A couple of day ago I reported on the remote blacklist for rogue Apple iPhone applications as claimed by Jonathan Zdziarski, (see here) today John Gruber of Daring Fireball counters Zdziarski, saying he has got it wrong.

According to Zdziarski, who has written two books on the Apple iPhone, he said of the code that he had found “This suggests that the iPhone calls home once in a while to find out what applications it should turn off. At the moment, no apps have been blacklisted, but by all appearances, this has been added to disable applications that the user has already downloaded and paid for, if Apple so chooses to shut them down.”

However, John Gruber thinks otherwise and insists: “While there may well be some sort of kill switch that Apple can deploy to remotely disable an app that’s already installed…this list is not it,” before citing “An informed source at Apple” confirming to him that “clbl” in the URL stands for “Core Location Blacklist”, and that it does just that.”

Gruber goes on to state: “it is not a blacklist for disabling apps completely, but rather specifically for preventing any listed apps from accessing Core Location – an API which, for obvious privacy reasons, is covered by very strict rules in the iPhone SDK guidelines.”

So while Apple may well have a “kill Switch” this is apparently not it. We’ll keep you updated on this.

Source — daring fireball – Image via pocket-lint