News Ask Jerry: Is iOS more secure than Android?

[AC News]

Have a question about the tech in your life? If so, maybe we can get them answered!

Ask Jerry: Is iOS more secure than Android? : Read more

 

[notforhire]

as usual, well said

 

[cribble2k]

Apple has their own advertising service as well. All that info they collect can offer curated ads to their users in the same way Google does.

 

[Laura Knotek]

Excellent explanation.

 

[daggre]

I worked in the mobile security industry for years, and I agree in general that both iOS and Android at the OS level are roughly the same, but there are some key differences that make Android devices much less secure in practice. Most (all?) of these come from the fact that it is much easier for rogue developers to get away with things on Android than on iOS, and the consequences when a developer does breech a policy are much less severe on Android. Generally speaking, Apple is proactive in their review process and extremely punishing for violators, where Google is reactive after products are already released, and relatively forgiving for violators. I can't give specific examples because of potentially violating proprietary information agreements, but social media companies in particular harvest as much information as they are allowed to, and sometimes more than they are allowed to, especially on Android. With TikTok in particular, this is unnerving because they are partially controlled by a foreign nation who has access to all that data, whether they intend to use it maliciously or not.

There's also just a lot more an Android app is allowed to do than an iOS app, such as capturing IP traffic, running the background 100% of the time, collecting and reporting information about what other apps are installed, and the list goes on... While it makes for some amazing experiences that can only be had on Android devices (such as having 3rd party voice assistants without running the app in the foreground) it also allows malicious developers to have more attack vectors.

I'm not sure where they cite their "recent reports" but this is consistent with what I've personally experienced in the Mobile Threat Detection and Prevention industry (that an Android device is about 50x more likely to be infected with malicious software than iOS): https://silentbreach.com/BlogArticl...ts, Android,all malware targets Android users.