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?

Question

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

Answer 1

The premise of this question is incorrect. Phones can get viruses/malware from web sites, and even from text messages. Computers can have a locked down per-app privilege system where one misbehaving application can’t access the entire computer.

For the latter, it’s just that many users don’t want to run applications like that, because it also leads to quite a few restrictions that many users don’t want to deal with.