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Comment by vbezhenar | Hacker News Reader

But I would say that I hate that iOS apps can't access my SMS messages. I've typed thousands of "pin codes" from SMS and I can't have auto-transactions in my budget app from bank SMS notifications. While I don't like an idea about allowing every app to access SMS messages, I'm fine to allow some apps to access all SMS messages and temporary allow app to access all new SMS messages.

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I would be happy if I went to add a photo to a text message and it said, "Allow Messages to access photos just this one time?" and I confirmed it. And then it turned off permission again after the message was composed.

What I don't like is when you get an app like "SuperPhotoStickers!"[1] which allegedly lets you take a picture, put stickers on it, and text it to a friend. Asks for permission to access texts all the time, and has a service that runs all the time, and later you find your phone has been sending photos and/or texts to a third party without you knowing about it. That is what I mean it is a broken permission system.

In a sane world you would be able to say "only access pictures taken with the App" and only access the text subsystem (SMS/MMS) only when "the App is open and the UI is on the screen in front of me."

[1] Example name, not a real app as far as I can tell.

something like for this session like how sudo works would work pretty well too

LineageOS has had this function since CyanogenMod.

That should be able to use Intents for both picking the image and sending the message, no permissions required.

iOS 12 automatically copies SMS codes to the clipboard. That said if you can avoid it don’t use SMS for 2 factor.

Even better than that it adds them as an autofill suggestion in the numeric keyboard https://ios.gadgethacks.com/how-to/ios-12-makes-easier-use-t...

That looks solved to me.

Apple definitely works hard for usable privacy.

Huh. Android Messenger will prompt me to copy the code to clipboard (which I don't think I've ever used since I'm always actually logging on with my laptop).

Would an option to forward all texts from a phone number to an app (read only, and only a single number authorized at a time) work? Or would it be too clumsy?

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