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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
by Jeaye 5y ago
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 full of FLOSS apps which are graded based on their patterns and anti-patterns.
- legulere 5y agoThe included email client already supports S/MIME though
- aomobile 5y agoFeels safer though to pay than to get something for free.
- teddyh 5y agoI prefer free friends to those that charge me money to be my friend.
- chmsky00 5y agoAndroid phones are free like speech, not free like beer.
- teddyh 5y agoWe were not discussing the actual phones, nor even Android itself, but the application software running on phones.
- jiminymcmoogley 5y agomore accurately AOSP phones, since Google Location Services is far from free as in freedom
- mattl 5y agoDoes any Android phone run a freely licensed image?
- imwillofficial 5y agoCompanies that act like friends don’t last long. Business and pleasure and all that
- teddyh 5y agoI was not saying that software is my friend, I was making an example of how some things are worse if they are paid for.
- rrix2 5y agoBut as this linked study points out: that's "just a feeling"...
- judge2020 5y agoIf 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.
- lrvick 5y agoI 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.
- PaulBGD_ 5y agoWhile 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.
- smoldesu 5y agoNice, 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).
- merlinscholz 5y agoThe IP logging they were legally obliged to set up, so the IP of a specific account would be stored upon the next successful login? Where’s the problem with that?
- simonh 5y agoPlease 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.
- smoldesu 5y agoThey shouldn't give themselves the faculties to even do that. Mullvad refuses to implement anything that could identify their clients, I guess it was my fault, since I considered Protonnmail to be among them as "one of the best".
- prepend 5y agoSeems like privacy and OSS support are different things. And it doesn’t seem tough to generally diff privacy between the two OSes, as this paper seems to add some contributions.
- cute_boi 5y agoThey are different but I think FOSS apps inclines to be privacy friendly and if there are some issue we can always fork it remove the code that phones to its home? But I agree andriod being in hands ads company has really no incentive to be privacy friendly. Apple mostly selling hard generally have incentive to be more privacy friendly.
- stefandesu 5y agoAs 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.)
- smoldesu 5y agoi like your name hehe