> access to read, delete or change all content on the phone The article is pure fiction, as no app has any possibility of ever being granted those permissions on iOS. No such capability even exists for any app on an iPhone.
Android
Everyone going to World Cup must have this app, experts are sounding the alarm
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Re: Everyone going to World Cup must have this app, experts are sounding the alarm
#12With the high churn of devices and increasing privacy intrusion, there's probably a small market for burner phones that will re-emerge just for apps in the next years.
Re: Everyone going to World Cup must have this app, experts are sounding the alarm
#13this is going to disproportionately affect people in the global south - there aren't data privacy laws that google and apple need to stick to. suddenly, any group that is not politically favorable in a country is going to be a target.
HN can't hide behind the argument that this doesn't affect iOS. thats a very elitist argument. the majority of the world uses android.
Re: Everyone going to World Cup must have this app, experts are sounding the alarm
#14> access to read, delete or change all content on the phone The article is pure fiction, as no app has any possibility of ever being granted those permissions on iOS. No such capability even exists for any app on an iPhone.
what is with you people thinking like nothing else other than Apple products exist?
Re: Everyone going to World Cup must have this app, experts are sounding the alarm
#15This is really no different than what other countries do, e.g. US border officials extensively questioning foreigners or asking for usernames and passwords for social media. As a visitor you have to abide by the law of the country, which may be different from your own country, and whose interpretation may be stretched by border control at the point of entry.
The only difference here is that they were able to build an app to do all the tracking in plain sight. I'm sure governments in the US and Europe would love to be able to force all visitors to install a similar app.
Re: Everyone going to World Cup must have this app, experts are sounding the alarm
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
Android and iOS have almost equal market share in Norway. Worldwide Android is a lot bigger (~70%). This affects most people, just not in the US.
You can’t grant access on iOS “to view / edit / delete all/any data”, that’s physically not possible, even with the hidden SDKs that only select parties have access to.
Are you talking about secret government back door stuff? Not into phones but that sounds interesting, lol
Re: Everyone going to World Cup must have this app, experts are sounding the alarm
#17this is going to disproportionately affect people in the global south - there aren't data privacy laws that google and apple need to stick to. suddenly, any group that is not politically favorable in a country is going to be a target. HN can't hide behind the argument that this doesn't affect iOS. thats a very elitist argument. the majority of the world uses android.
HN can't hide behind the argument that this doesn't affect iOS. thats a very elitist argument
My point was that this is an indictment of the Android ecosystem, not a snooty nod to why everyone should use iPhones.
Re: Everyone going to World Cup must have this app, experts are sounding the alarm
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
Android and iOS have almost equal market share in Norway. Worldwide Android is a lot bigger (~70%). This affects most people, just not in the US.
You can’t grant access on iOS “to view / edit / delete all/any data”, that’s physically not possible, even with the hidden SDKs that only select parties have access to.
Good for the 24% of users, then.
It doesn't change the fact that tracking your detailed location and who you are around in combination can be used to determine your affiliations or sexual orientation. If you, with your secure iPhone, are located around numerous people with Grindr installed, they may jump to conclusions.
They are capable of targeting gays or political opponents with this, which is the point of the story.
Re: Everyone going to World Cup must have this app, experts are sounding the alarm
#19Is it still not possible to allow an app read/write access to only a single directory on Android? Ony all directories or none?
From a quick check on my Android, that seems to be the case. How archaic. Why is it this way?
Re: Everyone going to World Cup must have this app, experts are sounding the alarm
#20The permissions mentioned sound like someone that doesn't understand the permissions systems used by Android and iPhone tried to translate them. So this part of the article is almost useless as it is hard to figure out what permissions the app actually has.
I don't understand the Android permissions system well enough here, but I would be especially curious about which API version this is targeting as I don't know how far back you can still go currently to avoid some of the stricter file access permissions newer versions added. As far as I can tell the most problematic storage-related permission in modern Android would be "MANAGE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE" meant for apps like file browsers. And if the app actually requests this permission (or intentionally uses an older API level to get equivalent access) that would be a very clear and specific overreach.
But I would also not be surprised at all if this kind of app asks for excessive permissions, and then provides a lot of telemetry and analytics and sends them somewhere. And in a country where e.g. homosexuality is illegal this kind of stuff presents additional dangers beyond compromising your privacy.