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Are iPhones Better for Privacy? Comparative Study of iOS and Android Apps

arxiv.org

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Re: Are iPhones Better for Privacy? Comparative Study of iOS and Android Apps

#121

Post by lrvick »

zsmi wrote: post #28

I think this study is quite good but it does come with one important caveat: From page 5, "This is before the introduction of Apple's new opt-in mechanism for tracking in 2021. Our dataset therefore reflects privacy in the app ecosystem shortly before this policy change." Personally, I would prefer to see the difference between apps monetized by customers paying directly and apps monetized by advertising. I take for…

It should be assumed that any app that won't allow public review and independent builds of their source code can and will take actions for profit you may not approve of at any time, be it intentionally or out of negligence.

Letting a third party run code on your system they don't permit you two or someone you trust to see is a bit like being asked to adopt a legal contract that has some amount of power over you you are not permitted to read.

If you want apps willing to prove you can trust them to respect your privacy and freedom, the reasonably strict process of apps in the F-Droid store are what you are likely looking for.

There is an accountable and privacy preserving alternative for almost everything.

Re: Are iPhones Better for Privacy? Comparative Study of iOS and Android Apps

#122

Post by lrvick »

judge2020 wrote: post #48
Jeaye wrote: post #29

It's tough to diff the privacy between Android and iOS, as an OS. However, as an app ecosystem, it's not tough at all. For example, there is not a single open source email app on iOS which supports GPG email. In the iOS app ecosystem, privacy and FLOSS is an afterthought, since iOS users are more likely to pay for proprietary software. On Android, there are a lot more options, including things like F-Droid which are…

If you're talking just about FOSS software availability, sure, but that's not grading the privacy of the app ecosystem nor does it grade the privacy posture of a typical user/the userbase on average.

I think the point here is that Play Store and the App Store have no requirements for public source code accountability so there is simply no way to know if a given app binary is safe or not.

Even an open source app on these stores can't be provably correlated to published source code and could have undocumented deviations at any time.

Put simply, there is no reasonably accountable privacy story on stock iOS or Android. You mostly just have to take each publishers biased word for it and that the permissions systems alone covers every potential way an app can abuse your trust.

Re: Are iPhones Better for Privacy? Comparative Study of iOS and Android Apps

#123

Post by lrvick »

tomComb wrote: post #95
concinds wrote: post #67

I'm not going to debate the conclusion of this paper, but keep in mind if you pick Android, it's still very important to pick the brand correctly. When you open the Clock app on Xiaomi phones, the first thing you see is a privacy policy you need to accept (!). Samsung might be better on this. I saw quite a few people on other websites (not HN) who said they switched to Android after Apple's CSAM thing, but put little…

This. On privacy and even moreso on security, Android can be very good or it can be terrible and the first, and perhaps most important, determinant of this is your choice of brand.

Privacy is terrible on all stock Android phones, even first party from Google.

All ship with piles of binary blobs mandated by Google, SoC vendors, and carriers that have god access to your device, as well as any entities they sell that access to, and this sort of power abuse has been caught publicly many times.

Apple has been caught doing similar in the past but it is much harder to regularly audit closed platforms.

Unless you run something best effort like CalyxOS or GrapheneOS you should not have any reasonable expectation of privacy on a handset.

Re: Are iPhones Better for Privacy? Comparative Study of iOS and Android Apps

#124

Post by stefandesu »

Jeaye wrote: post #29

It's tough to diff the privacy between Android and iOS, as an OS. However, as an app ecosystem, it's not tough at all. For example, there is not a single open source email app on iOS which supports GPG email. In the iOS app ecosystem, privacy and FLOSS is an afterthought, since iOS users are more likely to pay for proprietary software. On Android, there are a lot more options, including things like F-Droid which are…

As an iOS user, I would love to have something like F-Droid for iOS. That might also increase the amount of open-source iOS apps since it would be easier to publish them. (I expect that the mandatory developer account holds people in the open source community back when it comes to iOS.)

Re: Are iPhones Better for Privacy? Comparative Study of iOS and Android Apps

#125

Post by simonh »

smoldesu wrote: post #99
PaulBGD_ wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it would be nice to be able to ensure that the source is what's exactly on the app store, protonmail does have their iOS app open sourced. Not quite the same as a generic email client, but is probably the next closest thing.

Nice, but that doesn't really address the plethora of other privacy/security concerns that Protonmail has server-side (like their IP logging which they claims never happened).

Please don't pollute the debate with incendiary inaccuracies. They said "by default, we do not keep any IP logs which can be linked to your anonymous email account." It's always been clear that if they were compelled to do so by law, they would have to comply and that's what happened.

Re: Are iPhones Better for Privacy? Comparative Study of iOS and Android Apps

#126

Post by simonh »

jondwillis wrote: post #57
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

O & 0 are adjacent on US keyboards because they're interchangeable.

that logic holds the same with p and o, right?

Not really. If you mistype O and get a zero you're not likely to notice, but if you were after a P you're much more likely to notice and correct it.

Re: Are iPhones Better for Privacy? Comparative Study of iOS and Android Apps

#127

Post by kaba0 »

fsflover wrote: post #33
spansoa wrote: post #21

One thing you have to consider when debating i0S versus Android in the context of privacy is: you can have the best of both worlds and own an Android phone and an i0S device (if you can afford that, and I'm aware many citizens in third world countries don't have the luxury of owning two phones). It's like the old Chrome versus Firefox debates that happen every other month now on Hackernews & Reddit. I own a Chromeboo…

> you can have the best of both worlds and own an Android phone and an i0S device If you truly need privacy and control then the right approach is to have neither of them and consider a GNU/Linux phone (Librem 5 or Pinephone).

That is if you not care about usability and security.

Re: Are iPhones Better for Privacy? Comparative Study of iOS and Android Apps

#128

Post by simonh »

tyingq wrote: post #31
kristofferR wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "cheaper" customers you get, the less they demand. That includes privacy, unfortunately.

Yes, the idea is to give them privacy even though they aren't asking for privacy, just "cheap".

How do you undercut competitors that are doing what you do, but also have a revenue stream from compromising customer privacy, and are skimping on investment in securing their products?

Re: Are iPhones Better for Privacy? Comparative Study of iOS and Android Apps

#129

Post by simonh »

dartharva wrote: post #8

>In this paper, we present a study of 24k Android and iOS apps from 2020 along several dimensions relating to user privacy. >We find that third-party tracking and the sharing of unique user identifiers was widespread in apps from both ecosystems, even in apps aimed at children. In the children's category, iOS apps used much fewer advertising-related tracking than their Android counterparts, but could more often acces…

I don't think it's reasonable to expect people to adopt a bunker mentality on this. iPhones, Pixels, Samsung flagships, etc are fantastic devices that offer incredibly useful and powerful features. For most people giving that up for improved privacy in't a worthwhile tradeoff.

That does not in any way mean any of this tracking is ok or acceptable. It means we need to keep up the public pressure and technical vigilance to publicise this issue, and try and get the industry and legislators/regulators moving in the right direction.

Re: Are iPhones Better for Privacy? Comparative Study of iOS and Android Apps

#130

Post by kaba0 »

tyingq wrote: post #14

It seems like privacy isn't popular enough to enable a third player in the market. I wonder if "cheap" would be popular enough to make a dent. Like someone churning out de-googled AOSP phones cheap enough to attract market share.

A third player would have to create an ecosystem as well, and companies barely want to write apps for two platforms, let alone one with zero users/money.

It either has to be able to run one platform’s apps, or have some alternative support. The latter can be the open source world, but than why depart from Android, when its core is FOSS?

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