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At least in Android (not familiar with iOS) you can deny apps access to any and all permissions, the features just won't work. I.e. if you deny Snapchat access

At least in Android (not familiar with iOS) you can deny apps access to any and all permissions, the features just won't work. I.e. if you deny Snapchat access to the camera you can still browse the app, read messages etc - you just won't be able to take any photos.

DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
That’s not my point: I’m arguing that apps like TikTok and Facebook are big enough that they could convince non-technical users (who are either ignorant-of, or just don’t care about, app permissions and privacy) to switch to an unofficial app-store where they could list their app without it being denied approval by Apple or Google for unreasonable app permission prompts. ...but the fact that unofficial app-stores for unjailbroken iOS devices do not exist makes this impossible for now. It’s very easy to imagine a TV ad or movie trailer ad for a TikTok or Facebook app with the cheerfully-voiced narrator saying “Just visit the TikTok Android App Store” or “Just open the Facebook iOS App Store” - then when the app is installed and first-opened the app would use a single “grant everything” permission prompt - or if the OS doesn’t allow that it could bombard the user with many prompts all-at-once and if the user denies any of them then a curtly-worded new messagebox would say “you must grant these permissions to use our app” otherwise the app quits. There’s not much Apple or Google could do to stop this that those app developers couldn’t work-around. Apple’s iOS App Store rejections for privacy reasons is a human solution to a non-technical problem, as it’s well-established that technical solutions to non-technical problems are ineffectual. It can be argued this is possible on Android - which does allow for other app-stores - and I did wonder why this isn’t already happening with Android users - then I realised that probably most Android users have those horrible carrier and OEM locked-down devices that make it harder (if not impossible) to change system settings or add other app-stores.
- LordDragonfang 6y ago
  >they could convince non-technical users to switch to an unofficial app-store They could, but they're absolutely not going to. Every barrier you put between and user and installing your app is a percentage of those installs that you're losing. Doubly so for "non technical" users, who can barely work the app store in the first place. No company of that size is going to lose that many downloads just to steal a few more downloads. >then I realised that probably most Android users have those horrible carrier and OEM locked-down devices that make it harder (if not impossible) to change system settings or add other app-stores. Stock android makes you jump through hoops to install third party apps, and for good reason. No, it's not because "OEM locked-down devices", the reason you don't see it on android is because it doesn't make business sense.
  - chipotle_coyote 6y ago
    This has been my feeling for years, and why I think it'd probably be in Apple's interest to let people sideload apps. They could still require them to be signed, but otherwise be hands-off. The vast majority of users wouldn't go through whatever hoops were necessary to set that up -- even if it's just the single hoop of flipping an "allow non-App Store apps" switch in Settings -- but making it possible to do that gets them out of a lot of the regulatory imbroglio they've been heading toward. (I also can't help but feel it's necessary in the long run if they're serious about the iPad in particular being a general purpose computing device rather than an application console.)
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      So that iOS developers can enjoy the rampant piracy and app repackaging that takes place on Android?
  - Nextgrid 6y ago
    When it comes to a mainstream app like Facebook or TikTok that already has network effects and a critical mass of users, people will put up with significant efforts to alleviate their fear of missing out, including sideloading the app.
- bad_user 6y ago
  The scenario you're speaking of hasn't happened on Android. As a famous example of a popular app that eventually caved into Google's demands is Fortnite [1] and children are tech savvy (or at least motivated) enough to install from outside the app store. If Fortnite couldn't do it, then no, it's not easy to imagine TikTok doing it, especially given TikTok's market share is made of mobile users mostly, so no PC, no PS 4, no Xbox. There are indeed alternative app stores from Samsung, Amazon, maybe others, however Google's Play absolutely dominates the Android ecosystem. I'm an iOS user myself, however this whole reasoning is bullshit. The only reason Apple keeps such a tight control is because they want to keep that 30% commission on all sales, which is highway robbery. And I also suspect them of wanting to have enough reason and leverage to get rid of any app that threatens their own products. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/21/epic-games-launches-fortnite-on-the-google-play-store-and-theyre-not-happy-about-it/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/21/epic-games-launches-fortni... --- Also the elephant in the room is the web. I see grownups and children alike using the web successfully all the time. The web can be secure without a gatekeeper because browsers do a reasonable job at sandboxing. In fact it is the competitive nature of the market that makes it secure, consider that's how extensions and ad blockers happened (in the meantime I still don't have a browser on iOS capable of using uBlock Origin). And yes the web has dark corners, yet we live with it just fine. Look, we're having this conversation on a web page that's not gated by Apple and we're still alive.
  - tspike 6y ago
    As extortionate as Apple’s fees are, I’m actually glad that they have a business model that isn’t dependent on invasion of privacy. Without them continually calling attention to it, Google would have little incentive to improve privacy.
    - bad_user 6y ago
      Google payed Apple $12 billion in 2019 to remain the default search engine in Safari. I hear this line about their business model all the time, however it is bullshit. Given the opportunity all companies will take the money. And I fear that it is nothing more than a conspiracy theory, without much evidence, much like anti-vaxxing. Google these days is a very big target. The EU would love to have reason to slap them with another fine, given all the legal tax evasion they've been doing. Yet they've always been transparent about what they collect and have always been responsible with user data (versus Facebook). Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the privacy features of my iPhone, it always fared better than Android in that regard, but it has nothing to do with Apple's tight grip of its App Store. And Google Play takes a 30% commission too ;-)
- ElFitz 6y ago
  Zenly already does something similar with location permissions, and their app isn't even side-loaded. They'll simply annoy you to hell and not let you use the app until you've granted permanent location permissions.
efreak 6y ago
You can deny permissions to any runtime permissions beginning with apps built for Marshmallow. You cannot deny other permissions. Some apps will absolutely block you from using them unless the permissions are on (this is by design of the app, not an OS limitation). Internet is a permission that is required if your app expects to go online. You cannot turn this permission off in the OS. If you modify Android to allow changing this permission (usually via Xposed) or rebuild the app to remove it from the manifest, many apps will actually crash when they try to go online; this is part of the reason why people use a firewall even on devices with Xposed installed. My vague understanding is that this is how Android works when an app tried to do something it can't--it closes the app. IIRC there is an Xposed module that filters by the URL, but I'm guessing it fakes the network response (more complex than simply disabling permission), and it doesn't work with ndk. With Marshmallow, runtime permissions were introduced for a number of existing permissions, where it would prompt you the first time the app tried to access privileged data. If your app is older than Marshmallow (ie, written for lollipop or KitKat), disabling any of the enabled permissions is liable to crash the app as soon as it tries to use them. For the full list of permissions on Android, see https://gist.github.com/Arinerron/1bcaadc7b1cbeae77de0263f4e15156f https://gist.github.com/Arinerron/1bcaadc7b1cbeae77de0263f4e... (there's a few links in the comments to Android source code; they cause my phone browser to crash, though) Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, or if this information is outdated; much of it was specific to Android 6 release.
vczf 6y ago
By and large this is true. However, the android Citibank mobile app refuses to do anything useful if you don't give it access to your entire file system upfront. I don't think Apple would allow that kind of permissions abuse, but apparently Google does.
- DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
  > However, the android Citibank mobile app refuses to do anything useful if you don't give it access to your entire file system upfront. Considering Citi’s corporate culture, I’d attribute this to incompetence rather than malice or a desire to spy on users. I’ll bet they’re using a third-party anti-spyware library to examine the Android FS for keyloggers/etc to protect their users’ security. It’s well-intentioned, but still idiotic. This is the same Citibank that’s been engaged in an idiotic arms-race with Google about blocking password-safes on their online banking login page for the past 5+ years - while also allowing me to do phone-banking without any real authentication - and STILL haven’t given me an EMV Chip+PIN credit-card, while the EMV Chip+Sign card I do have from them DOES have NFC without a purchase limit... anyone could steal my wallet and “tap” a couple grand off it. Arggghhhhhh. The “banks who think they’re smarter about security than platform vendors” trope is getting real old.
  - callalex 6y ago
    No, it’s because they like laundering money and the profit that brings, and hate any feature that might prove their wrongdoing empirically. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-citigroup-fine-idUSKBN1ET25A https://www.reuters.com/article/us-citigroup-fine-idUSKBN1ET...
    - DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
      Oh, of course - I understand most (if not all?) major banks have serious ethics issues from the top-down - but money-laundering is a business-objective and is distinct and separate from online banking security. The $70m fine (a joke to a multi-billion-dollar company) is insignificant to the potential damages from a class-action lawsuit from a wide-ranging vulnerability in their online banking platform - hence their focus and over-engineering on their online banking security - while the risks from credit-card abuse and individual identity-theft are much more limited in scope - and are a known-quantity.
AnonC 6y ago
That model was pioneered by Apple in iOS long before Android started taking it up with Android 6 (runtime permissions instead of collective install time permissions). Android took a few years to catch up and increase the range of runtime permissions, and apps on Android at that time would actually crash if some permission wasn't given. Even today, there are apps on Android that ask for needless permissions and refuse to continue unless the permissions or granted. That same app on iOS would provide more functionality (that's possible without having the permissions). There seems to be a very different mindset between Android developers compared to iOS developers.

DaiPlusPlus 6y ago

That’s not my point: I’m arguing that apps like TikTok and Facebook are big enough that they could convince non-technical users (who are either ignorant-of, or just don’t care about, app permissions and privacy) to switch to an unofficial app-store where they could list their app without it being denied approval by Apple or Google for unreasonable app permission prompts. ...but the fact that unofficial app-stores for unjailbroken iOS devices do not exist makes this impossible for now. It’s very easy to imagine a TV ad or movie trailer ad for a TikTok or Facebook app with the cheerfully-voiced narrator saying “Just visit the TikTok Android App Store” or “Just open the Facebook iOS App Store” - then when the app is installed and first-opened the app would use a single “grant everything” permission prompt - or if the OS doesn’t allow that it could bombard the user with many prompts all-at-once and if the user denies any of them then a curtly-worded new messagebox would say “you must grant these permissions to use our app” otherwise the app quits. There’s not much Apple or Google could do to stop this that those app developers couldn’t work-around. Apple’s iOS App Store rejections for privacy reasons is a human solution to a non-technical problem, as it’s well-established that technical solutions to non-technical problems are ineffectual. It can be argued this is possible on Android - which does allow for other app-stores - and I did wonder why this isn’t already happening with Android users - then I realised that probably most Android users have those horrible carrier and OEM locked-down devices that make it harder (if not impossible) to change system settings or add other app-stores.

LordDragonfang 6y ago
>they could convince non-technical users to switch to an unofficial app-store They could, but they're absolutely not going to. Every barrier you put between and user and installing your app is a percentage of those installs that you're losing. Doubly so for "non technical" users, who can barely work the app store in the first place. No company of that size is going to lose that many downloads just to steal a few more downloads. >then I realised that probably most Android users have those horrible carrier and OEM locked-down devices that make it harder (if not impossible) to change system settings or add other app-stores. Stock android makes you jump through hoops to install third party apps, and for good reason. No, it's not because "OEM locked-down devices", the reason you don't see it on android is because it doesn't make business sense.
- chipotle_coyote 6y ago
  This has been my feeling for years, and why I think it'd probably be in Apple's interest to let people sideload apps. They could still require them to be signed, but otherwise be hands-off. The vast majority of users wouldn't go through whatever hoops were necessary to set that up -- even if it's just the single hoop of flipping an "allow non-App Store apps" switch in Settings -- but making it possible to do that gets them out of a lot of the regulatory imbroglio they've been heading toward. (I also can't help but feel it's necessary in the long run if they're serious about the iPad in particular being a general purpose computing device rather than an application console.)
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    So that iOS developers can enjoy the rampant piracy and app repackaging that takes place on Android?
- Nextgrid 6y ago
  When it comes to a mainstream app like Facebook or TikTok that already has network effects and a critical mass of users, people will put up with significant efforts to alleviate their fear of missing out, including sideloading the app.
bad_user 6y ago
The scenario you're speaking of hasn't happened on Android. As a famous example of a popular app that eventually caved into Google's demands is Fortnite [1] and children are tech savvy (or at least motivated) enough to install from outside the app store. If Fortnite couldn't do it, then no, it's not easy to imagine TikTok doing it, especially given TikTok's market share is made of mobile users mostly, so no PC, no PS 4, no Xbox. There are indeed alternative app stores from Samsung, Amazon, maybe others, however Google's Play absolutely dominates the Android ecosystem. I'm an iOS user myself, however this whole reasoning is bullshit. The only reason Apple keeps such a tight control is because they want to keep that 30% commission on all sales, which is highway robbery. And I also suspect them of wanting to have enough reason and leverage to get rid of any app that threatens their own products. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/21/epic-games-launches-fortnite-on-the-google-play-store-and-theyre-not-happy-about-it/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/21/epic-games-launches-fortni... --- Also the elephant in the room is the web. I see grownups and children alike using the web successfully all the time. The web can be secure without a gatekeeper because browsers do a reasonable job at sandboxing. In fact it is the competitive nature of the market that makes it secure, consider that's how extensions and ad blockers happened (in the meantime I still don't have a browser on iOS capable of using uBlock Origin). And yes the web has dark corners, yet we live with it just fine. Look, we're having this conversation on a web page that's not gated by Apple and we're still alive.
- tspike 6y ago
  As extortionate as Apple’s fees are, I’m actually glad that they have a business model that isn’t dependent on invasion of privacy. Without them continually calling attention to it, Google would have little incentive to improve privacy.
  - bad_user 6y ago
    Google payed Apple $12 billion in 2019 to remain the default search engine in Safari. I hear this line about their business model all the time, however it is bullshit. Given the opportunity all companies will take the money. And I fear that it is nothing more than a conspiracy theory, without much evidence, much like anti-vaxxing. Google these days is a very big target. The EU would love to have reason to slap them with another fine, given all the legal tax evasion they've been doing. Yet they've always been transparent about what they collect and have always been responsible with user data (versus Facebook). Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the privacy features of my iPhone, it always fared better than Android in that regard, but it has nothing to do with Apple's tight grip of its App Store. And Google Play takes a 30% commission too ;-)
ElFitz 6y ago
Zenly already does something similar with location permissions, and their app isn't even side-loaded. They'll simply annoy you to hell and not let you use the app until you've granted permanent location permissions.

efreak 6y ago

You can deny permissions to any runtime permissions beginning with apps built for Marshmallow. You cannot deny other permissions. Some apps will absolutely block you from using them unless the permissions are on (this is by design of the app, not an OS limitation). Internet is a permission that is required if your app expects to go online. You cannot turn this permission off in the OS. If you modify Android to allow changing this permission (usually via Xposed) or rebuild the app to remove it from the manifest, many apps will actually crash when they try to go online; this is part of the reason why people use a firewall even on devices with Xposed installed. My vague understanding is that this is how Android works when an app tried to do something it can't--it closes the app. IIRC there is an Xposed module that filters by the URL, but I'm guessing it fakes the network response (more complex than simply disabling permission), and it doesn't work with ndk. With Marshmallow, runtime permissions were introduced for a number of existing permissions, where it would prompt you the first time the app tried to access privileged data. If your app is older than Marshmallow (ie, written for lollipop or KitKat), disabling any of the enabled permissions is liable to crash the app as soon as it tries to use them. For the full list of permissions on Android, see https://gist.github.com/Arinerron/1bcaadc7b1cbeae77de0263f4e15156f https://gist.github.com/Arinerron/1bcaadc7b1cbeae77de0263f4e... (there's a few links in the comments to Android source code; they cause my phone browser to crash, though) Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, or if this information is outdated; much of it was specific to Android 6 release.

vczf 6y ago

By and large this is true. However, the android Citibank mobile app refuses to do anything useful if you don't give it access to your entire file system upfront. I don't think Apple would allow that kind of permissions abuse, but apparently Google does.

DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
> However, the android Citibank mobile app refuses to do anything useful if you don't give it access to your entire file system upfront. Considering Citi’s corporate culture, I’d attribute this to incompetence rather than malice or a desire to spy on users. I’ll bet they’re using a third-party anti-spyware library to examine the Android FS for keyloggers/etc to protect their users’ security. It’s well-intentioned, but still idiotic. This is the same Citibank that’s been engaged in an idiotic arms-race with Google about blocking password-safes on their online banking login page for the past 5+ years - while also allowing me to do phone-banking without any real authentication - and STILL haven’t given me an EMV Chip+PIN credit-card, while the EMV Chip+Sign card I do have from them DOES have NFC without a purchase limit... anyone could steal my wallet and “tap” a couple grand off it. Arggghhhhhh. The “banks who think they’re smarter about security than platform vendors” trope is getting real old.
- callalex 6y ago
  No, it’s because they like laundering money and the profit that brings, and hate any feature that might prove their wrongdoing empirically. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-citigroup-fine-idUSKBN1ET25A https://www.reuters.com/article/us-citigroup-fine-idUSKBN1ET...
  - DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
    Oh, of course - I understand most (if not all?) major banks have serious ethics issues from the top-down - but money-laundering is a business-objective and is distinct and separate from online banking security. The $70m fine (a joke to a multi-billion-dollar company) is insignificant to the potential damages from a class-action lawsuit from a wide-ranging vulnerability in their online banking platform - hence their focus and over-engineering on their online banking security - while the risks from credit-card abuse and individual identity-theft are much more limited in scope - and are a known-quantity.

AnonC 6y ago

That model was pioneered by Apple in iOS long before Android started taking it up with Android 6 (runtime permissions instead of collective install time permissions). Android took a few years to catch up and increase the range of runtime permissions, and apps on Android at that time would actually crash if some permission wasn't given. Even today, there are apps on Android that ask for needless permissions and refuse to continue unless the permissions or granted. That same app on iOS would provide more functionality (that's possible without having the permissions). There seems to be a very different mindset between Android developers compared to iOS developers.