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Comment by TheDong | Hacker News Reader

I'd feel much safer if the message was filtered at the server, not on my device.

It's not clear how much or little of the message is processed, but it's clear attacker controlled data lands on my device.

> an option to somehow restrict media in messages

"LockdownMode", which removes attachments, but also turns off JIT in your browser, and removes the ability to install configuration profiles, among other things.

For some reason apple has a security setting that restricts iMessage media, but to opt into that, you also have to make your web browser useless and have GPS stripped from your photos, idk, apparently "enable" toggles are expensive and they could only afford a single one for like 10 unrelated security features.

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If the message is filtered at the server, it adds a lot of requirements you might not actually want:

1) the server needs to have your contact list, in a form where it can query if user X is in user Y's contacts, in order to do filtering.

1a) If you really meant mutual contacts, the server needs to process contact lists from both parties together. If you are ok with getting a media message from someone who doesn't have you in their contacts but you have them in yours, this one is skipped.

1b) The server needs to know who the message is from and who it is to at the same time.

2) If you're ok with a text message, but not a media message, the server needs to know the difference between text and media messages.

3) I'm not familiar with the details of iMessage, but often messengers use a pattern where a media message is really a link to a media file on some blob server, optionally with some text. If you want the server to remove the link to the file, but allow the text, the server would need to be able to see and process that.

Again, I'm not familiar with how iMessage operates, and some of these may already be aspects of the service, but they're not strict requirements of a messenger service, and the less the server knows about messages and contacts, etc, the more privacy users have from the service.

I have been running lockdown mode for a while now and it can be painful for shopping but usable. You can disable it on a per site basis in Safari. Stolen device protection mode on also.

To do it and enable side loading you need to do two resets to enable developer mode. I am able to enable a configuration profile also without a problem. It was installed and enabled pre-lockdown and re-enabled in lockdown mode. I just enabled location services for camera and it correctly gps tagged my photo.

The only pain points I have are if someone texts me something other than a picture which is a lockdown feature. For some reason usps tracking webpage fails on all browsers except on Firefox/Firefox focus browser. A few heavily tracked apps or shopping websites don’t like it but tolerate it. Pain: You cannot search your iMessages. I can turn lockdown off on a per app basis excluding iMessage also but have not needed to.

If Apple advertised a toggle that protects you completely but let the users decide the mitigations, it would severely damage its standing as a secure phone when it would inevitability get exploited. (Targeted) Apple users are usually not technical.

About Lockdown Mode https://support.apple.com/en-gb/105120

Harden your iPhone from a cyberattack with Lockdown Mode https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/iphone/iph049680987/io...

You're saying that having "enable full lockdown mode", but _also_ having a toggle in iMessage settings for "Disable automatic display of media attachments" would be less secure?

The poster two above me couldn't find the setting because they looked in iMessage settings for an iMessage security feature, not for lockdown.

And I would turn on the imessage security feature in a heartbeat if it didn't break my browser, and a custom font I have to install via a configuration profile.

I feel like these are both good counter examples to "adding options obviously means people won't use it"

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