control over others are screen time monitors and parental controls? Maybe I’m being unimaginative, but that’s a narrow band of functionality better served by OS-level features.

[aiyodev]

> looks like it was kind of a hack

Where do you think you are?