Can windows apps (not installed from the MS store) enumerate through the window titles of all open windows? How hard would it be for an app to monitor all of your web traffic based on the title alone?
Legit question. ChatGPT isn't super helpful here since it agrees with everything when I'm really looking for someone to say why this isn't really feasible in the real world.
Not only can most apps see the titles of all other open windows on the system, but they can log all your keystrokes, take screenshots, record audio/video of you or your screen, or copy/delete all the files in your home directory, without any explicit permission or notification.
This is at least true for Windows and most traditional (X11 at least) *nix systems.
That is one thing I think Android got right... by default it runs every application as a different user. That means different home folders and no visibility into other apps.
Originally Android apps could draw over top of any other app though which is a phishing nightmare. It took them a long time to make that a permission, and then everyone granted it until they finally added the bubbles API recently.
Permissions are difficult to get right, and Android is unfortunately pretty slow to react.