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Comment by newscracker | Hacker News Reader

Not directly related to the apps mentioned in this article, but one key permission that iOS lacks that Android has is the network access permission. There are many apps that I just don't want accessing the network or the Internet at all. I want them to run as local pieces of software with whatever other permissions I choose to grant them.

Even in our connected world, there is no reason to provide blanket network access to every app on the device.

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Android does have the FULL_INTERNET_ACCESS permission, but the UI hides it pretty well, to discourage people from rejecting apps with advertising.

AFAIK you can't refuse the network access permission on Android, even though the permission exists and is necessary for the app.

Doesn’t the “Off” setting for wireless data do this for iOS? With the other two options being “WLAN” and “WLAN & Cellular”, what’s the alternative network route?

You can't turn off network access for specific apps on iOS.

I don’t understand. For each app I have the above mentioned setting. What’s the network access method that’s outside of WLAN and cellular?

On my iPhone, the setting is “mobile data”, I.e. you can stop it from using cellular data (normally payable), but you can not stop it from using WiFi (presumably free).

Im using 12.3.1, maybe this is a new feature?

Where in Settings do you see a way to disable WiFi access to each app separately? Please provide the full navigation path. It's always been Cellular data that one could turn on or off for each app.

In the wireless settings for each individual app.

Sure, open settings, scroll to the app you’re interested in, click it to access its individual settings (location, notifications, background refresh, etc), click “Wireless Data”, then select “Off”.

Yes, that and not being able to root a device is also restricting in some sense for power users.

You'd be surprised that some of the most popular OEMs (Xiaomi, and the Oppo trifecta) have removed the ability to restrict specific apps from using data. Some OEMs do remove certain security and privacy oriented user settings like Private DNS, for instance.

If you can root a device, you're good to go. There's no such escape with Apple, for both the developers (a good thing given Apple's privacy charm offensive) and the users.

> If you can root a device, you're good to go

If you can root the device, bad actors can root the device, and all the nice security/isolation guarantees made by the OS are moot.

It's a two way street and not for everyone (note that, I mentioned no-root restricts power users, not everyone), yes, but being able to root an Android device is the reason extensions like XposedMod+XPrivacyLua (uMatrix for all apps) and tools like Frida.re (dynamic and static reverse engineering) exist.

I don't see laptops sold without root due to security implications. Why the distinction for handheld devices? That said, I do get there's a lot of malware on laptops, and a malware being able to assume root is game over. So, I kind of get your point too (not necessarily agree with it).

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