Apple boots some ad blockers from App Store to protect users’ privacy

Less than a month has passed since the release of iOS 9, with which Apple welcomed third-party ad blocking apps, and the company has removed some of them from the App Store.

Among the temporarily banned apps is also Been Choice, an app that was capable of blocking apps within Apple’s own News app.

But it seems that this particular capability is not considered problematic by the company.

“We’ve removed a few apps from the App Store that install root certificates which enable the monitoring of customer network data that can in turn be used to compromise SSL/TLS security solutions,” the company explained. “We are working closely with these developers to quickly get their apps back on the App Store, while ensuring customer privacy and security is not at risk.”

“I was surprised the root certificate-based ad blocking apps were approved to begin with,” iMore’s Rene Ritchie commented.”They perform deep packet inspection of everything done on the internet, including secure financial transactions and private communications, on the ad-blocker’s servers and any servers involved in their chain, and in a way that’s not easily toggled on or off.”

While these developers think of a better, more secure way to block ads in apps, iOS users can block ads in the Safari browser by using apps like Crystal and Purify.