These are the sorts of prohibited behaviors that can be heuristically recognized by technical means (e.g. static analysis), but where any such recognition would necessarily result result in tons of false positives; and so those issues, when raised, must be passed to a team of human auditors for determination.
This is, by-and-large, why App Store submissions — even for updates — still require that human-auditor step. They're always watching for those seemingly-minor "this app got sold to someone evil" updates that slip in spyware — the kind you see often with Chrome Extensions.
The second example has already been fixed with the microphone indicator from 1-2 versions back, where a light shows up in the corner whenever the microphone has been activated (and swiping down tells you what app activated it). A notification could be added if an app tried to activate the microphone when it wasn't in the foreground (but I don't think the OS lets you do that anyway?)
You'd think that maybe restricting connections to e.g. domains that are rooted in a zone the developer has proven ownership of, would be fine... but there are third-party advertising, analytics, and fingerprinting services that allow you to CNAME them as subdomains of your domain to evade ad-blocker signature recognition.
And, of course, no user could ever be expected to figure any of this out if asked in a prompt. "Example App is asking me to allow it to connect to abcdefg.example.com? Well, they own that, don't they? Why wouldn't I allow that?"
ANY "solution" that puts more burden on the user isn't.
The problem with consent prompts on websites is that they are rarely in compliance with the GDPR.
Take, for example, this: https://www.reddit.com/r/ios/comments/w27x6j/uber_does_not_r...
This also ignores that it's conceivable that Apple can harden iOS's existing permissions system.
Not at all. App Store review is not perfect and no one expects it to be. That doesn't mean it has no value or that we should get rid of it entirely. Otherwise you could make the same argument about any system involving unscrupulous actors: "people still kill despite there being laws against murder, doesn't that mean the law is pointless?"
> This also ignores that it's conceivable that Apple can harden iOS's existing permissions system.
Curious how you think this would actually solve the issue I linked above.
But Apple is clearly presenting it as such.
> That doesn't mean it has no value or that we should get rid of it entirely.
That is correct, but right now it is the only game in town. There's no secondary stores that present it with competition. Already we read about top-10 grossing apps that are actually scammy. Perhaps Apple will strengthen its App Store when presented with alternatives.
> Curious how you think this would actually solve the issue I linked above.
It really depends on what mechanism that Uber is using to bypass the notifications systems. But off the bat, iOS could force even more granular alerts to the user when sensitive permissions are required.
Curious too, how you think that App Store review currently solves this issue. Uber is already too significant to the platform for Apple to do much more than give them a slap on the wrist, as seen historically.
https://www.cnet.com/news/privacy/apple-tim-cook-threatened-...
How does having more granular alerts actually solve this issue?
> Curious too, how you think that App Store review currently solves this issue.
Well, obviously it doesn't, currently. App Store review needs to update their rules to address this type of abuse. Uber is big but they've taken hard line stances against bigger apps before (e.g. Facebook).
> https://www.cnet.com/news/privacy/apple-tim-cook-threatened-...
Sounds like a success story, imagine the alternative scenario where there was no review process and Uber could get away with this unimpeded.
> Sounds like a success story, imagine the alternative scenario where there was no review process and Uber could get away with this entirely.
It'd say 60-40. The 40% downside is that Apple deigned to go through with actually pulling Uber from the store, even just for a few days. Do you think they'd do anything even remotely similar over the notifications permission leak you cited?
> How does having more granular alerts actually solve this issue?
More restrictive and more transparent handling of permissions. Maybe this mechanism was caused by Uber bundling some sort of library that led to permissions leak. Perhaps the OS could expose that permission being triggered.
I don't think you've thought this all the way through. Once a user grants me permission to send them push notifications because they want to know when their ride shows up, you can't really stop me from pushing them ads through the same channel.
> Once a user grants me permission to send them push notifications because they want to know when their ride shows up, you can't really stop me from pushing them ads through the same channel.
Wait, can't an improvement upon the OS be to make it more granular so that Uber is forced to establish separate permissions channels for rides (vital) vs. ads (not-so-vital), and that every time a notification of a certain type appears, the user is given the option to mute that channel entirely?
My underlying point, of course, is just because the operating system provides certain APIs, does not mean they are going to be used in good faith.
Perhaps they could team up with Facebook and create a rival app store of those who don’t want to pay the 30% tax. Of which they can all hemorrhage users together- it should be noted that FB is also having issues maintaining and growing DAU.
Permissions represent one of two pillars of their strategy against legal malware developers. The second one is the rulebook associated with the AppStore, preventing publishing non-compliant apps and banning developers for breaking said rules. A classic example is Facebook misusing enterprise certificates to install "Facebook research" which allowed them almost unrestricted access to the data of the users. Apple revoked their enterprise certificate, which also affected internal applications that Facebook employees were using. Facebook relented.
If Facebook launches their own app store, the second pillar is completely circumvented. Additionally they will find ways around the technical limitations, be it through use of private APIs, tricking users into clicking confirmations or bribing them. Technical limitations are not enough when dealing with malicious actors.
Meta be forced to offer their adware/spyware Facebook app through the Apple app store as well, as many people will not agree or won't have the technical knowledge to install more than one alternative app store. Apple will probably be forced to provide a list of alphabetically ordered app stores to choose from in the initial iPhone setup. It's quite convenient that their own app store starts with an A.
And let's say the user says No. Today the app will be forced to work without it. By Apple Store rules. Tomorrow the app will say "this permission is required for app to work".
The government offers a democratic way to determine these requirements
Some apps are unavoidable for most people, like whatsapp or facebook.
Future is Matrix.
Are you aware of man in the middle attacks? Do you think encrypted channels are safe from state actors?
Also most phones don’t even use SMS anymore, and instead go through an encrypted server to make it so you can hide your traffic from your neighbors.
Get with reality, not everybody wants or needs what your selling here.
Of course I am aware of this.
Spend $16 and sit in a coffee shop for an hour, guarantee you'll intercept plenty of SMS: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/03/16-at...
Not selling anything here considering every reasonable solution to this problem is something offered for free, or can be mitigated by a user with FOSS.
Or does the EU law prevent them from having private APIs/system components period? It seems like many people are making the assumption that this means that every single sideloaded app will be able to bypass all of the privacy/security features on the device, and I don't see why that would be. My understanding is that this is for "fairness", which would mean that apps that are sideloaded would have the same level of access as those on the App Store, meaning they use the same APIs that trigger the same prompts.