Apple's new policy requires the possibility to delete an account and all personal information. Imagine this scenario:
User A pays to User B in advance for a service User B provides.
User B deletes their account after getting the money
User A writes to customer support that they haven't received any service but we have absolutely no information on the User B and no way to contact them or inform legal authority on promised and paid services not provided.
How should we deal with this?
If there are situations like this that are applicable to your situation, then simply inform users that in the event of an account deletion some information will be retained via a legal document they can read when they are about to initiate account deletion.
Apple's review team is unlikely to be so thorough but even if they do ask you about it just explain why some user information has to be retained for legal purposes.
Apple states here:
Deleting an account removes the account from the developer’s records, along with any data associated with the account that the developer isn’t legally required to maintain.
Lots of apps are still retaining information after users delete their accounts because of legal requirements. For example, an investment app cannot just erase all your personal information when you delete your account because of compliance regulations.
In your case, you may want to prevent users from deleting their accounts until their transactions have all settled. I have worked on a similar situation, where users cannot initiate deletion until their balance is zero and they have no pending transfers. Have had no issues with App Store Review.
Related
The appstore guidelines states, "If your app supports account creation, you must also offer account deletion within the app."
https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#5.1.1
My app only needs the name and email address of the user for the sign up process. The name is only for greetings; so maybe I can bring it down to just the email address.
Assume the app gives a free trial of a service for 30 days or so. How can I prevent the same user from signing up again for free trial once the account deletion is implemented?
Is soft delete an option here? How would apple know if we are actually deleting account data or just soft-deleting it?
Background:
I am trying to implement In-app purchasing for my iOS app. The app allows the user to be able to log in to multiple accounts and register multiple accounts. Each registration will require the user to pay a subscription fee (unless a free plan is selected). When the registration is complete the account will be linked to the Apple ID that paid for the subscription.
Question:
If already have done a registration with my current Apple ID(Account A) with a $0.99 subscription every month and then do another registration with the same Apple ID(Account B) with a $1.99 subscription every month. Both accounts have purchased a subscription with the same Subscription Groups. In that case will that Apple ID just be paying for the subscription of Account B since it would be considered an upgrade from Account A.
I can make it so that when an account is created with an Apple ID that have been used, we link the new account with that Apple ID and disable the older one. This would however provides a bad user experience and only ever one account will work with one Apple ID and probably isn't the solution I want.
I did try to set the ApplicationUsername for SKPayment object in hopes that it will appear on the other side when the notification API is hit by Apple but it don't seem to use it for that and is used to detect fraudulent activity.
I am trying to find some documentation on handling this case but to no avail. I'm not too sure how to get around this issue and have a feeling that my app's implementation is not aligned with how Apple expects us to implement it. Maybe I have misunderstood some documentation but any insight to this would be greatly appreciated.
Situation:
- User makes an IAP and is awarded some content, we store the users device id to ensure they can access this content whenever they want.
- User decided they do not like the content, so they call Apple and get a refund.
- User can still access the content, even though they have been refunded for their IAP
Problem:
We don't want the user to be able to access this content anymore. This could become a loophole that they would take advantage of. (unlock content, then get refunded and keep their access to said content)
Question:
Is there any way for us to check if a user has been refunded for an IAP with either their transactionId, transactionReceipt, or any other information we may have?
For Reference, I've read the StoreKitGuide, it did not mention this case.
No. There is no way to revoke access to content if they have been refunded. I believe this is by design. It is the same with App Store refunds; if someone buys an app and then asks Apple for a refund, Apple does not stop the user from continuing to use the app.
No. you cannot stop user to access. Apple does not stop user to use that feature after refund
Below a recent answer from the overbearing Apple!!!
At April 11
Hello Joe,
Thanks for your quick reply at first.
I think there were some misunderstandings. We understand that you must protect the user information. And we do not require any user info. We do not require any user's information---- iTunes account, User Name, email address and other information about himself/herself.
We require only one data----- transaction id (named "transactionIdentify" in your code), for example "1000000033409668" (this transaction id is a record at March 13).
A user buys a product from IAP, you will generate a "transaction id" and send it to us. This transaction id is stored in our database then. Now he/she gets refunds from you, so please send the transaction id to us. Let us know which one in the game canceled the IAP.
When a refund occurs, we think you should provide the transaction id to us. With these data, we could make a more fair service for all players. If you do not do it, more and more players will use your refund mechanism to get game items without real payment. You and we will lose money then. We think it is very important.
Regards,
Baibo
At April 12
Hello Baibo,
Thank you for following up with me regarding the refund transaction data.
We will not be able to provide you with the refund transaction data you have requested as it is not a feature or benefit provided to you per the contracts you have agreed to.
To view your paid applications contract and review your membership benefits, please access the contracts, tax and banking module within iTunes Connect:
http://itunesconnect.apple.com
If you are not happy with large refunds, you may want to consider adjusting the price of your in-app purchases as we will not be able to provide you with the refund transaction data in the future.
According to an answer one of my users received from Apple, refunding an app means they will no longer receive updates to the app, but doesn't remove the app from the device. IAP appears to work the same.
I am wondering if there is not a way by using restoreCompletedTransactions to check for the iAP purchase, but this would pop up a request for the user's iTunes password, so its use is limited.
I want to create a social networking ios app which costs money, and when the user buys it they are allowed to create only one account on the app. So the purchase is associated with the account somehow... or the app has a specific id on each device its bought on... would I need to use gamecenter somehow...
How would I approach something like this?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
First of all, more than one person may use the device (think a family with an iPad) so what your doing is inherently a bad idea.
That said, you can use an in-app purchase to let them buy account access - check with the server first to make sure a desired username is available, then let them use an in-app purchase to buy access, and on your server tie that purchase ID to the user name. Even if they deleted the app and tried to re-purchase (while logged into the same iTunes store account) it would see a purchase had been made and essentially be the same user. It even does kind of work with multiple users as they could switch iTunes accounts (though that is a pain).
I would also suggest trying to tie it to the users iCloud account in some way, which is easier for users to switch between on an device (a family might use one iTunes account but have separate iCloud accounts).
If you don't want to give Apple 30% of the registration fee, your only option is to have users sign up on the web and pay there, then have a login they can use in your app. Then it's a matter of trying to prevent duplicate logins on you server, although as a last point of thought, I can't remember a business that succeeded by refusing people's money.
You could generate an unique id on the phone, store it in the keychain, and use that to communicate with the server.
Since you are creating your own account management system, just save the user information once they do the account creation bit and never show the option again. Because developers no longer have access to the device id, you may have problems identifying an existing user if they delete and re-install the app, but I am not sure that there is a solution to that problem.
Edit: As a commenter to this question mentioned, you can save things to the keychain. Check out this link for a good lib for modifying the keychain.
My app implements the iOS auto-renewing subscription to access premium content. I haven't yet submitted this for approval, because I want to know what subscriber information I'll be able to access once users purchase subscriptions. I need this information so that iOS app subscriptions integrate with a separate business database handling subscriptions on other platforms.
My reading of the typically-cryptic Apple docs is that name, e-mail and zipcode are available but only if the user explicitly opts in. But I'm not clear how to request that this information be asked for during the purchase process, or whether there's additional information I can ask for.
So here are my questions:
Are subscriber name, e-mail and zipcode the only pieces of information available via iTunes Connect?
If (1), is this information available only through opt-in?
If (1) and (2), how does the opt-in process work?
I think so. Although I've never received this info, based on the dialog below, I can only assume you don't get more info than they list.
Yes. You can't require the information. You'll only get the information if the user opts in.
You don't have to request that the user be prompted. In fact, you can't prevent the dialog from appearing when the user first subscribes to your auto-renewing subscription.
From Marco Arment's post on The limited world of auto-renewable subscriptions:
There’s no way for a developer to opt out of this data collection and
disable this dialog. If you sell an auto-renewable subscription, your
customers will be told that you want their personal information, and
you will be given that information [...] whether you wanted it or not.
Please read the rest of his post to see why you may want to steer away from ARS. Apple may reject your app if you're not a magazine or newspaper.
This is what the dialog looks like: