Apple continues to reject antitrust laws in the United States that could bring major changes to the App Store. A letter sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee in March refuted Apple's anti-sideloading stance.
The letter was signed by Timothy Powderly, Apple's Senior Director of Government Affairs in response to allegations made by security researcher and analyst Bruce Schneier, who told lawmakers that Apple's security concerns regarding "sideloading" were "unfounded".
Previously, Bruce Schneier sent a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, in January. In the letter Schneier wrote:
"I would like to address some of the unfounded security issues raised about this bill. It is absolutely not true that this law jeopardizes the privacy and security of users. In fact, it is more fair to say that this law jeopardizes the extractive business models of these companies." Their claims about privacy and security risks are both false and dishonest, and motivated by their own private interests rather than the public interest."
Reuters first reported Apple's response to Schneier, and 9to5Mac has obtained a full copy of the document. Apple explained that the accusations made by Schneier were "deeply disappointing" and proved that "technically gifted practitioners" could screw up issues around sideloading:
"Given our respect for Mr. Schneier, these allegations are deeply disappointing. In our experience, the work of providing cutting edge security and privacy to modern computing platforms at the scale of billions of devices is one of the most complex and challenging technical policy and engineering endeavors, and much about this work remains easily misunderstood. Mr. Schneier's letter underscores that even technically gifted practitioners, if they don't work on the main problems in this area, can screw up the problem."
Throughout the letter, Apple pointed to a number of different examples of third-party app stores containing malware-infected apps and apps that scrape user data. One of the examples cited by Apple revolves around the Android ecosystem.
"In the Android ecosystem, which has 50 times more malware than iOS, Nokia found that "the fact that Android apps can be downloaded from anywhere is still a big problem, as users are free to download apps from third-party app stores. , many of which contain malicious code or trojans."
"In the Nokia 2021 threat report, Android accounted for 50.31% of all infected devices, followed by Windows with 23.1% and macOS at 9.2%. iOS devices make up such a small percentage that they are not even separated into their own category. , instead of being moved to “other.” We consider this a success in protecting our users, and it could never have been done without the industry's last line of defense, namely our device security controls, working in tandem with frontline security and privacy protection that we make available to our users through the App Store and App Review."
As expected, Apple also demonstrated some of the protections offered by the App Store, including the review process, App Tracking Transparency, and Privacy Labels. The company says none of this is possible with third-party app stores.