Apple approves an app, Been Choice, that blocks ads in native apps through its VPN content-removal service, offers rewards to users that share behavioral data
Context & Ripple Effects
Apple's approval of Been Choice is the opening move in a short-lived experiment at the App Store's edge: a VPN-based service that strips ads out of native apps and pays users for behavioral data. The related coverage shows how quickly that window closes — within days Apple pulls Been Choice and similar root-certificate blockers from the store in its first purge of in-app ad blockers, and by 2017 it formalizes the reversal by rejecting AdBlock's iOS update and removing VPN-based ad blockers outright.
What makes Been Choice distinctive is not the blocking but the business model: rewards in exchange for behavioral data. That same pattern — a VPN app monetizing what it sees about users' activity — is exactly what Apple later cites when it pulls Facebook's Onavo VPN for collecting information about other installed apps.
First-order effects
- Users who install Been Choice gain a way to strip ads from native iOS apps and earn rewards by sharing their behavioral data, while developers and ad networks lose those impressions on opted-in devices.
Second-order effects
- Apple's own review process is forced into a contradiction — it has approved an app whose VPN position lets it observe all device traffic — pushing Apple to clarify where the line sits between content blocking and surveillance.
Third-order effects
- The arc from this approval to the 2017 ban on VPN-based ad blockers establishes Apple's lasting rule: blocking is confined to Safari content blockers, and any app using network-level access to resell user behavior gets removed — a precedent later softened only for parental-control apps under strict no-data-sale conditions in the 2019 MDM reversal.
The trend: Apple is consolidating access-layer power over the iPhone, progressively evicting third-party apps that use VPNs or certificates to intercept traffic or monetize behavioral data.