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Comment by natch | Hacker News Reader

Searching for YayView on the app store, nothing comes up.

To find the app, search for these keywords:

    view meet your classmates

A possible connection to an app called Highlight is further indicated by the fact that the AWS landing page for the View app contains the string highlig.ht.

Any App Store user can report a problem with an app by first downloading the app (no need to actually run it, and it can't do any damage without being run), then visiting https://reportaproblem.apple.com and signing in. The app will appear at the top of the list of downloaded apps, and next to the app is a "Report a Problem" button.

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I downloaded the app & reported it via that link. I encourage others to do so as well. It's shameful that this app was allowed through Apple's review process.

> no need to actually run it, and it can't do any damage without being run

How sure about this are you?

Some common apps like Hangout and Facebook misuse iOS features to run in the background despite Background App Refresh is turned off, AFAIK.

Up to iOS 7 at least, there was no way to run in the background without the app being launched at least once. I haven't worked with the latest two versions though.

Which features, exactly?

The only one I'm aware of is marking the app as a VoIP app, which means the system will keep it alive and let it occasionally check in with the mothership. But Apple heavily scrutinized apps marked as such to make sure they actually need it. And even then, I don't think they run until the user starts them at least once.

Even if the app could automatically run on download, it couldn't access any interesting information without being activated by the user and prompting to allow access to location, contacts, photos, etc.

iOS developer here. Pretty damn sure. All the ways I know of for running code in the background, and I've looked at this quite a bit, require at least one launch for them to be enabled.

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