Russian regulators open antitrust investigation against Apple following Kaspersky Lab complaint

Russia’s Federal Anti-Monopoly Service (FAS) has begun investigating Apple after receiving a complaint from the Russian antivirus software company Kaspersky Lab. Kaspersky alleged that Apple arbitrarily curtailed the functions available on its devices for the Kaspersky Safe Kids parental control application while releasing similar functions in its own product, Screen Time. The FAS will consider the case on September 13.

In April of 2019, The New York Times reported that Apple had deleted or placed limits on 11 of the Apple Store’s 17 most popular parental control apps in the year since Screen Time was released. Multiple companies complained about those changes to the European Commission. Apple responded by arguing that the third-party parental control apps in question had the ability to collect confidential user data.