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Other than open season on the users with malware out the wazoo. But who cares about security. Do you buy healthcare from the back of a pickup truck?
by coldcode 6y ago
Other than open season on the users with malware out the wazoo. But who cares about security. Do you buy healthcare from the back of a pickup truck?
- davidg109 6y agoApp stores leave a lot to be desired when it comes to security. In fact it can give users a false sense of security. https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.5351280 https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.5351280
- zepto 6y agoSure but Apple is clearly continuing to move in the direction of more security. The argument that they could be better therefore they are worth nothing, is a clear fallacy.
- raxxorrax 6y agoThen the same is true for letting people just install apps without vendor lock in.
- zepto 6y agoNo. That doesn’t follow. I’m claiming that the App Store solution as it stands is better for most users than just freely installing apps from the web. It’s not at all clear that the safety of just installing software without vendor lock in is getting better for most users. In fact it seems to be getting worse.
- GekkePrutser 6y agoFdroid is hardly full of malware. There's a big range between locked down like Apple and "click here to install bonzibuddy" like Windows. It doesn't have to be black or white.
- lern_too_spel 6y agoYet somehow more iOS users have been hit with malware (see Xcodeghost) than Google and Amazon Android users combined, despite there being far more of the latter and despite the latter being able to install whatever they want on their devices.
- saagarjha 6y agoI don’t see any evidence for that?
- lern_too_spel 6y agoI gave it to you. Xcodeghost infected hundreds of millions of users.
- the_af 6y agoI don't think it follows that malware is the only possible alternative to walled gardens. You could still have trust mechanisms while downloading from sites where the author, not the walled garden, has the control.
- zepto 6y agoA lot of authors want to do things that violate the user’s trust, but are hard to detect. Wouldn’t it be better to have the user have the control? The walled garden does have problems, but I generally don’t see anyone adding any value to our understanding of how to replace it with something better.
- the_af 6y ago> Wouldn’t it be better to have the user have the control? It would, but the user has no control of the walled garden either. It's a situation where both the user and the author have little to no control, as well as poor feedback. I'm not sure walled gardens, with their arbitrary rules, and opaque audit and review processes (which include not knowing how detailed their reviews are), are really a trusty safeguard against malicious authors. Whether you believe walled gardens protect you from malware depends on your definition of "malware". It's not true that without the App Store there's a world of dangers out there. Author reputation goes a long way.
- zepto 6y agoIf you don’t believe that there are dangers out there for general users installing software from the internet, I don’t know what to tell you. History certainly proves otherwise, as do the number of attempts at putting malware into app stores. I’d go as far as to say that you are certainly wrong about this and you can trivially verify this by even the most cursory examination of software threat models. Author reputation goes almost nowhere these days. It’s quite obvious why. There are a huge number of authors producing software. It’s impossible for more than a few authors to develop a reputation, and even those that do face impersonation. As to you not being sure how much protection ‘walled gardens’ give. They aren’t perfect, but they clearly work, and you can trivially verify that. If you think the author or the user can solve these problems without an intermediary, it bears some explanation as to how exactly this could work. Can you explain?