Apple removes a few apps from the App Store that installed root certificates to block ads inside apps, including Been Choice
App Store removes root certificate-based ad blockers over privacy concerns — Root certificate-based apps don't just block ads, they deeply inspect all your traffic, even private and secure traffic.
Context & Ripple Effects
The reversal comes fast: just two days after Apple approved Been Choice's VPN-based approach to blocking ads inside native apps, the company is pulling it from the App Store because the root certificate such blockers install doesn't merely strip ads — it positions the developer to inspect everything on the device, including encrypted traffic. The move lands amid an already tense ad-privacy moment, with Google having just told developers how to route around iOS 9's HTTPS enforcement so ads keep loading.
First-order effects
- Users who installed Been Choice or similar apps are carrying a trusted root certificate controlled by the developer, meaning their supposedly secure in-app traffic is exposed until they uninstall and remove it.
- Been Choice loses its distribution channel entirely, and any rival attempting the same root-certificate trick now knows Apple will treat it as grounds for removal rather than an approved technique.
Second-order effects
- Ad-supported app developers get back threatened in-app inventory without changing their own code, since the blocking method is being policed at the store level rather than by each publisher.
- The episode forces the ad-blocking category toward Apple-sanctioned shapes — Safari content blockers — setting up the stricter line Apple drew in 2017 when it began removing VPN-based blockers for third-party apps and rejected AdBlock's iOS update.
Third-order effects
- App review becomes the enforcement mechanism for device-level privacy: the same removal playbook reappears in Apple's purges of Adware Doctor after it was caught exfiltrating browsing histories and of third-party parental-control trackers once iOS 12 shipped Apple's own Screen Time tools.
- The structural upshot is that interception-grade access to user traffic migrates from independent developers to the platform vendor itself, with Apple as sole arbiter of who may see what flows through iOS — a gatekeeping role the App Store's scale makes consequential.
The trend: Apple is steadily narrowing which software may touch system-level traffic on iOS, using App Store removals to reserve deep inspection for itself while pushing developers toward surface-level alternatives like Safari content blockers.