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As to the data collection, Apple clearly states that’s what the developer claims the app does. Given the existence of encrypted connections, I don’t think they

As to the data collection, Apple clearly states that’s what the developer claims the app does. Given the existence of encrypted connections, I don’t think they can do better than that without doing a code review, and even then, if the app happens to have a legitimate reason to send personal data to a remote server, they wouldn’t be able to verify that that server doesn’t store it. As to the crashing: the app _might_ do all kinds of shenanigans to make it through the app store approval process. Things I can think of are that it may work fine with tracking disabled until a given date, or when used within Apple’s IP address range, or when in Cupertino, or if a remote call it makes tells it so, or when some server or DNS entry exists or does not exist. If they obfuscate such behavior enough, I think it can be very hard to discover it. I wouldn’t know how likely that is, but it wouldn’t surprise me if there were apps out there that do such things. But yes, it also could be sloppy app review. That might be more likely.

Apocryphon 5y ago
It's not even just an app slipping through review. It was featured!
colejohnson66 5y ago
> As to the crashing: the app _might_ do all kinds of shenanigans to make it through the app store approval process. Things I can think of are that it may work fine with tracking disabled until a given date, or when used within Apple’s IP address range, or when in Cupertino, or if a remote call it makes tells it so, or when some server or DNS entry exists or does not exist. Just like Volkswagen did. Short of providing Apple your code and then perusing through it each time (which isn’t feasible), they can’t catch everything. Now, a featured app? They really messed up here.
- Someone 5y ago
  _If_ this app did that kind of thing, I don’t see much of a difference. You can’t expect them to catch it at review. If picking it for being featured happens closely in time to that (likely, IMO) you can’t expect them to catch it at that time, either. That leaves them being paranoid, and periodically rechecking all featured apps. Even if they do that, there still will be a time window in which the app misbehaves.
  - Apocryphon 5y ago
    Sounds like the vaunted App Store review isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.
    - Someone 5y ago
      If an app can make a http request, parse the response, and do different things depending on the result, it’s hard to prove it won’t crash on receiving invalid input without access to the source code (often even with access to it. If that were easy, there wouldn’t be that many vulnerabilities from exploiting such crashes) If Apple required the source code, I predict an outcry “they’ll steal our code, just as they steal our ideas”. And no, LLVM Bitcode won’t help here, even ignoring (AFAIK) that they don’t require you to provide it (which would lead to another outcry “we can’t use gcc”) It’s too low level for that.

Apocryphon 5y ago

It's not even just an app slipping through review. It was featured!

colejohnson66 5y ago

> As to the crashing: the app _might_ do all kinds of shenanigans to make it through the app store approval process. Things I can think of are that it may work fine with tracking disabled until a given date, or when used within Apple’s IP address range, or when in Cupertino, or if a remote call it makes tells it so, or when some server or DNS entry exists or does not exist. Just like Volkswagen did. Short of providing Apple your code and then perusing through it each time (which isn’t feasible), they can’t catch everything. Now, a featured app? They really messed up here.

Someone 5y ago
_If_ this app did that kind of thing, I don’t see much of a difference. You can’t expect them to catch it at review. If picking it for being featured happens closely in time to that (likely, IMO) you can’t expect them to catch it at that time, either. That leaves them being paranoid, and periodically rechecking all featured apps. Even if they do that, there still will be a time window in which the app misbehaves.
- Apocryphon 5y ago
  Sounds like the vaunted App Store review isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.
  - Someone 5y ago
    If an app can make a http request, parse the response, and do different things depending on the result, it’s hard to prove it won’t crash on receiving invalid input without access to the source code (often even with access to it. If that were easy, there wouldn’t be that many vulnerabilities from exploiting such crashes) If Apple required the source code, I predict an outcry “they’ll steal our code, just as they steal our ideas”. And no, LLVM Bitcode won’t help here, even ignoring (AFAIK) that they don’t require you to provide it (which would lead to another outcry “we can’t use gcc”) It’s too low level for that.