eli5: Why do computer operating systems have lots of viruses and phone operating systems don’t?
In: 5085
Mostly for two reasons:
1. Phones are for most part super restrictive. You can only get apps from a limited number of places and you (the user) do not have rights over a big chunk of what’s installed unless you root the phone.
2. There are other ways to get what they want. If you install an app, let’s say TikTok, it will ask for a lot of permissions and the end user will just grant them. See the Android page for the app: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/datasafety?id=com.zhiliaoapp.musically&hl=en_US&gl=US](https://play.google.com/store/apps/datasafety?id=com.zhiliaoapp.musically&hl=en_US&gl=US).
There are lots of permissions listed, and they are a pain in the neck to parse too. You might think you know what “app activity” is, but until you read the developer documentation you don’t know for real. It is a pain to read even if you are a developer (e.g. [https://developer.android.com/reference/packages](https://developer.android.com/reference/packages)).
Even if you know what the permission means, its implementation can be misleading too. I heard an app developer describe their location check as “periodic evaluation of your approximate location”. The thing is that the “period” here was 3x per second. They’d know if you washed your hands after using the toilet.
There is a very believable allegation that Temu (shopping) installs tracking code on your phone, spies on all other apps, and leaves behind the tracking once the app is uninstalled. ([https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/02/tech/china-pinduoduo-malware-cybersecurity-analysis-intl-hnk/index.html](https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/02/tech/china-pinduoduo-malware-cybersecurity-analysis-intl-hnk/index.html)). That is not called a virus on a phone, but would most certainly be called a virus on a PC.
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