Apple Bans App That Was Storing iPhone Passcodes
We shared some cool data with you on Monday about the most commonly-used passcodes on iPhones. — It came from developer Daniel Amitay, who made the Big Brother Security app. The app was designed to snap a photo of anyone who entered …
Context & Ripple Effects
The ban is the direct sequel to Monday's data drop: Daniel Amitay published an analysis of the most common iPhone passcodes drawn from his own Big Brother Security app, which photographed anyone entering a code and quietly stored what they typed (the most-common-passcodes dataset). The publicity cut both ways — it made clear the app was transmitting users' unlock codes to a third party, and Apple removed it from the App Store within a day.
First-order effects
- Big Brother Security is pulled from the App Store, ending its distribution and any further passcode uploads from new installs.
- Users who already downloaded the app have transmitted their iPhone passcodes to Amitay's servers, an exposure that exists regardless of the removal.
Second-order effects
- App Review now has a high-profile test case for enforcing disclosure rules: apps that collect sensitive credentials under a security-marketing premise face removal, raising the bar for every developer harvesting user input.
- Security-tool makers specifically lose cover — an app whose stated purpose is protecting access becomes the cautionary example when it logs the very credential it guards.
Third-order effects
- If this enforcement posture holds, Apple's gatekeeping shifts from reviewing what apps do on-device to auditing what they send off-device, making undisclosed data exfiltration a takedown offense rather than a terms-of-service footnote.
The trend: Platform gatekeepers are moving from trusting developer privacy disclosures to actively policing data collection through App Store review and takedowns.