eli5: Why do computer operating systems have lots of viruses and phone operating systems don’t?
In: 5085
Simple reason is, that the limitations placed on the two classes of computers are different.
Computers were built by tech people for tech people, before the internet and before the destructive potential of software was identified.
Come internet, computers became a household item, and people who didn’t know what they’re doing were running software.
Software that said one thing and did another, aka malware was created.
When it came to building the smartphone, it was built for people who didn’t know, or didn’t need to know what software even is.
So it was designed to be easier to use while being harder to exploit. It is very difficult to gain root (or “administrator”) access to a smartphone.
With smartphones, there’s (usually) only one place to download software l, that is the app store. Every app on the apple and google store is carefully vetted and reviewed by teams to make sure nobody sneaks malware in.
In addition to that smartphones have a more robust permissions framework, where they have to ask a user whether they may read your contacts or browse your photos, or manage your storage. This prevents malware from doing things the user doesn’t like.
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