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iOS privacy sleuth Clueful returns as a web app
After having been yanked from the App Store by Apple in July, an app called Clueful has found a second chance at life on the web. Created by Bitdefender, the app was designed to present a searchable database of other iOS apps and information on what ways they share your personal data. Neither Apple nor Bitdefender ever explained the app's exorcism but it appears that the latter still believes there's some usefulness to the concept. Like with the iOS-native original, the web-based Clueful lets you look up any iOS app and see how it shares user data, from sending your UDID to its developer to silently tracking your location. The web app also lets you see the current top free apps, biggest privacy offenders and apps most recently analyzed by Bitdefender for privacy incursions. Clueful's web-based interface is built to look like an iOS app running on an actual iPhone. The site looks and sounds like it's built to promote an actual iOS app, which has us wondering if Clueful for iOS is on the verge of a return to the App Store, with this site merely serving to demo its functionality. We'll keep you posted if it does resurface.
Apple pulls Bitdefender's privacy app Clueful
Apple has pulled an app named Clueful from the App Store, though it hasn't been completely forthcoming yet as to why the app was pulled. Clueful is an app from a company called Bitdefender that's designed to let iPhone users monitor what their other apps are doing or sharing in terms of usage. One of Bitdefender's reps does say that "most app developers use [Clueful's] information for legitimate purposes, others might not," so it's possible that the app allowed for some less-than-secure activity on the part of app developers or users. It's unclear what that is, however. It seems from the project's FAQ that Clueful did try to interact with other apps on the iPhone, and that seems like something open to exploits and issues. At any rate, the app's gone now. If you already have it installed, you can obviously keep it, but for now, there won't be any new installs from the App Store. The big question here is, of course, why the app was approved in the first place. Bitdefender didn't add any functionality to the app to get it removed, so there must have been something Apple missed. Hopefully, we'll hear more in the future about the problems behind Clueful, and we'll get a good reason why Apple suddenly changed its mind.
