Why aren’t iPhone viruses more common? What does Apple do that makes iPhones so secure virus-wise?
In: Technology
They don’t allow iPhone owners to modify and screw around with their products as much as Google does with Android. The devices are locked down more.
Also, they have much stricter quality control requirements for their App Store. The Google Play store deletes harmful apps if they are detected but that doesn’t mean someone can’t upload something that does something bad in the first place. And you can download programs from multiple places, so you’re not even restricted to the Google app store.
Apple locks down the app store and does not allow users to install any software they have not blessed. Malware on IOS is a problem with jailbroken devices.
Android allows anyone to install anything, just like a computer.
The main one is installing anything on an iPhone requires that the person pay $99 to Apple and Apple checks it for viruses. iPhones refuse to run anything that hasn’t gone through this process.
There’s also the fact that phone OSs are just much more resistant to viruses than normal computers. Computers are (generally speaking) designed to allow any program to affect any part of the computers memory. When security became an issue OSs were designed to check whether a program had permission to access the areas of memory. If a virus can access an unprotected area in memory, or can find a flaw in the checking process or (worst case scenario) gets real permission from the user, then it can do major damage.
iPhone and android are both designed differently. On a phone memory is heavily restricted. Each app is given a set portion of the memory and is never allowed to access the memory of other apps no matter what. This heavily restricts what apps can do, but you’re probably just too used to it to notice. There are some applications that need to be able to share their data. Namely the camera, pictures, location, wifi et cetera. As an added layer of security, your phone asks you if you want to give those permissions to that app, and THEN only allows the app to access those resources through an API which heavily restricts the things that app can do with those resources.
Vulnerabilities still exist, and viruses still propagate, but its significantly less likely, and causes far less damage.
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