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hibikirtoday at 1:49 AM2 repliesview on HN

Yet we look at phones, and we see people accepting outrageous permissions for many apps: They might rely on snooping into you for ads, or anything else, and yet the apps sell, and have no problem staying in stores.

So when it's all said and done, I do not expect practical levels of actual isolation to be that great.


Replies

troadtoday at 2:10 AM

> Yet we look at phones, and we see people accepting outrageous permissions for many apps

The data doesn't support the suggestion that this is happening on any mass scale. When Apple made app tracking opt-in rather than opt-out in iOS 14 ("App Tracking Transparency"), 80-90% of users refused to give consent.

It does happen more when users are tricked (dare I say unlawfully defrauded?) into accepting, such as when installing Windows, when launching Edge for the first time, etc. This is why externally-imposed sandboxing is a superior model to Zuck's pinky promises.

Analemma_today at 2:59 AM

For all its other problems, App Store review prevents a lot of this: you have to explain why your app needs entitlements A, B and C, and they will reject your update if they don't think your explanation is good enough. It's not a perfect system, but iOS applications don't actually do all that much snooping.