> If instead I were able to specify what was happening in the prompt rather than iOS giving users an ambiguous statement

No. They’re correct, there.

The app developer should not get to provide the message text for a prompt like that.

A secondary note somewhere in less than ten words, maybe, where it explicitly warns that the statement may be false.

I had an iOS game I purchased, that, after about 24 hours of use, presented popups that you couldn't dismiss, without opening Safari to the developer's site, and it sent something there. The only way to avoid that, was to force-quit the app. It also likely directly sent stuff to the mothership.

I suspect that was to get around reviewers, and it seems to have worked.

I reported and nuked the app. I have no idea if Apple ever did anything about it.

The baddies are pretty clever.

> The app developer should not get to provide the message text for a prompt like that.

In App Store apps, where these messages get human review, it could more safely be allowed.

If they allow apps to provide that message from code, that is very hard to test for, even for Apple.

Shady developers would try very hard to get past such checks, for example by changing that message based on the date, IP address range, nearby WiFi networks, receipt of a payload, etc.

They could introduce an optional string-valued entitlement and check its text. That would be a lot easier but still require them to translate messages.

For the iOS permissions I know of (Camera, etc), the message comes from the Info.Plist in the .app bundle, not from code.

App Store reviews are no longer human, they’re LLM

BlackBerry supported incredibly fine grained permissions way back in the day, and even that wasn't sophisticated enough to support OP's use case.

I don't really even care what OP's good intentions are, because the minute the app is sold, those good intentions are out the window. I use very few apps because I assume they are always going to potentially be adversarial to my interests.

The system warning is correct and should not be subject to the developer promising free candy to gullible users.

Exactly

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