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Is it possible to allow sideloading and keep users safe?

(shkspr.mobi)
205 points ColinWright | 3 comments | 30 Aug 25 12:03 UTC | HN request time: 0.42s | source
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Disposal8433 ◴[30 Aug 25 13:01 UTC] No.45074267[source]▶
Sandboxing should prevent most of those issues. We can't control the users giving permissions to everything, but with more control on those permissions, or disabled by default, a phone should stay pretty safe, or am I missing something?
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rafram ◴[30 Aug 25 13:12 UTC] No.45074353[source]▶
People have been trained to tap through those prompts without really reading them, and it’s unreasonable to expect a less technical user to know what the implications of granting a permission are.
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simion314 ◴[30 Aug 25 13:19 UTC] No.45074405[source]▶
>People have been trained to tap through those prompts without really reading them, and it’s unreasonable to expect a less technical user to know what the implications of granting a permission are.

Can you please explain why there is no big push from the Google and Apple to remove microphone and camera access from the browsers? You claim that most users are "less skilled" and will allow anything , so for the grater good why not pushing to remove microphone, camera and file upload permissions? Why do we trust this users with reading a popup for permissions ?

Or maybe if the popups are not clear or good enough maybe is not the users fault ?

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snowe2010 ◴[30 Aug 25 14:16 UTC] No.45074881[source]▶
That’s just advocating for the same thing, OS makers removing users abilities to do things they want with their devices. Pretty much everyone in this comment section that is advocating against what Google is doing would advocate against that as well.
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1. simion314 ◴[30 Aug 25 20:12 UTC] No.45077639[source]▶
I do not see this Apple fanboys asking Apple to remove the camera and microphone features in their OSX operating system. They have many stories about grandma getting tricked to sideload soem evil app from Facebook but somehow same grandma does never get tricked to share her microphone, camera or screen. So I concluded that it is all their minds creating a narative to feel better about them getting screwed by Apple (we all have this problem where we invent some reason to justify some decision we did but in this case is a big mob)
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2. danaris ◴[31 Aug 25 12:00 UTC] No.45082510[source]▶
Or maybe your absolutist bullshit is, in fact, bullshit, and there's nuance to be had that explains the discrepancy you observe.

In this case, one nuance is the fact that camera and microphone permissions are very very often necessary in the browser for video chats. Y'know, exactly the kind of thing that grandma might want to do with her grandkids on a regular basis.

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3. simion314 ◴[03 Sep 25 17:51 UTC] No.45118621[source]▶
But it is dangerous, Tim from Apple can't protect your grandma , she should only speak with their nephews using Apple approved applications , preferably the built in iApps, do you really want grandma to be scammed? Tium needs to remove microphone and camera support in browsers or else the hypocrisy is to obvious... or we can all be mature here and stop pretending that the restrictions are for security of your grandma.