A Bad Move For iPhones?

A Bad Move For iPhones?

The EU does some great work and has the power to force large companies to bend to their will. Their drive on e-ID and eIDAS2 is to be greatly commended and generally driving digital identity to levels that have never been seen before. But, forcing a silly ruling for citizens to continually approve cookies on sites showed that they sometimes can get things wrong.

So, today, Apple bowed to pressure from the EU and will now allow apps to be downloaded from sources outside their App Store. But could it be a bad move? My personal feeling is that I like the trust of the Apple App Store, especially as I’ve seen the poor quality control of some Android App stores [here]:

While the analysis was done a few years ago, we did find the Chinese and Russian App stores had significant numbers of Apps with Trojans and a range of threats:

I often demonstrate a range of hacks on Android devices, and it is generally not that difficult to install malicious applications. This is because Google has a looser rein than Apple on the applications that can be installed on an Android device. But, when it comes to the Apple store, you can generally trust the apps that you download, as they have typically been rigorously evaluated for security threats. They also, generally, link better to the security environment on the device. And, as you now have your bank account on your smartphone, you have to make sure that the apps you use are secure.

Conclusions

I generally trust the locked-down nature of the iPhone and think it may be a bad move to open them up to external applications.