‘We apologise’: Google disables its data-collecting app for violating Apple’s policies

Internet giant Google has been forced to disable its private iOS app collecting data from users after it was revealed that it too, like Facebook, was violating Apple’s policies. It follows the shutdown of FB developer apps on iOS.

The Screenwise Meter app launched by Google in 2012 allowed iOS and Android users over the age of 18 to earn gift cards in exchange for letting internet companies track their data.

However, the iOS version of the app needed to use Apple’s enterprise program,which allows for the distribution of apps with special privileges. Those are only supposed to be given to company employees.

While it remains in Google’s Play Store, the company have now disabled the iOS app, after it was exposed that they violated Apple’s distribution policies.

“The Screenwise Meter iOS app should not have operated under Apple’s developer enterprise program – this was a mistake, and we apologize. We have disabled this app on iOS devices,” read a statement from a Google spokesperson to The Verge.

Google claimed they had been “upfront with users about the way we use their data in this app,” adding that they have no access to encrypted data.

Apple earlier punished Facebook by revoking the license to its developer apps after it emerged that the company monitored personal data of users as young as 13 for some $20 a month. Facebook denied that it has ever “spied” on users and said all who downloaded the app went through a “clear on-boarding process asking for their permission and were paid to participate,” adding that “less than five percent” of them were teenagers.

Scenes of anger and confusion have been described in reports from Facebook HQ as thousands of employees realized that their developer builds of both internal and basic apps no longer work.

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