Apple had elected to eliminate the category of anti-virus and anti-malware products from their iOS App Store according to the latest resource in May, in an effort to prevent customers from believing iOS devices are capable of contracting viruses and malware. Among them there is the product of Intego, VirusBarrier iOS app had been removed from Apple App Store, saying it’s misleading.
VirusBarrier iOS is from Intego, a company that produces anti-virus software for Mac and iOS, after exiting in four and a half years in the App Store, Apple decided to crack down that protection app. Intego VirusBarrier iOS offers on-demand scanning for your iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch, so you can catch malicious files and get rid of them before they spread.
The iOS lost their VirusBarrier protection, but don’t worry, users still can have their VirusBarrier protection in Mac OS X, Intego VirusBarrier for Mac provides real-time antivirus protection for Macs, and scans files whenever they’re accessed to keep your Mac free of malware. If you need to a guide to download Intego VirusBarrier for Mac please click here, if you are already have one and want to get rid of it cleanly, that click here for tutorial of completely removing Intego VirusBarrier for Mac.
Later of Apple’s action to fire Intego VirusBarrier iOS, Intego CEO Jeff Erwin to confirm the removal of their product from the iOS App Store, now if you go to VirusBarrier for iOS 8 platform you’ll see it’s no longer available to download. According the speaking of Jeff Erwin, Apple thought VirusBarrier iOS’s description was “misleading” and could potentially cause customers to believe that there are viruses on iOS.
Apple thinks such kind of anti-virus app like VirusBarrier iOS will somehow “misled” their users to believe there is viruses in iOS. Even with an App Store description that stated VirusBarrier scanned email attachments and cloud files, Intego would still receive negative comments from people who didn’t read the description and didn’t understand the app’s purpose.
“I sort of get Apple’s point. Even as clear as we were about what our product did, there were still customers who were confused as to why the app was scanning their iPad or iPhone. There are a lot of people who don’t have a tech background and don’t understand.”
But if you have download VirusBarrier iOS once before, don’t worry, because Intego said all of our existing VirusBarrier iOS customers will continue to get their virus definition updates as they have been for as long as they own the product. These updates do not go through the App Store and are not affected.
From Jeff Erwin statement, it is clearly Intego is not the only company directed specifically by Apple’s decision, but several companies also had been affected, too, which means more anti-virus and anti-malware products were pulled from App Store. It is not clear when Apple began removing anti-virus apps or how many have been pulled from the App Store.
Well, seem Apple iOS is the most safety place to stay, because no virus will be scanned.