Apple Approves Smutty iPhone App By Mistake
Over the weekend, an interesting app made its way into the iPhone app store: Wallpaper Universe, a naughty little number that let you decorate your homescreen with pictures of women in various states of undress. On Friday, we saw FunMobility's appear in the app store but by Saturday, the app had been removed. This begs the question: what exactly is going on with Apple's app approval process?
Let's be honest here. Even if you only took one quick glance at the screenshot provided by the application's maker, it would be obvious what this app was all about: Porn...and Apple doesn't do porn. Even though approving adult applications would turn the app store into a veritable goldmine for both the company and app developers, Apple has no intention of ever letting those sorts of applications into their store.
So what happened? How could an Apple employee see this and yet hit the "approve" button? Apple won't reveal what goes on behind the scenes with their approval process, a process that often takes weeks or months, but this incident almost makes you wonder if there is one blurry-eyed guy sitting a keyboard clicking "approve," "approve," "reject" all day long as hundreds of applications arrive for approval. Or could it be that some approvals are now just being automated with their final review done only after they are live in the store? That also would explain how an app like this could appear.
Mistakes Like This Raise Questions
What's more important than the approval then subsequent removal of this silly little app is the giant gaping hole that this incident points to in Apple's review process. Along with porn, Apple also intends to keep us safe from illegal and malicious applications, those that are bandwidth hogs, and those that raise privacy concerns. But if they thought that Wallpaper Universe was acceptable only to realize later, that...oops...it was porn, how can we trust them to keep us safe from the other application no-no's that are far more dangerous?
Can we (and should we) expect all the apps Apple approves to be safe and secure? If Apple screws up, who is negligent for the damage caused? This time, Apple's mistake may have only involved naughty wallpaper, but next time, it could be something worse.
Image credit: VentureBeat
Comments
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"oops"...:)
Posted by: Olcayto
|
November 24, 2008 6:11 AM
Apparently, It's never a mistake when thy block them.
Posted by: Michael Fidler
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November 24, 2008 6:12 AM
Sarah,
While I agree that this has been a great mistake from an Apple employee, I don't understand why you are making this so big.
Do you have information on the review process and how it is carried on?
A very basic approach is that porn and security are completely different issues, one is architecture, one is content.
For security you will look at the code behind the app and the interaction with the other phone features. There are no images there. This app can have been coded beautifully and perfectly sure.
A mistake could have been in checking security only and not the actual content. This means, no security issues!
By the way, is the app only featuring pornographic images or does it have all kind of images?
Posted by: Lorenzo | November 24, 2008 6:38 AM
@Lorenzo: good point about the differences between checking for content and security...however, NO ONE has any information on the Apple review process, which is a major concern. Content such as this is breaking the rules and quite easy to detect, but a mistake was made anyway. If they can't block the obvious rule breakers, why are we trusting them to block the more difficult to detect security risks?
I agree with Lorenzo that Apple may have checked this app's security and ignored its content. Sarah: saying that because they didn't look at the content means that didn't look at its security is a logical fallacy.
And, sorry, but the real question is--why are they blocking porn on *MY* device? Shouldn't I be the final arbiter of what gets on the device *I* paid for?
There should be a ratings system for apps (like the movies) if some people are concerned about content.
Porn is perfectly legal and safe, and Apple should allow people to have it on their phones.
Posted by: Lou | November 24, 2008 12:30 PM
I think this article and others about it has blown this incident way out of proportion. I realize that "sex" and "iphone" make for a frothy combination, but Wallpaper Universe is by no means "smutty" - in fact it's one of the leading Wallpaper apps in the U.S. The content being shown above are the winners of a Hottest Girl contest. All content is double-screened by two FunMobility employees to be in compliance with very specific carrier guidelines: no nudity, no gang signs, no smoking, no signs, etc etc. There is nothing racier than what you would find on your local Wal-mart magazine rack or on network television. Additionally, glamour / model / amateur content make up less than 1% of Wallpaper Universe's catalog of over 10,000 wallpapers including premium content, personalizable wallpapers, team logos, etc. We are one of the largest content providers in the U.S., with over 90 employees serving all the U.S. mobile characters. To characterize Wallpaper Universe as "smutty" is misleading. If you actually use the app, you probably would agree.
We have been in touch with Apple on this incident, and they informed us that they'd rather not have content like this, and we took it down. One of the posters here did bring up a point, which is that there are actually no written content standards from Apple (something that we have requested) We have written content standard guidelines from all our carrier partners, which we comply with 100%. Once we get them from Apple, we'll comply there as well.
Adam Lavine
President & CEO
FunMobility Inc.
Posted by: FunMobility | November 24, 2008 6:52 PM
you guys probably meant 'raises the question'
http://begthequestion.info/
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