During the International Association of Privacy Professionals summit in Washington DC, Cook sought to rally support at a time when politicians in the United States and abroad are pushing to force Apple to allow iPhone users to download mobile apps from outside its App Store.
“We are deeply concerned about legislation that undermines the protection of privacy and integrity of services,” Cook said, noting that “the risks we face undermine not only our data, but our freedom as individual. ”
The US giant group is in a legal dispute with Fortnite developer Epic Games, which has sought to “circumvent” App Store rules by accusing Apple of using a monopoly policy to purchase assets and service from the online store.
In November, a federal judge pressured Apple to allow an alternative payment system in its online store, but also found that Epic Games failed to prove that Apple violated competition laws.
The company also opposes some European regulators.
Cook felt that allowing Apple users to “manually download” apps from online stores outside of the App Store would bypass Apple’s testing path to prevent viruses and limit data collection.
“This means that companies seeking to use the data will be able to violate our privacy protection rules and target our users without their knowledge or will.”
“It will also allow attackers to bypass our arsenal of privacy protections by interacting directly with our users,” Cook added.
Critics of Apple accuse the company of designing its App Store to measure it, taking a large portion of the cost of financial transactions that go through it, and exercising strict control over app developers.
Source: Al Akhbar
