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realusernamelast Monday at 6:16 AM1 replyview on HN

It hasn't, security isn't just technical features but a social contract.

Even on an iPhone without a sim card, they can download one of the scam casino games from the appstore and give away a lot of money, on Ubuntu they can't do that.

There's more to security than just bytes.

The threats to your average user isn't a bootloader exploit built by some Israeli firm but privacy breaches, social engineering and scams.


Replies

josephglast Monday at 6:30 AM

Sure; but technical features can certainly make security better.

Like, iOS makes most unsafe actions incredibly clear. Apple pay always requires the user to double tap the power button. The OS makes it impossible for an application to charge you money through apple pay without an explicit user action.

Phone apps also can't take control of my entire device, or steal my cookies or cryptolocker my hard drive. Any program you download and run from the internet on a desktop computer can do all of this stuff and more. We shouldn't allow that stuff by default on desktop computers either.

Phones have the right idea. I just don't want Apple and Google to be the only ones who can modify the system at the OS level.

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