iOS Apps Phoning Home

Apple are very good about not making this kind of thing available to apps that don't have an explicit reason to need it.

My network socket isn't Apple's property, yet Apple phones home for every application I start.

Any Apple engineers reading this, please give users control over this. This is a privacy hole.

It could be. But the fact it’s behind a special permission you have to request from Apple tells me they likely think it’s secure enough.

You can install programs like mitmproxy (CLI) or Charles Proxy (GUI) and have a look for yourself. Apple claims they need this information to protect you from malware. Meanwhile, IMHO, using the strategy they have, they are the malware.

Why does Apple restrict access to certain functionality?

What does apple not allow outside it’s platform? How would they even control that?

Nothing to do with Apple at all, if apps call services it can call anything at any time, some companies even hide things while Apple is reviewing then turn them on later. No way for Apple to know you are calling https://sometwiddle.com is nefarious or not, at runtime. At least in iOS the app has to ask for specific permissions to access things the app should not get without informing the user. But what it does with the info

That's impossible. Apple protects user's privacy.

Interesting, though I wonder if apple could potentially block something like this to favor their own platform like they do for analytics and the Appsfire fiasco