Re:Bouncer – Private SMS Blocker
by css on Saturday September 10, 2022 @11:48AM
(#32791686)
It shows up when you allow the app to filter your messages in iOS settings: https://imgur.com/zPhUdnL
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This feels like a case where it'd be good if Apple had two different messages, one for SMS filters which have a ILMessageFilterExtensionNetworkURL configured (which should get the scary message you saw) and one for those that don't (which are sandboxed to be purely device-local).
That said, Apple doesn't really handle the case of permissions changing with an app update very well, so launching your app purely device-local then updating to add something server-side a year later would probably let you get around that.
This app seems to not have the key that'd indicate it's capable of sending anything to a server: https://github.com/afterxleep/Bouncer/blob/master/Bouncer/In... (though, you know, that assumes that the build on the App Store is directly from the source we can see...)
Well, that's pretty troubling considering https://shot.3e.org/ss-20220910_115329.png
Isn't App Store review supposed to at least catch things like that?
It's a boilerplate warning that applies to the maximum possible amount of data-collection that could be happening. The app says it doesn't collect anything, and its source on GitHub supports that claim... but a SMS app theoretically could and so Apple warns you of the worst case.