this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2023
26 points (88.2% liked)
Technology
927 readers
27 users here now
A tech news sub for communists
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
compared to iOS, sure, but hardly the most secure of all operating systems
It is because it isolates apps and stops apps from using permissions it isnt allowed to use. In windows mac and linux programs just have access to all the user has access to which is very insecure. + on phones programs are most of the time installed by an appstore, so no installing viruses by beeing a idiot.
The permission system on Android (at least any version of Android I've seen) is far from exhaustive. On Linux, FreeBSD, etc., you can set fine-grained restrictions (including network access) if you know what you're doing
Thats a big if. But on linux you cant by default on most distros isolate programs like you can on android.
if "by default" you mean without installing any additional software, no (unless you're willing to configure the firewall), but last time I checked you can't restrict network access on most Android devices by default either
In a user frendly manner would be a better wording. But the bigger thing is the sandboxing android does. That doesnt exist on desktop OSs.
there are many options for sandboxing on Linux, including user-friendly interfaces (e.g. Flatpak), and it's far more extensive than anything I've ever seen on Android
But the average user and most advanced users dont do any of that. Android always does that you cant do that. Android was build with security in mind. GNU/Linux is just a copy of earlier unix systems that didnt think about security. Android has the superior security architecture. You can of course use QubesOS but from what ive seen its not user friendly and has very bad performance.
Flatpaks and other container solutions are actually fairly popular; my point is that Android potentially being more secure for beginners (which is not the case for most devices by default since they use proprietary versions of Android) doesn't make it the most secure operating system, not by a long shot
I recomend waching the hated ones Video on Android security
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
the video is based on a hardened version of Android run on a device with no vulnerabilities or backdoors, and there's nothing in it that shows Android as superior to hardened Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, etc. -- it's also important to note that the userspace permission system on Android, unless variants like GrapheneOS have massively improved this, is extremely underwhelming in terms of restricting access to your files since it doesn't let you grant access on a file-by-file basis