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Apple faces investigation for suspected unfair competition in Russia

Apple faces investigation for suspected unfair competition in Russia

Apple

Appleis underinvestigationinRussiafollowing a complaint from cybersecurity company Kaspersky Lab and may be abusing its dominant market position, Russia's anti-monopoly watchdog said on Thursday.

Watchdog FAS said it was investigating why a new version of Kaspersky Lab's Safe Kids application had been declined byApple's operating system, resulting in a significant loss in functionality for the parental control app.

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It saidApplehad released version 12 of its parental control app, Screen Time, which had similar functions to the Kaspersky program. Parental control apps allow parents to control their children's phone and tablet usage.

Asked about theRussianinvestigation,Applereferred Reuters to an April 28 statement in which it said it had recently removed several parental control apps from its App Store because they "put users' privacy and security at risk."

It said several of these apps were using a "highly invasive" technology called Mobile Device Management (MDM) and that its use in a consumer-focused app was a violation of App Store policies.

Kaspersky saidApple's App Store guidelines allowed for limited use of MDM, but that it was not clear how to obtainApple's permission to do so. It also said the requirements reduced the competitiveness of third party developers.

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