No one, except you, should have unrestricted access to manage your child’s device. Parents shouldn’t have to trade their fears of their children’s device usage for risks to privacy and security, and the App Store should not be a platform to force this choice.

Beyond the control that the app itself can exert over the user’s device, research has shown that MDM profiles could be used by hackers to gain access for malicious purposes.

But it is incredibly risky-and a clear violation of App Store policies-for a private, consumer-focused app business to install MDM control over a customer’s device. Businesses will sometimes install MDM on enterprise devices to keep better control over proprietary data and hardware. MDM gives a third party control and access over a device and its most sensitive information including user location, app use, email accounts, camera permissions, and browsing history. We started exploring this use of MDM by non-enterprise developers back in early 2017 and updated our guidelines based on that work in mid-2017. Over the last year, we became aware that several of these parental control apps were using a highly invasive technology called Mobile Device Management, or MDM. It’s important to understand why and how this happened. We recently removed several parental control apps from the App Store, and we did it for a simple reason: they put users’ privacy and security at risk. Other apps in the App Store, including Balance Screen Time by Moment Health and Verizon Smart Family, give parents the power to balance the benefits of technology with other activities that help young minds learn and grow.

It’s the reason we created, and continue to develop, Screen Time.

Apple has always believed that parents should have tools to manage their children’s device usage.

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