iPhone phone home? Can Apple kill your apps? [Update - Don't worry]

iPhoneAtlas reports that there is another new feature of Firmware 2.x that isn’t so hot. Apparently, the iPhone (and presumably the iPod Touch) has a process by which it can check for and disable unauthorized programs. The article goes on to say that the firmware has a URL with a list of unauthorized applications. Currently, that list is empty.

Jonathan Zdziarski, author of an iPhone Forensics Manual, has this to say about the blacklist:

This suggests that the iPhone calls home once in a while to find out what applications it should turn off. At the moment, no apps have been blacklisted, but by all appearances, this has been added to disable applications that the user has already downloaded and paid for, if Apple so chooses to shut them down.

I discovered this doing a forensic examination of an iPhone 3G. It appears to be tucked away in a configuration file deep inside CoreLocation.

I personally don’t find this all that frightening, but it does bother me that my iPhone can “phone home” periodically. This is likely for killing any apps that may have slipped through Apple’s fingers at the App Store, but don’t live up to their terms. It’s interesting to see that the list is empty though, even with the recent troubles for NetShare. Apple is apparently not crazy about using this feature yet.

Does this bother you? I can see why they’d want to have this enabled on iPhones, as they can protect users against applications that have been found to be malicious after being released on the App Store. But where does the phoning home stop?

Update: So, it seems there may have been some misinterpretation about this blacklist. Here’s what DaringFireball.net has to say…

An informed source at Apple confirmed to me that the “clbl” in the URL stands for “Core Location Blacklist,” and that it does just that. It is not a blacklist for disabling apps completely, but rather specifically for preventing any listed apps from accessing Core Location—an API which, for obvious privacy reasons, is covered by very strict rules in the iPhone SDK guidelines.