5 ms·

Aren’t you asked every time you reestablish a connection? If I unplug my iPhone (applies to Android too but with slightly different options) and plug it back in

Aren’t you asked every time you reestablish a connection? If I unplug my iPhone (applies to Android too but with slightly different options) and plug it back into the computer I simply get prompted again. I think the trust is ephemeral and is forgotten the moment you disconnect from the USB port. From the phone’s perspective there doesn’t seem to be a trust store where devices are uniquely identified and remembered.

lisper 7y ago
> Aren’t you asked every time you reestablish a connection? No. Sometimes it asks, sometimes it doesn't. There doesn't seem to be any pattern to it that I have been able to discern.
- noizejoy 7y ago
  > There doesn't seem to be any pattern to it that I have been able to discern. In sufficiently complex software, things can appear to be random (or magic), even when they are neither. — I seldom trust myself to declare something random in computer technology, just because I haven’t figured out the pattern (yet).
  - lisper 7y ago
    In this case it doesn't matter. The indiscernibility of a pattern has the same effect as the absence of a pattern, namely, I can't tell whether or not the decice that my phone is asking me about is actually my computer or malicious hardware embedded in my USB cable.
    - noizejoy 7y ago
      I didn’t think the device had any way of telling if the cable was malicious. So even if it wouldn’t ask repeatedly, you wouldn’t know if the cable was evil? So I’m not sure if the question “do you trust the device you just plugged in” does much of anything other than giving you a chance to reconsider? Also, is there a chance that the trust is lost on a weird AI timer? For example, a little while ago, my phone asked, if I wanted an alarm set to a specific time on a specific weekday morning, apparently just because I needed such an alarm for 2 weeks in a row. That made the pattern easy to recognize, but it also told me that the phone AI is trying too hard to learn about me. - I assume you’re always using the same cable? And I also assume you don’t get the trust dialog when plugging into a wall charger directly?
      - lisper 7y ago
        > I didn’t think the device had any way of telling if the cable was malicious. Well, no, but I assume it has a way of knowing if the computer I'm plugging it in to now is the same one that I plugged it in to yesterday and that I told it to trust yesterday. The cable I'm using is the one that came with the phone, so if it was malicious that would be big news. But I just realized that I left out an important detail: my phone is not plugged directly into my computer, but is instead connected through a USB hub and an OWC Thunderbolt dock. So that muddies the waters considerably. It is not at all out of the question that one of those devices is doing something hinky, though I'll give long odds against. > is there a chance that the trust is lost on a weird AI timer? Extremely unlikely. This one computer is the only one my phone has ever been plugged in to (AFAIK). > I assume you’re always using the same cable? And I also assume you don’t get the trust dialog when plugging into a wall charger directly? Correct on both counts.
        noizejoy 7y ago
        Wow - it’s a strange one indeed. Your use case doesn’t even strike me as that far from a pretty normal scenario. But it illustrates, how much potential for malfeasance is introduced with the chains of “smart” components that we’re increasingly required to use. And even being vigilant becomes difficult to impossible, because there are just too many vectors of vulnerability. Kinda depressing...
        lisper 7y ago
        It is indeed. (The most depressing thing to me is that people actually pay money for devices like Alexa and Google Voice which are designed to spy on them. Who needs to become a hacker when people will voluntarily give up their privacy for a shiny thing?)
        noizejoy 7y ago
        They probably didn’t read George Orwell in their formative years :-/
        7y ago
- gruez 7y ago
  > There doesn't seem to be any pattern to it that I have been able to discern. How often do you charge your phone? I only get those prompts when charging with a computer, not with a charger. One explanation might be that it remembers your computer for 1 week (random guess), but if you irregularly connect your phone to your computer it might seem random to you.
  - lisper 7y ago
    I work from home, so my phone is plugged in more often than not. But I'll pay more attention to how long it has been away the next time it asks.
radley 7y ago
I had a similar experience. It took me a long time to find out if "personal hotspot" is turned on, iPhone will always ask to trust when connecting to a computer.
- dragonsky67 7y ago
  New to me. Thanks I did not know this. It explains why I've been getting this unexpected behavior.

lisper 7y ago

> Aren’t you asked every time you reestablish a connection? No. Sometimes it asks, sometimes it doesn't. There doesn't seem to be any pattern to it that I have been able to discern.

noizejoy 7y ago
> There doesn't seem to be any pattern to it that I have been able to discern. In sufficiently complex software, things can appear to be random (or magic), even when they are neither. — I seldom trust myself to declare something random in computer technology, just because I haven’t figured out the pattern (yet).
- lisper 7y ago
  In this case it doesn't matter. The indiscernibility of a pattern has the same effect as the absence of a pattern, namely, I can't tell whether or not the decice that my phone is asking me about is actually my computer or malicious hardware embedded in my USB cable.
  - noizejoy 7y ago
    I didn’t think the device had any way of telling if the cable was malicious. So even if it wouldn’t ask repeatedly, you wouldn’t know if the cable was evil? So I’m not sure if the question “do you trust the device you just plugged in” does much of anything other than giving you a chance to reconsider? Also, is there a chance that the trust is lost on a weird AI timer? For example, a little while ago, my phone asked, if I wanted an alarm set to a specific time on a specific weekday morning, apparently just because I needed such an alarm for 2 weeks in a row. That made the pattern easy to recognize, but it also told me that the phone AI is trying too hard to learn about me. - I assume you’re always using the same cable? And I also assume you don’t get the trust dialog when plugging into a wall charger directly?
    - lisper 7y ago
      > I didn’t think the device had any way of telling if the cable was malicious. Well, no, but I assume it has a way of knowing if the computer I'm plugging it in to now is the same one that I plugged it in to yesterday and that I told it to trust yesterday. The cable I'm using is the one that came with the phone, so if it was malicious that would be big news. But I just realized that I left out an important detail: my phone is not plugged directly into my computer, but is instead connected through a USB hub and an OWC Thunderbolt dock. So that muddies the waters considerably. It is not at all out of the question that one of those devices is doing something hinky, though I'll give long odds against. > is there a chance that the trust is lost on a weird AI timer? Extremely unlikely. This one computer is the only one my phone has ever been plugged in to (AFAIK). > I assume you’re always using the same cable? And I also assume you don’t get the trust dialog when plugging into a wall charger directly? Correct on both counts.
      - noizejoy 7y ago
        Wow - it’s a strange one indeed. Your use case doesn’t even strike me as that far from a pretty normal scenario. But it illustrates, how much potential for malfeasance is introduced with the chains of “smart” components that we’re increasingly required to use. And even being vigilant becomes difficult to impossible, because there are just too many vectors of vulnerability. Kinda depressing...
        lisper 7y ago
        It is indeed. (The most depressing thing to me is that people actually pay money for devices like Alexa and Google Voice which are designed to spy on them. Who needs to become a hacker when people will voluntarily give up their privacy for a shiny thing?)
        noizejoy 7y ago
        They probably didn’t read George Orwell in their formative years :-/
        7y ago
gruez 7y ago
> There doesn't seem to be any pattern to it that I have been able to discern. How often do you charge your phone? I only get those prompts when charging with a computer, not with a charger. One explanation might be that it remembers your computer for 1 week (random guess), but if you irregularly connect your phone to your computer it might seem random to you.
- lisper 7y ago
  I work from home, so my phone is plugged in more often than not. But I'll pay more attention to how long it has been away the next time it asks.

radley 7y ago

I had a similar experience. It took me a long time to find out if "personal hotspot" is turned on, iPhone will always ask to trust when connecting to a computer.

dragonsky67 7y ago
New to me. Thanks I did not know this. It explains why I've been getting this unexpected behavior.