[simion314]

> a) Apple has invested heavily in automated review methods over the years.

There was a news here where malware was found on the Apple iOS store, and Apple changed their mind in the last moment and refused to inform the victims.

The reality show you (if you want to see) that

- malware happens (you can't make automatic analysis code to detect all possible issues )

- Apple users will mostly have a wrong image of the Store security due to Apple not informing victims when bad things happen and a big PR budget to paint a fiction.

The reviewers are there mostly to make sure you do not put a link to your website and buypass the Apple payments and make sure that the app does not crash and use the approved UX. I really hope you are not that navie to think they are opening the app in a debugger and checking for weird code.

[wwtrv]

You need register with a real name and credit card and pay 100$ to be able to publish anything on the app store. Irregardless of how effective the review process is even if you manage to sneak any app with malware past it Apple will still be able to remotely remove it from every user’s device and ban your account. This alone make the Appstore inherently safer than any system which would allow side loading.

As for code, they run relatively extensive automatic tests to detect whether private (banned/undocumented) APIs are used, I don’t know how effective they are at catching malware, though.

[simion314]

>You need register with a real name and credit card and pay 100$ to be able to publish anything on the app store.

This was done on Windows too, you were not forced but any business would sign their application, otherwise they user would get a scary warning that the developer is not know.

>As for code, they run relatively extensive automatic tests to detect whether private (banned/undocumented) APIs are used, I don’t know how effective they are at catching malware, though.

The sandbox should solve this, unless the Store bans APIs only for some or worse there are hidden APIs that should not be used and the sandbox is to dumb to notice you are using them , then this would be security by obscurity.

This topic is different then most of the other topics about side loading apps, in this case the giant refused to allow an application on the store, or allow access to an API without a good enough reason. This reveals again that rules are not fair and is very hard to get justice for the users.

I would suggest a law to force the giants to give always an exact reason of why an action aganst someone happened, I have personal experience where an account of mine was banned and I have no way to appeal and I have no idea what was wrong. The giants are shitting on us all, as long as the numbers of the victims are low enough some flashy ads would solve their PR problems. We need something to make it fair for the users, make it easy to get our justice.

[g_p]

In the EU there is a (little known) law that does as you suggest -

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32...

This regulation specifically looks at platform-to-business relationships, and requires actual disclosure of reasons, notice periods, etc.

What we need to see are cases using this law (as it's pretty clear from article 4 what business' rights are), so it becomes too costly to trample over businesses in an unaccountable way. Once the cost of human intervention and support is lower than that of their legal bills and penalties, human support and intervention will return. Platforms are getting away without humans in the loop as a result of the lack of cost impact to them of a mistake. Once it hits their bottom line and gets their counsel in a pickle, it will start to change rapidly to preserve their bank balance.

[simion314]

I am from EU, I will try and google more, my issue is with PlayStation and I could not find with my searches any way to appeal or get clarifications on what happened. I am not sure if sending an email on a generic contact email address with a link to the law will work.

[citizenkeen]

Regardless