Apple Placing iOS Users at Risk

We do not like to openly criticize Apple of which many of us are big fans, but it is becoming unavoidable. It is necessary for us to inform iOS users of the following:

1. Apple has in the past, provided a safe ecosystem for its users from the dangers of the world wild west of the web. TonSafe does the same for users of web3 TON.
2. Apple is placing demands upon developers and apps to lie to our users and mislead them, perhaps out of systemic failures at Apple Review process.
3. Apple is holding up urgent hot fixes for apps. Hot fixes are important to squash any bugs that can affect users safety. The Apple Review Process is broken.

It is a highly frustrating process. App developers such as BASED Group, must submit Apps to the App Store for review before being made available on the App Store. This is good because the idea behind this is to protect users from poorly designed apps or even malicious or undesirable apps.

Double Standards

This review process has been broken for many years, however. It is not transparent, and it is not equal.

Many Apps are treated differently. It typically takes 8 hours before the App Review process will even begin. And then, even for the simplest of reviews which would in all honesty take a few minutes, take another 8 hours. What are the reviewers doing during this time? We speculate they are cheating Apple of pay.

Reviewers are typically on a dictator’s power trip. If you politely hold them to account they simply don’t respond and leave the app hanging indefinitely, waiting for you to give up and cancel the update.

And then the reviewers do not even know what they are doing, and instead simply post time and again "canned responses" that are highly annoying to developers. They simply do not read developers messages carefully, if at all, and work off a check list without engaging the grey matter between their ears. And so it goes in circles.

There is no accountability, no transparency as to procedures.

Appealing for a review of the review can take several weeks based on our past experience. However, we cannot cut corners with our users and we will not be forced to lie and cheat users at Apple's behest.

Coercion and Deception

Other apps, such as Tonkeeper and Tonhub, simply cave in and lie to their users, to appease Apple, and such apps are deceiving not only Apple and themselves but also their users, and this shows a very low moral fibre.

The BASED Team include many from the generation of Steve Jobbs. He would be turning in his grave at what Apple are now doing. Here is the current root of the pressure Apple is, in our view illegally (and thus opening themselves up for class action lawsuits as we're based in Europe, now protected by DMA legislation) and immorally:

Apple want TonSafe to install a DELETE ACCOUNT button. But as everyone who knows even the most basics about blockchain knows, you cannot delete blockchain accounts.

So, is Apple as a big tech company really that ignorant that they don't know this?

Of course not. But they still want apps to do it, and as we said, Tonkeeper and Tonhub have done this. They lie to their users, to Apple's users. They create a Delete button simply to appease Apple, instead of appealing to reason, and entering into a battle that ends with legal action if Apple do not give way to the law.

You simply cannot call the earth flat or the sky green just because Apple tell you to do so, there is no law that protects Apple from the consequences of lying to their users and deceiving them, and moreover demanding that others do so too. TonSafe will never do that.

Solutions Ignored

We suggested to Apple a very good solution to this issue. It is now clear that Apple are simply VIRTUE SIGNALING to their users: PRETENDING to protect users. Again, you can NOT delete a blockchain account once it is created. Try it on Tonhub and Tonkeeper and you will see that of course you can log in again after it was "deleted".

The good suggestion we made to Apple, which we will not disclose publicly yet, is the RIGHT THING TO DO. It makes sure that users are fully aware and not deceived, and it protects users above and beyond the mere legal requirements. Like Apple CLAIM to do, TonSafe actually DOES: We want to protect users above and beyond obligations.

So what does this all mean? It means we are delayed in a hotfix, which will be annoying to users. This hotfix is regarding the transaction ID, which is required by users who are in a dispute with an exchange, where they forgot to include a MEMO. While our Support can assist such users with a workaround, it creates an inconvenience to them, an inconvenience and added expenses to us, and Apple just sits twiddling thumbs.

We have not give up, the process has only just begun with Apple to resolve this, however they'll need to listen and do the right thing. We are giving them time to do so.

What can YOU do?

TonSafe is all about community and standing up to abuse and human rights violations. We already know that the community cannot expect any assistance from the TON Foundation.

So what you can do, is continue to support TonSafe. The more social media followers, the more installations and active users, the more TonSafe PRO members (5 TON per month promotion currently, or 50 TON per year), the more we resources we have to defend the rights and interests of TON users that the TON Foundation fails to do.