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Comment by smegel | Hacker News Reader

The truly rotten egg here is Android (and Google by extension).

Why a user cannot elect to nominally provide permissions to an app, but restrict the content of different grants (so an app may see an empty phone book by default or an empty Pictures folder) is beyond me. It borders on abusive.

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Android 6.0 has the ability to enable/disable individual permissions. Apps running on Android 6, but not compiled against the Android 6 SDK, end up with similar behaviour to what you described i.e. If you disable access to your contacts, the OS just reports back you have zero contacts etc.

A lot of people have suggested this and I would really like it too, but the thing is that this makes things extremely difficult or annoying for users and any novice will just accept all the alerts they get, defeating the entire purpose.

More advanced people can use XPrivacy or similar:

http://repo.xposed.info/module/biz.bokhorst.xprivacy

I see this (fake permissions) as a pretty crucial feature. Let lusers be lusers and provide functionality to those who will appreciate it.

No excuse for the ridiculous time it's taken, but this is coming in M.

Is it really? I know they would allow you to specify the permissions yourself, but i think the guy above you is talking about "fake" permissions (the app "sees" your emails, but there are none)

You cannot do any of that on a computer either. As far as I know neither Windows, Mac and Linux have any kind of permission system for the applications they run. Sure, you can hack something together using sandboxing/containers/VMs, but none of the operating systems provide this by default. There have been alternate Android roms which provide the features you speak of, as well.

My firewall can stop them talking to the Internet. I often use VirtualBox to run new downloads in isolation, sometimes with a VPN running as well.

And who installs apps on their PC anymore, maybe after your initial setup? The point is you install apps you know and trust. I don't think notepad++ is uploading my photo library somewhere.

And there's a word for PC apps that do the wrong thing: (ad/mal/crap)ware. It's one of the reasons I do as much online in a webbrowser as possible - its a hellla lot more secure than downloading and installing stuff all the time.

That's not strictly true on Linux: you could use AppArmor/SELinux to remove capabilities from programs. Surely not as user friendly as they could be but the capability is there.

You can do that, but there is no way for an application to "ask" access to anything. You need to fully know how the application works, where it wants to read/write etc. I consider this under the hacking something together using 'sandboxing' portion of my post, since it's not something that will work for your regular user. (Don't get me wrong, I think it's awesome but sadly not the same as a permission system)

> neither Windows, Mac and Linux have any kind of permission system

Actually, OS X now has the beginnings of an iOS-like permission system for location services and access to your contacts.

Apps that extract random infos from computers without user's consent are considered spywares and can be blocked with an anti-virus.

Anti-virus only blocks things it knows about, by preventing you from running it or killing if it is running. They're hardly as effective as the vendors want you to believe.

FreeBSD jails?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeBSD_jail

Also this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating-system-level_virtual...

This is not a user-facing permission system. When double-clicking a binary I do not get to pick and choose which files it gets to access, if it gets to access my webcam or not, etc. Like I said in my third sentence:

> Sure, you can hack something together using sandboxing/containers/VMs, but none of the operating systems provide this by default

There I meant a fully fledged user-facing permission system with 'this'.

So what? We shouldn't fix something in Android because desktop operating systems don't have the same problem? That doesn't make any sense at all.

That isn't what I was saying at all. Sure, it should be fixed. But you shouldn't shame it for not having it.

Yes, you should. You're saying exactly this - "You should live with some bad implementation because things are bad elsewhere."

Yes, you should live with it, and you are. Meanwhile alternative ROMs exist if you really care, and a better implementation for stock android is in the works. Meanwhile most/all desktop operating systems are in an even worse shape, and no one is complaining about that or calling it a rotten egg. Talk about hypocrisy.

Well nobody here seems to agree with you.

And that's all that matters in this world, right? It's disappointing to see people use the downvote button as a disagree button, though.

It seems to matter to you a lot, since you've replied to every single dissenting opinion. So, have an upvote!)

It's called having a discussion (while bored, it happens). I am perfectly fine with people disagreeing with me.

Sorry, maybe you're fooling yourself, but you're not fooling me.

You're not here to discuss anything. You're here to impose your opinion and do battle with anyone who doesn't agree.

I bet you keep replying to me no matter what I say.

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