Due to the growing menace of hackers leveraging your device's processing powers to mine cryptocurrency, Apple has announced a ban on such malicious apps from its App Store.
With such apps, the battery life of the device is compromised. Hence, Apple has introduced new developer guidelines that prohibit iOS and Mac apps from mining cryptocurrency in the background, Mashable reported.
Under the new guidelines, apps should not rapidly drain the battery, generate excessive heat, or put unnecessary strain on device resources.
Apple's app store guidelines for iOS now say that apps may not mine for cryptocurrencies unless the processing is performed off device. This requirement was not found in the same document before. The policy goes on to state, "Apps, including any third party advertisements displayed within them, may not run unrelated background processes, such as cryptocurrency mining,"
Apple has added a new section in its guidelines about cryptocurrencies that read:
(i)Wallets: Apps may facilitate virtual currency storage, provided they are offered by developers enrolled as an organization.
(ii) Mining: Apps may not mine for cryptocurrencies unless the processing is performed off device (e.g. cloud-based mining).
(iii) Exchanges: Apps may facilitate transactions or transmissions of cryptocurrency on an approved exchange, provided they are offered by the exchange itself.
(iv) Initial Coin Offerings: Apps facilitating Initial Coin Offerings (“ICOs”), cryptocurrency futures trading, and other crypto-securities or quasi-securities trading must come from established banks, securities firms, futures commission merchants (“FCM”), or other approved financial institutions and must comply with all applicable law.
(v) Cryptocurrency apps may not offer currency for completing tasks, such as downloading other apps, encouraging other users to download, posting to social networks, etc.
