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Comment by emsy | Hacker News Reader

I have yet to see a downside of this bill that isn’t solved by deleting or not installing offending apps.

I cannot login to three of my bank accounts (even on the web), authenticate with several services used in my job, or approve some card payments without installed apps on my phone.

It is assumed you have a device. Not installing isn't a reasonable option. You may think "just choose different banks, jobs and cards" but suitable alternatives were not available.

Having a second device would be ok, but very inconvenient and a little expensive due to needing multiple mobile contracts.

If those apps start to include more user hostile features such as spam and data collection, if there are no suitable alternatives we will live with those features. To some extent I am already seeing spam in bank apps, in the form of interstitials advertising shady third party services.

At the moment the app store policies and human review offer some buffer against those features being pervasively standard for such apps, but it's not hard to imagine a dystopian future where all e.g. BankId apps that are required to make payments for food everywhere all seem to have built-in spamvertising and tracking functions that no technical measures like sandboxing can prevent.

Because software isn't fungible and "doesn't spam" isn't a differentiating feature so it costs apps nothing to do it.

I uninstalled a few noisy apps (that is until Android added a per-app mute for notifications).

This is actually an argument for allowing multiple stores, because I already receive spam (just today as a matter of fact!). So this might be an incentive for Apple to actually enforce their guidelines to keep users on their store.

Except that you can only do so after you know it is offending.

By then the app could've siphoned all of your data.

Don't. Install.

If you think Apple's vetting process is adequate protection, exclusively use their App Store.

Websites can also siphon your data, yet Safari let's me browse the websites unfiltered.

This is the status quo on desktop OSes, and it's largely a solved problem.

A centralized monopolistic app store isn't solving the same "problem."

Is that true? I still have to remove AltAdBrowser fairly often from my mother’s relatively new Dell laptop when I visit.

It solves it as much as any app store.

There have been numerous cases of Apple missing malware in the App Store, here's one: https://www.wired.com/story/apple-app-store-malware-click-fr...

Desktop has much better tooling than it used to, including code signing, built-in browser scam website filtering, and automatic malware removal tools distributed by OS vendors. The late 90's was full of "take over your computer, time to wipe your hard drive" level viruses and malware (and I downloaded many of them!)

Macs even have recently added sandboxing for manually installed apps similar to the ones seen on App Store apps, such as OS prompts asked to allow access to personal folders, camera, desktop sharing, and other sensitive areas. Even a manually installed app is less likely to access private things because of this addition.

If AltAdBrowser (which, I assume is spyware/adware) is our level of harmful software we're talking about, it should be noted that app stores allow this type of data collection with user consent. Just check out the privacy tab in Apple's App Store for Facebook or TikTok.

Just like on a PC, all it takes is one uninformed download button press to install spyware/adware on your iPhone.

Your relative could also just only click download buttons within the app store on their desktop. That would be a very easy piece of advice.

There's a similar solution to both: Parental controls

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201304

When people say trustworthy software installation is a “solved problem” on desktop, do you think they are referring to parental controls?

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