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Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

(peabee.substack.com)
1192 points gniting | 1 comments | 29 Mar 25 21:26 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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andsoitis ◴[30 Mar 25 00:11 UTC] No.43519910[source]▶
> everyone knows all the alls on your phone

On Android phones. iPhone doesn’t have this privacy deficiency.

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ctippett ◴[30 Mar 25 00:17 UTC] No.43519943[source]▶
Are you sure? I know someone in adtech and I'm pretty sure Apple allows a similar app manifest that allows you to check for specific apps. I could be wrong.
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1. czk ◴[30 Mar 25 01:21 UTC] No.43520340[source]▶
Not sure about the manifest but recently I've seen talk about some banking apps using SBSLaunchApplicationWithIdentifierAndURLAndLaunchOptions (undocumented function in SpringBoardServices) [0] to try to launch another app on the phone by the bundle id, and they can determine if it's installed or not.

They were using this trick to detect unauthorized apps on the phone.

https://blog.verichains.io/p/technical-analysis-improper-use...

[0] - https://gist.github.com/wh1te4ever/c7909dcb5b66c13a217b49ea3...