I recently got some of my kids app rejected because I use the share function. The rejection reason is:
"Apps in the Kids Category must get parental permission or use a parental gate before allowing the user to link out of the app or engage in commerce"
These apps have all been accepted before, so the restrictions of not allowing sharing must be new. As far as I can tell, there is no parental gate API for sharing? But removing the share button will make the app a lot less interesting!
Is there a way to get around this, or remove my app from Kids Category?
Parental Gate rejection is applied when an application is targeted to kids section and it has a provision to redirect the user out of the application or it lets user engage in any sort of in commerce process.
You can actually add a parental control in your application for example on share button action, display a view with a simple mathematic operation (eg: 5x7), if the user answers correctly then, proceed normally. This way you can by pass the Parental Gate rejection.
Here is the important link for reference.
Related
I submitted a Real Estate App (Category: Business, secondary: Shopping)
My app include:
Sign up/Sign in to be a user.
Create product and post it to the server. (I use CloudKit)
Save products that user like.
Call to another (seller, requester ...), share to FaceBook (or Twitter ... - UIActivityController)
But Apple rejects it cause Minimum Functions:
"We noticed that your app’s main functionality is to market your
service, with limited or no user-facing interactive features or
functionality. Apps that are primarily marketing materials or
advertisements are not appropriate for the App Store. We encourage you
to review your app concept and incorporate different content and
features that are in compliance with the App Store Review Guidelines.
We understand that there are no hard and fast rules to define useful
or entertaining, but Apple and Apple customers expect apps to provide
a really great user experience. Apps should provide valuable utility
or entertainment, draw people in by offering compelling capabilities
or content, or enable people to do something they couldn't do before
or in a way they couldn't do it before."
I read App Store Review Guidelines but I think that my App has the user experience, cause I free for everyone to post their topic to my app server. So anyone can access to their topic and call or share or email or send the message to each other.
But it's rejected.
What can I do now?
Login to your iTunes account. Where you are viewing the error or apple rejection message there is an option "Reply Submit an appeal to the App Review Board", after selecting that option you will have some more option, selects the one which you find suitable and contact the apple review team. Schedule a call with apple review team and you can explain them on call about you application functionality, if they find it OK they will approve else they will explain you lackings.
Your app provides a limited user experience as it is not sufficiently different from a mobile browsing experience. As such, the experience it provides is similar to the general experience of using Safari. Including iOS features such as push notifications, Core Location, and sharing do not provide a robust enough experience to be appropriate for the App Store.
Apple developers rejected my app with this reason.
"Business - 3.1.1
Your app includes an account registration feature, which is considered an access to external mechanisms for purchases or subscriptions to be used in the app.
This feature does not comply with the App Store Review Guidelines.
Next Steps
Please remove the account registration links and any other fully qualified links to your site that could indirectly provide access to these mechanisms, such as links to web pages for support, FAQ, product or program details, etc."
The users can use the app in demo mode (without registration) with some restrictions, but if they register they can use without registrations.
The registration is not in webview. The client sends the user's datas to server.
Can someone help me?
You basically have two ways to solve the problem.
1) Sell the subscription etc. only through the App Store in the app (similar to Dropbox/Office etc.), i.e. there should be no links to your website, where your users have/can insert payment information. Look at the mentioned examples, how they solve this.
2) Only sell the subscription/services via the web, but never ever link to these pages via your app (similar to Kindle app, partially Spotify).
Your app must still be somehow (open for interpretation) functional for users without a subscription / registration.
The main issue Apple has, is that it's possible to circumvent the store and Apple's 30% cut. Just make sure that users are not able to purchase any digital products & services
Apps may not include buttons, external links, or other calls to action that direct customers to purchasing mechanisms other than IAP.
Source:
https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#payments
Yes, You can submit app again but you have to implement one small feature like as guest user login.
In this You will implement one UIButton it's should say "Go without login". Implement this small functionality in your app. Create one user as guest.
When user hit "Go without login" you will pass your static user id and login in the app.
I have same problem. I am create a this solution and it's work
I just spend oodles of time getting iAd to work in my AIR app for kids and now Apple tells me that it no longer supports iAd for kids apps! Any advice? The app sometimes has tens of thousands of downloads in a day. Do I take the loss and move on or is there any way to re-release this app as not "kids only"? Has anyone done this before? Thanks!
Note: Apps designed for children are not allowed to run rich media ads
I think that there is no solution about it.
The thing that is not clear to me is if this rule is valid only for Made for Kid category, you select that category in ITC when you set the parental rating. I guess that is the only way that they can recognize that. Try to see if creating a new upgrade you can remove the "Made for kids" flag.
If I'm not wrong, you cant air ads on kids apps. Maybe contact apple developer support and get the age bracket of your app changed? Thats the only thing I can think of..
You can release an update to the app and change the setting in iTunes Connect so that you app is not "Made for kids".
However, ads in general are frowned upon in kids apps. Although they're not specifically illegal, according to COPPA.
Also, if an Apple app reviewer decides that your app is targeted at kids anyway, they might reject it based on their policy of no iADs for kids apps.
Regarding COPPA's rules on ads for kids: http://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/complying-coppa-frequently-asked-questions
"I want to run ads on my child-directed websites and apps. What do I need to know to make sure that I am complying with COPPA?
There are a number of questions you must find answers to before you enter into an arrangement with any entity to serve advertising to run on your child-directed sites and services. These include:
Is there a way to control the type of advertising that appears on the sites and services? (e.g., can you stipulate and contract only for contextual advertising, and can you prohibit behavioral advertising or retargeting?)
What categories of information will be collected from users on the sites and services in connection with the ads they are served? Will persistent identifiers be collected for purposes other than support for internal operations? Will geolocation information be collected in connection with the ads served?
You should make informed decisions before you permit advertising to run on your sites and services. Depending on what advertising choices you make, you may be required to notify parents in your online privacy policies and in a direct notice, and obtain verifiable parental consent, before you permit advertising to occur. Remember that the amended Rule holds you liable for the collection of information that occurs on or through your sites and services, even if you yourself do not engage in such collection."
If you want to monetise your app with advertising, you have little choice but to use an ad-network that can specifically provide ads for your target age group, and that is COPPA-compliant. Apple's ad network is neither as far as I know. Try Superawesome.tv or Ads4Kids - they may have an SDK you can add to your app for delivering ad campaigns appropriate for children.
With Apple's new kids' app policy, one has to make a parental gate before Apple will accept the app. Unfortunately Apple haven't provided a mechanism one can use for such a gate, and so developers are struggling with how to solve this.
In iOS settings, Apple does allow users to set Restrictions, such as no in-app-purchases etc. You first have to enable the Restrictions setting as a whole, and then select which Restrictions you're going to put in place.
I would like to know if there is an iOS function or method for checking the state of the Restrictions i.e. enabled or disabled, and ideally whether one can also specifically check the state of individual restriction settings per app as well? I know you can for in-app-purchases (canMakePayments method)
If anyone has found the way to make an iOS parental gateway that Apple has accepted, I and many other developers would really like to hear about it.
Many thanks
There is no standard mechanism for a parental gate, and Apple stays quiet when asked.
However, many apps in the appstore who got accepted in the kids section, most notably the Toca Boca one's, use the 'random two finger swipe' mechanism, so apparently that's an approved mechanism.
As parental gate show a pop up window with the text "swipe two fingers up/down/right/left to continue" (where the up/down/left/right is randomized)
(haven't tried this myself, but will very shortly)
Concerning your question about making an iOS Parental Gate, I've posted an open source Parental Gate SDK which has been used in an app that has successfully passed review under Apple's new 24.3 rule that requires a "parental gate" for in app purchases and anything that brings the user experience to the web. You can read more about the SDK and get the source code here:
MKParentalGate Open Source SDK
Closed. This question does not meet Stack Overflow guidelines. It is not currently accepting answers.
This question does not appear to be about programming within the scope defined in the help center.
Closed 9 years ago.
Improve this question
I am updating my kids app for compliance to Apple's new Kids section. I have read the updated Review Guidelines. And it says :
Apps primarily intended for use by kids under 13 must get parental
permission or use a parental gate before allowing the user to link out
of the app or engage in commerce
Does anybody have any idea about what kind of action to take? How can we get parental permission or use a parental gate? Besides I am linking out just to apps iTunes page and our social pages, so do I need to take any action?
Thank you for your time.
I thumbed through the FAQ and the iTunes Connect Developer Guide myself and Apple certainly doesn't make it clear what "must get parental permission" means, but I suspect what this means is that the App Store will require some kind of extra authentication steps in order to do commerce (i.e. in-app purchases) or go somewhere outside of the app (e.g. with a UIWebView).
Which seems to be make sense because of this statement: "must get parental permission or use a parental gate before allowing the user to link out of the app or engage in commerce".
I looked through this topic on the Apple developer forums, where someone suggested the following for in-app purchases:
if ([SKPaymentQueue canMakePayments]) {
// user can make purchases
} else {
// no purchases can be made, show error or just don't show the in app purchase button(s)
}
If there is a way to determine if in-app purchases have been enabled on the device, is there a way to determine if Safari has been enabled?
Also, this article mentions PINs that must be entered before links can be opened, as well as requiring a three-finger swipe for in-app purchases / parents' sections.
These options may be worth a try, but I don't know if they will be enough.
I was wondering the same thing, as I'm not entirely sure if this is under NDA I asked this question on the apple developer forums, but no reply there either.
As far as I know there is no "set of API's" which define parental permission / parental gate, so the requirements are very vague indeed.
I fear we'll just have to try things and submit for approval, and find out in blogposts of various developers (and answers here on stackoverflow) what gets you rejected and what not, I hope I'm wrong and they clear this out though.
Anyway, I just updated one of our apps and checked the "Made for kids", it's in "waiting for review" now, if anything out of the ordinary happens I'll keep you posted.
As I have mentioned before, I had uploaded an update (keeping the outgoing links to social pages and to App Store for app rating via an UIAlertView) and the update is rejected as well.
At Resolution Center, it was mentioned clearly that because these outgoing links were not passing through a Parental Gate my app was rejected, and two screenshots were attached which show the buttons and UIAlertView leading out off the app. So don't forget to check the Resolution Center.
I have removed all out-going links and uploading the app again. I will keep here updated.
And the Parental Gate thing. I think I have found out how it will be working. Apple leaves this completely to developers. We will have to be using API's or SDK's of Parental Gate providers or services. With the help of such API's we will pass the urls to these parental gate services via their API's, and they will approve or reject the link (by checking their database) or they will require a parent's input, and possibly they will return a true/false flag, or let the user continue to the link.
For instance, a parental gate service is working on such thing :
http://parentalgate.com/parental-gate-ios-sdk/
My update with out-going links removed is approved. It took 20 minutes to get reviewed after waiting for review for 8 days.