Eric Zeman at Information Week has earned his ad-impression quota with this particular gem of inflammatory gibberish:

According to hacker Jonathan Zdziarski, the iPhone can “phone home” to tell Apple what apps are installed, and if Apple doesn’t like what it sees on your iPhone, it can kill the offending application.

Oh man. Apple, please tell me you didn’t open this can of worms for real.

Oh man. For real? For reals real? Ok, the problem here is in a misinterpretation of what Zdziarski reported. That is, it is the iPhone that does the checking, not Apple. The iPhone doesn’t give Apple a list of installed apps, but rather it retrieves a list of blacklisted apps. It is a small difference, but a pretty significant one. The article is feeding a general paranoia that the iPhone “phones home” and reports user actions to Big Brother. Is it technically possible? Sure. Is there yet any indication of this being the case? No.

Of course it’s worth pointing out the redundancy of the iPhone sending a list to Apple of all the Apps you’ve purchased and installed. Apple knows this already — you bought them from Apple, Apple sent you a receipt, Apple keeps track of what Apps you’ve purchased and reminds you when there’s an update to the App.