ELI5. Why can’t phones get viruses from websites that normal computers do? And why don’t computers use whatever technology the phones operating systems use?
In: Technology
There’s a few things to unpack. It’s anecdotal, but I’ve seen tons of other people say they haven’t got a virus on PC in 10 years. Windows Defender is excellent these days, and unless you go out of your way to get a virus, like clicking the “wrong download link” its way more secure than it used to be.
So we’ll reframe the question of why were phones more secure 10 years ago? Most virus developers were/are very well verse in x86, the very basic framework upon which practically desktop CPUs are built on, and they have been built on for nearly 50 years now.
Smartphones use other CPU manufacturers that don’t run x86, they run ARM and now Apple has been rolling out Apple Silicon on phones and their PCs. Viruses built for x86, which is most of them since it’s been around for 50 years, won’t run on these CPUs.
Why haven’t PCs switched then? Compatibility. Viruses for x86 won’t run on ARM sure, but neither will any program built for x86. Which again, also like viruses, is most programs. Only very recently is Windows on ARM becoming a thing, but anything that runs on x86 has to be run on an emulator which dramatically reduces performance. Right now it’s about 50/50 if a program will even run on said emulator.
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