China has decided that Apple is not doing enough to spy on the users of its own products, so it has taken the decision to force the American company to log for 60 days the identity of all users who access its virtual stores, along with information on what access or buy them.
Moreover, the Apple company must notify government agencies of any violations of censorship legislation, non-compliance with these rules may result in the closing of stores or the imposition of fines large enough to count for those in Cupertino.
Separately, developers must be verified by the Apple company before they can send applications for publication in the App Store, and their applications must also be verified by a government agency before being published in the App Store, so their life will become much harder in China starting on July 1.
The very strange part of this new law given by the Chinese government lies in the fact that Apple, and other companies operating in the country, must obtain the consent of users to record data about their activity, the situation itself being extremely comical, but typical for a communist country that wants to control everything.
App stores and providers must establish the identity of users, while monitoring and reporting postings that contain banned content. The legitimacy of developers who post apps for download must also be verified. All app stores and providers are now required to keep a record of users' activity for 60 days.
Basically, China makes life much more difficult for those who want to have application stores in their country, and for Apple we are talking about a moral problem, the American company being completely against techniques of this kind that involve strict monitoring of the users who use them the services.
China has become the most important country for Apple, based on the revenues generated there, so it will be very interesting to see how the American company will motivate keeping the App Stores in operation and monitoring users when 2 months ago it refused to help the FBI unlock a iPhone.
