Apple under investigation for alleged unfair competition in Russia

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Apple is under investigation in Russia following a complaint by cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab and may be abusing its dominant market position, the watchdog said on Thursday Russian anti-monopoly.

Watchdog FAS said it was investigating why a new version of Kaspersky Lab’s Safe Kids app was rejected by Apple’s operating system, resulting in a significant loss of the parental control app’s functionality.

He said Apple had released version 12 of its own parental control app, Screen Time, which had similar functions to the Kaspersky program. Parental control apps allow parents to control their children’s phone and tablet usage.

Asked about the Russia investigation, Apple referred Reuters to an April 28 statement in which it said it had recently removed several parental control apps from its App Store because they “endangered users’ privacy and security.” .

He said several of these apps used “highly invasive” technology called Mobile Device Management (MDM) and that its use in a consumer-facing app was a violation of App Store policies.

Kaspersky said Apple’s App Store guidelines allowed limited use of MDM, but it was unclear how to get permission from Apple to do so. He also said these requirements reduced the competitiveness of third-party developers.

(Reporting by Maria Kiselyova, Nadezhda Tsydenova; writing by Tom Balmforth; editing by Jason Neely/Keith Weir)