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Comment by yjftsjthsd-h | Hacker News Reader

> A single intrusive Android, Apple, or Microsoft app enables the developer to conduct audio, video, and physical surveillance on the end user while data mining highly confidential personal, business, medical, legal, employment, and location information from the end user to exploit for profits.

Y'all do know that modern Android and iOS have permission prompts to prevent this kind of thing, right? And at best this would still be "don't worry that our hardware is inferior because at least we make it harder to install malware" - deflecting doesn't convince me that speed isn't a problem.

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> Y'all do know that modern Android and iOS have permission prompts to prevent this kind of thing, right?

You know these apps completely disable themselves if you don't grant them the permissions because the OS tells them when you do that, right?

That doesn't happen on iOS. Apps completely disabling themselves if not granted permissions is explicitly against Apple's terms IIRC. This is how I was able to install Truecaller (yes that invasive app) without giving it my contacts permission and then disable my number from it (which seems to be the only way). You can not do this on android as truecaller would refuse to move forward without permissions.

> You can not do this on android as truecaller would refuse to move forward without permissions.

Then it's only iOS that allows that. My point still stands though because the commenter said that "android and iOS" allow you to do this but they don't.

Back when Android allowed you to root the phone, XPrivacyLua let you spoof granted permissions so that apps thought they were tracking data that was actually fake. But now you can't do this. Some distributions like GrapheneOS and maybe LineageOS also let you do this nowadays, but it's still not enough.

I encounter this all the time with App Store apps. Citizen will disable itself if you don’t grant live, high precision location data even though it would work fine with “when open” and an approximate location. The app for sketchy WiFi cameras I bought requires location to register the cameras, and will refuse to activate them without the permission.

(Taking the claim at face value) Okay, then nothing is safe regardless of platform; apps on every platform can just demand permissions and be given them, and PureOS is no better because "we demand that you disable technical measures that would protect you" is effective on all OSs.

This still leaves the Librem 5 no better than anything else.

> This still leaves the Librem 5 no better than anything else.

It doesn't. The security model of GNU/Linux is that you run trusted FLOSS apps from a signed repository. Try to find malware in there.

Okay, then the security model of Android can be that you run trusted apps from a signed repository (say, f-droid). If you don't install apps that aren't from a publisher you trust, both OSs should be fine. If you do, then the only advantage of PureOS is that it's less likely to be targeted, not that it actually has better security.

Edit: As a worked example, let's say the app for some social network does something nasty. If they released their app for PureOS, it would still do something nasty. If they don't release such an app, then you can't use it, but you could also just not use it on Android and enjoy the same security.

Yes, sandboxing should be improved on GNU/Linux. Still, you can use the smart card on Librem 5 and kill switches if you need to be 100% sure malware has no access to some things.

And how can you verify that those permissions are behaving the way that you asked them to?

Google themselves have publicly stated that turning off GPS in your settings menu doesn't actually turn it off physically. So how do we know that apps still aren't accessing GPS data?

These permission prompts is useless because way too many app asks for all these things.

There is still better security. On Android apps can't start using the microphone or camera while in the background. If an app is using the microphone or camera while in the background the app has to show itself on the notification bar. The notification bar will also have an indicator showing that you are being recorded.

Meanwhile on PureOS you can install a package and then it is free to spy on you all it wants without you even knowing about it.

This is not better security, it is wholesale: android and ios has security, while almost every linux distro lacks any form of meaningful security, which is a huge shame.

Linux phones have a different threat model. Saying they lack any form of security implies you know nothing about them: https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Freque...

Do people not just say no? I reflexively deny any unexpected permission prompts these days.

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