Is Apple a Safe Haven or a Money-Grubbing Trojan Horse?
A fake app finds a home in the place Apple argues is safest of all.
This app, which was pretending to be the password manager LastPass, was actually a rather bad fake, filled with spelling mistakes and errors that plenty of Apple users caught onto.
Apple usually says its App Store is safe because they check all the apps, but this fake app still got through. They’ve been fighting tooth and nail against new rules that would force better interoperation and ensure that tech giants have a harder time gate-keeping their customers.
Their argument against interoperating, against better pluralism of competition? That allowing other app stores to operate on their devices could make things less safe for users. And yet this fake LastPass app was discovered in Apple’s own store!
This comes at a bad time for Apple as the European Commission has identified six companies — Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, and Microsoft — as digital “gatekeepers” under the Digital Markets Act (DMA).
Apple and these other tech giants now have six months to comply with DMA obligations, ensuring fair and open digital markets. Since non-compliance could lead to significant fines, up to 20% of worldwide turnover for repeated infringements, this is the first time we’ve seen real teeth emerging from governments against corporate powerhouses like Apple.
Regardless, this latest breach of trust only further highlights how dangerous it is to let any one company dictate terms of access to its users.
We need a comprehensive set of interoperability standards, backed up from strong legal measures.
We need to force companies like Apple into earnestly serving the public’s good… otherwise, they will just continue to serve the public up on a platter for the “good” of their corporate stakeholders.