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Comment by raw_anon_1111 | Hacker News Reader

And you are completely ignoring viruses, ransomware, keyloggers, the 50 toolbars etc that has been the staple of Windows and before that DOS for over 40 years.

Scam apps are rife in the iOS App Store. But what they can’t do easily install viruses that affect anything out of its sandbox, keyloggers, etc

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You are missing the part where the OS provider is the virus and keylogger. Unless of course you feel it reasonable that google and apple datamine everything you type via their software keyboard[0] or reading the contents of your notifications via play services[1].

0 - https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/16046-google-keyboard-w-net... 1 - https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/sandboxed-google-play-pr...

You mean if you run an OS made by a company whose whole profit model is based on tracking users so they can advertise to you is invading your privacy?

Sandboxing isn't feature dependent on Apple being a big curator is it? These are orthogonal but not the same issues. I've never said that PCs don't have viruses or that it isn't a problem, only that I should be able to install software from developer I trust if I want to.

I agree let's have sandboxed app instalations on platforms. Flatpak is already going this way. But it looks like big players Microsoft,Apple and Google are gatekeeping app sandboxing behind their stores instead of allowing people/devs to use sandboxing directly.

And then there will still be complaints about Google limiting what apps can do and take away “your freedom”. What happens when a third party app wants to be able to read in other apps internal storage to create a back up solution like iCloud? Should that be allowed? What about if they want to create an app that autocompletes what you type when working in another app requiring key logger like capabilities?

What part of "I should be able to install software from developer I trust if I want to" was hard to understand?

Then you don’t want sandboxing if you want all of those permissions.

You can have sandboxing and run whatever you want. I do it every day on PCs where I, the user, can define the terms of sandboxing any appliclation I want, and not a trillion dollar corporation using sandboxes to enforce their chosen revenue streams upon users.

Yes and for you to think that is a valid argument for a consumer product is why most open source products suck for consumers and end up being about as bad as the “homermobile”.

You do realize macOS has used sandboxing by default for over a decade, right?

ChromeOS/ChromiumOS uses heavy sandboxing. Android currently uses sandboxing transparently, despite plans to iOS-ify the platform. Hell, Windows uses app isolation sandboxing these days.

All four consumer platforms let you run the software you want to and they provide sandboxing at the same time. They also let you configure sandboxes, too.

As for open source, consumer products like the Steam Deck use sandboxes, popular game launchers like Lutris use sandboxes, Firefox transparently uses sandboxing by default, as does Chromium/Chrome, anything installed automatically with Flatpak or Snap are sandboxed by default and AppArmor/SELinux works in the background automatically on most distros and are activated by default.

Saying open source projects like the Steam Deck, Firefox, Chromium, ChromiumOS and Android suck for consumers is a weird opinion, but you're free to have it.

Mac apps outside of the Mac App Store really doesn’t have any sandboxing.

And Android’s sandboxing is so bad, you always hear about the malware of the week especially outside of the Play Store.

ChromeOS also isn’t open source. And expecting end users to “configure sandboxes” you might as well not have one.

Firefox is s browser, and didn’t they tighten what third party extensions can run?

Android - or at least the version that most people use - is not “open source” by any stretch of the imagination.

> Mac apps outside of the Mac App Store really doesn’t have any sandboxing.

Apps can and do ship with sandboxing rules that will be applied at runtime.

> ChromeOS also isn’t open source. And expecting end users to “configure sandboxes” you might as well not have one.

I listed ChromeOS as one of four consumer operating systems used by billions of people that uses sandboxing, not as an open source OS.

Notice how I did use ChromiumOS when referring to open source software, along with Chromium.

> And expecting end users to “configure sandboxes” you might as well not have one.

Who said anything about expecting users to do that? I just mentioned that you could configure them if you wanted to, like I said in my GP.

Again, my point is that these are consumer products that billions of people use everyday that use sandboxing by default, yet somehow not even having to think about sandboxing is too onerous for end users?

> Firefox is s browser, and didn’t they tighten what third party extensions can run?

Yes, it is open source consumer software that does sandboxing by default without the user having to think about it.

> Android - or at least the version that most people use - is not “open source” by any stretch of the imagination.

AOSP is very much open source

> Apps can and do ship with sandboxing rules that will be applied at runtime.

Hardly any apps outside of the Mac App Store voluntarily opt in for sandboxing

> I listed ChromeOS as one of four consumer operating systems used by billions of people that uses sandboxing, not as an open source OS.

And also locked down…

> AOSP is very much open source

Calling AOSP open source when it’s almost useless to most consumers without the proprietary bits from Google is just as disingenuous as calling iOS open source because Darwin is open source.

Sure I do. I sandbox what I want when I want.

So now you are expecting users to navigate hundreds of permissions and know the consequences of each one? How did that work out for Vista?

Yes, if you bother with the rigmarole of escaping walled garden then you should be expected to navigate 20-30 permissions, which is in practice all that's necessary.

If users without that level of technical skill are pressured into making those decisions, that's because they're being mistreated.

“Besides that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?”

Nah it's really not that bad.

The toolbars don’t just magically appear there. They are the product of a technically illiterate user.

Yes because technically literate users shouldn’t have trusted mainstream companies to not install bundle ware back in the Day? They shouldn’t have trusted Zoom not to install a web server on Macs surreptitiously that caused a vulnerability? They shouldn’t have searched Google for printer drivers not knowing that it was a fake printer driver? They shouldn’t have trusted Facebook when they installed VPN software that tracked all of their traffic from any app?

Is that really your answer? To make the phone ecosystem as fraught as Windows PCs for the average user? How is they worked out for PC users since the 80s?

How is they worked out for PC users since the 80s?

Just to be clear, are you claiming that we would be better off if PC hardware and OS vendors had the level of control that smartphone vendors do today?

For almost every user - yes. If apps had to run in a strict sandbox it would be better for most users. Where it would make you jump through an incredible number of hoops or even install “developer editions” of operating systems.

You really can’t trust developers to do the right thing - even major developers like Zoom (the secret web server) , Facebook (the VPN that trashed usage actoss apps on iOS) and Google (convincing consumers to install corporate certificates to track usages on iOS).

Even more to the point, you read about some app installed outside of the Google Play store that’s malware - including the official side loaded version of FortNite…

https://blog.checkpoint.com/research/fortnite-vulnerability-...

I appreciate your response even though I strongly disagree.

You really can’t trust developers to do the right thing

Indeed not, and that includes OS developers. Imagine if Microsoft had been able to block web browsers other than IE in the name of "security".

Well, you have to trust the operating system vendor.

In this case, I’ll much rather trust F-Droid maintainers than Google.

Technically illiterate users should leave the default security settings enabled.

In the modern day, I actually think this mostly works? Are you aware of instances where normies installed Windows malware because they purposefully disabled Windows Defender?

Everyone always talks about the "Dancing Bunnies Problem" but I'm not convinced it's actually a thing.

You mean like all of the ransomware that is being reported on a monthly basis? My mom looked for a printer driver by searching on Google and installed some type of crap that wasn’t the official driver. She is 80. But she has actively been using computers since we had an Apple //e in the house in 1986.

On the Mac, people installed Zoom and it installed a backdoor web server.

I'm explicitly only talking about ransomware that requires disabling Windows Defender.

Please install an ad blocker on your mom's computer, if you haven't already. Not every fake driver etc gets blocked by an ad blocker, but the majority do.

The fake printer driver came up in the organic results…

The default security settings only got to be the way they are after more than a decade of exploited windows xp machines breaking the whole internet.

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