Patent ID: 7546956

Claim:
A method of application control for use on an electronic device, the method comprising: receiving an operation request from an application; determining whether the requested operation is allowed to be performed by the application based upon a stored authorization record and an application identifier associated with the application; wherein the authorization record and the application identifier are provided by an external source for storage on the electronic device; allowing the application to perform the requested operation based upon whether the requested operation is determined to be allowed to be performed by the application; storing source authentication information onto the device; and using the source authentication information to prevent any party other than the external source from altering the stored authorization record; wherein the source authentication information comprises a digital signature public key that corresponds to a digital signature private key used by the external source to digitally sign the source authentication information with a digital signature, and wherein using the source authentication information to prevent any party other than the external source from altering the stored authorization record comprises decrypting the digital signature with the digital signature public key.