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Comment by mikaeluman | Hacker News Reader

I see the point. But honestly I am more concerned about having to constantly fight to turn off all permission allowances every time I install an app.

And the moment I have some faith and trust an app that I deem important, I get promotional junk as a "notification".

I would really like to have notifications allowed on certain apps like parking, or health etc., but all they seem to do is abuse the trust they are given, meaning I turn them off.

So where I agree with this author is certainly that more power belongs at the user.

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Apart from this, what is most needed in both platforms is an application firewall - not every app needs to be allowed to connect to the internet.

I can't believe this still isn't a thing outside of GrapheneOS. Being able to revoke network permissions is a fundamental security and privacy tool that's willfully left out of both Android and iOS.

There's zero reason not to include it as a toggle.

On iOS it wouldn’t even be that hard. There’s already a toggle to disable use of cellular connectivity. Add a separate one for non-cellular (iPadOS can connect via Ethernet), and/or a “disallow all” toggle.

We are partly there in spirit with App Transparency keeping track of the IPs and hostnames apps connect to.

Apparently chinese versions of ios (specifically for China) already have this feature because the Chinese government mandates it!

> certain apps like parking, or health etc., but all they seem to do is abuse the trust they are given, meaning I turn them off.

I've found that live activities on iOS helps with this quite a bit. Let's me keep notifications disabled on parking apps and DoorDash while still getting the tracking info I want in the live activity & dynamic island.

Otherwise, yeah, you just can't trust anyone to be respectful with notifications. Phone & a messages whitelist via focus modes are the only notifications I allow on my phone.

"having to constantly fight to turn off all permission allowances every time I install an app"

Are you really installing that many apps that this is so hard?

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