Apple Implements Remote App Kill Switch for the iPhone

from wired (here) Apple has announced that it has sold 60 million apps for the iPhone since its launch a month ago, that is a staggering 2 million a day and one of the reasons I proposed that the iPhone would introduce a mobile malware tipping point (here), what I didn’t realize at the time was that Apple had implemented a remote kill switch, which Steve Jobs himself confirmed with the WSJ (here).

Although I can understand the potential to do evil here I am far less concerned with Apple abusing their remote kill capabilities, like the US federal government would, and think it is a great idea they can reach out and kill a nefarious application – that is, of course, it till it is mine and it isn’t malicious just kind of subversive and anti-Apple…

While it’s good to know that a malicious application can be immediately yanked from all iPhones at the press of a button, it’s a little worrying, too. Given the level of secrecy inside Apple, we have a picture in our heads of some kind of virtual Guantanamo Bay inside One Infinite Loop, where bad applications are kept locked up indefinitely and tortured to find their secrets.

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