Apple Revoked Facebook’s Enterprise Developer Certificates

Kurt Wagner, reporting for Recode:

Apple’s response, via a PR rep this morning: “We designed our Enterprise Developer Program solely for the internal distribution of apps within an organization. Facebook has been using their membership to distribute a data-collecting app to consumers, which is a clear breach of their agreement with Apple. Any developer using their enterprise certificates to distribute apps to consumers will have their certificates revoked, which is what we did in this case to protect our users and their data.”

Translation: Apple won’t let Facebook distribute the app anymore — a fact that Apple likely communicated to Facebook on Tuesday evening. Apple’s statement also mentions that Facebook’s “certificates” — plural — have been revoked. That implies Facebook cannot distribute other apps to employees through this developer program right now, not just the research app.

Alex Heath:

This is incredible: None of Facebook’s internal iOS apps/betas (used by thousands of employees) are working right now because Apple just revoked the company’s certificate. They won’t open.

For employees to use Facebook products on iOS they have to go download from the App Store.

Someone is (rightly) pissed.

★ Wednesday, 30 January 2019