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Comment by pandatigox | Hacker News Reader

MDM is used for enterprise. IT Admin has certain escalated privileges, which is different to a parental control app. It can be especially dangerous if the person in control of MDM has malicious intent.

Refer to the Mobile Device Management tab in the link.

https://support.apple.com/en-au/business

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> IT Admin has certain escalated privileges, which is different to a parental control app.

So a random employer is allowed to control employee devices, but a parent isn't allowed to control their children's devices?

Really?

This is flat-out evil on Apple's part.

The employer is allowed to manage devices on its own network, generally to enforce security policies that they may put in place.

It’s not at all the parent that Apple is concerned about, it’s the app developer, or anyone who can hack the app developer.

If a parent was using this feature to manage their in-home devices directly, Apple would have no problem with it at all.

An app developer cannot masquerade as your employer to back door your iPhone and control things on it which third-party apps are generally prohibited from controlling.

Be aware that in some (most?) cases the MDM blocks, at least the very restrictive ones, are only achieved on devices shipped by the employer strictly for work purposes, not on private ones. To get full, total and utter control, you need to wipe your device through Apple Configurator (a Mac program) and set it up with the MDM profile from the start. Just installing the enterprise profile, like you normally do, won't give you access to everything.

It gives the app developer deploying the profile enough access to pipe all traffic through a remote VPN or attempt to redirect certain traffic through DNS resolution, with new certificate trust settings, to let you capture TLS and non-TLS traffic from your phone. It also gives them enough power to change the configuration of the phone this way at any time.

Nothing to do with the parent. It’s the app developers using mdm that are the problem.

IT admins are given powers over devices that would be considered domestic abuse if given to parents.

Like what?

Complete surveillance and indefinite recording of Internet traffic.

Mind you I realise that a lot of people believe parents have absolute right to deny their children privacy. I don't, I have friends with CPTSD.

As a parent, I have a legal and moral obligation to act in the best interests of my minor children. To allow a minor unencumbered access to anything is no different than leaving a gun unlocked.

Not a parent, but perhaps you could teach your minor about the dangers of the {internet, apps, etc.}?

Parents have the legal right to do basically whatever they want with regards to their children’s privacy. That doesn’t mean that I agree that they should do this, but if they would like to do this there’s not much that can stop them.

> Parents have the legal right to do basically whatever they want with regards to their children’s privacy.

Maybe that's true in the US, but it's not true in Europe and definitely not true in England.

That is true to a large extent, but this isn't really a legal question, no?

Domestic abuse is a legal construct.

It is not exclusively defined by the legal domain. Actually I'm not sure how many places have such a crime.

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