I don't understand why internet access isn't opt-in for apps. Preventing exfiltration would prevent much of this harm, and most apps don't have any need to access the internet in the first place. Why am I creating a GE account to read my blood pressure? At least I know it's taking advantage of me. But this is clearly abusive behavior

• fizwidget

  today at 10:20 AM

  Because 99% of apps would request it & not function without it, desensitising users into blindly accepting it. Most apps do have a legitimate reason for accessing the internet, so a binary yes/no wouldn’t achieve much anyway.

  I just don’t think it’s an effective way of solving the problem.

  • fauigerzigerk

    today at 12:58 PM

    100% of users have legitimate reasons to block internet access for some apps.

    If internet access wasn't granted by default, a lot more apps would function without it.

    Many other apps wouldn't exist at all, because their only reason to exist is to spy on users.

  • evanjrowley

    today at 1:55 PM

    The internet access permission should be implemented. Users of macOS are already accustomed to the local network access permission.

    Even if it's not the most effective way to raise awareness, it does put pressure on developers to be explicit about the connectivity requirements with users. It would also be a great way to audit an app's local-first / offline-first claim without having to do a network packet capture.

    Want telemetry? Send it through Apple and Google. Given Apple's late history and latest trends in Android development, I see them both favoring this approach.

  • RedComet

    today at 5:45 PM

    "99% of apps would request it & not function without it"

    Apple could refuse to publish them, then. Isn't that why we are forced to go through the App Store? Because Apple ensures every app there works in the best interest of the user?

  • abecedarius

    today at 2:38 PM

    Permission should be in the form of a capability, which need not end up on the built-in OS network capability. If an app insists on your car's steering wheel, you can be like "sure, kid, here's your Help Daddy Drive(TM)".

  • today at 6:16 PM

  • throwaway27448

    today at 4:14 PM

    > Most apps do have a legitimate reason for accessing the internet

    I just flat out think this is bullshit

    • rationalist

      today at 6:17 PM

      You are right, it is BS.

      Non-multiplayer games, clock, camera, contacts, phone, text message, file explorer, keyboard, launcher, notes, document viewer/editor, image viewer, audio recorder...

      Most of the apps on my phone do not need internet access.

      • runjake

        today at 6:28 PM

        Almost all of the apps you mentioned sync data to, or access data from iCloud in the vast majority of use cases. I mention iCloud here because this submission is about iOS.

        That said, I'd love to have a new "Internet access" permission for apps, so users had the choice. Perhaps even separate "Allow iCloud" and "Allow Internet" but that's probably too granular for Apple's taste.

        • arcanemachiner

          today at 6:38 PM

          For that case, iOS could just run a system daemon to shuttle the app data to/from iCloud. The app itself should not need internet access for this.

          I have no idea if this is what already happens, but I feel like it might be. (Why would each app have all these network connections when the system could just manage it instead?)

• gyomu

  today at 8:13 AM

  Better yet, a tool like Little Snitch should be built into the OS. Give me a detailed log of every network requests, to which domains, with what data.

  • Cider9986

    today at 8:44 AM

    This isn't effective because Little Snitch only sees the domains so apps can just serve the trackers on the same domain as essential services making blocking impossible.

    The only way to prevent malicious apps from affecting your privacy is to not install them or not give them network access.

    • gyomu

      today at 8:48 AM

      I derive lots of value from Little Snitch on my Mac, so this approach is more effective than not having anything.

      And yes, having the ability to deny any app network access on iOS would be great.

      • amelius

        today at 10:13 AM

        Yeah but it might be because you are part of a minority. Once/if this is built into the OS, the app builders will have a strong incentive to do things differently.

    • inigyou

      today at 12:39 PM

      Can, but they don't, because app developers are just as lazy and don't waste time to hide their trackers

      • 360MustangScope

        today at 1:46 PM

        They don’t because there is no reason to currently. If this was added then they would have a reason to and do it.

        YouTube used to be separate domains for ads and then it got merged together so that you can’t block the ads network wide without blocking YouTube videos.

        • inigyou

          today at 2:34 PM

          That's YouTube. One of the unlaziest dev teams. Spiderman Solitaire isn't going to bother.

      • saagarjha

        today at 12:41 PM

        Yet.

  • CTDOCodebases

    today at 10:50 AM

    If I remember correctly iPhone apps used to use the devices SSL certificates so you as a user could install your own and man-in-the-middle the traffic to see what was being sent. AFAIK now the apps use certificate pinning.

    • floam

      today at 5:38 PM

      Certificate pinning is actually rarer today than it was a few years ago. You see it mostly in bank apps, and some system services. It’s not a best practice.

    • saagarjha

      today at 12:41 PM

      Apps can choose to do what they want.

  • prime17569

    today at 11:20 AM

    This exists already! You can see it by going to Settings > Privacy & Security and turning on the App Privacy Report at the bottom.

    • jtmarl1n

      today at 11:34 AM

      Thanks, I did not know about this setting. Curious to see what will show up now that it’s on.

  • Barbing

    today at 3:01 PM

    Yes and it should work properly instead of making unwanted initial outbound connections (macOS firewalls are broken).

  • fizwidget

    today at 10:26 AM

    It’s not quite that detailed but iOS’s builtin “app privacy report” does give a fair amount of info, including a list of domains accessed.

  • today at 1:12 PM

• henryhchchc

  today at 10:31 AM

  iPhones purchased in mainland China (with model number ending in CH/A) do provide options for setting per-app Internet access permissions. There are three options [0]: Off, WLAN only, WLAN and Cellular.

  [0] https://old.reddit.com/r/ios/comments/aib10i/in_china_ios_al...

  • throwaway27448

    today at 4:18 PM

    Crazy. So they're explicitly selling crippled devices to most of the world.

  • ksec

    today at 4:05 PM

    What? Why is this Chinese market only? This is exactly what I wanted. There are Apps I simply don't want them to touch internet.

    • thewebguyd

      today at 6:07 PM

      Its Chinese market only because of regulation. China mandates it. Don't implement it = you don't get to sell in China.

      If Apple wanted to provide this willingly they would. That its only available in China due to government regulation tells you all you need to know.

• nobody42

  today at 1:24 PM

  Because exposed, non-private, abused by-default is a business model. The company is incentivised to not provide restricted access - otherwise you can't have a cut from apps revenue. It's defective by design.

  • Barbing

    today at 2:59 PM

    Shocked to see iPhones sold in China are less defective by design on this one point, from another comment. It has surely reduced Genius Bar visits but it’s also harmed my privacy.

• reorder9695

  today at 8:32 AM

  AOSP has network as a regular permission for apps, so on Lineage at least (idk about Graphene as I haven't used it) you can disable network for any app including google play services etc. I have no idea why most phone companies remove this permission from their roms but android itself supports it perfectly fine.

  • inigyou

    today at 12:39 PM

    GrapheneOS not only has this permission, but it asks you every time you install an app.

  • microtonal

    today at 8:44 AM

    It's nice to be able to toggle it (it's also possible to revoke this permission on GrapheneOS). However, it is imperfect, since apps within the same profile can still communicate through IPC, so if apps cooperate, network access can still be achieved. I would guess that Play Services is one of the larger offenders, since many apps communicate with Play Services and as far as I understand (but I may be mistaken) Play Services does work that involves internet access on behalf of other apps.

    You could of course disable network access to Play Services, but at least for me that broke a bunch of apps or made them unreliable.

    What AOSP ROMs need besides the network permission toggle is IPC scopes functionality, akin to storage scopes.

    • inigyou

      today at 12:40 PM

      GrapheneOS has user profiles, but they're too heavyweight for most uses.

      • Hoodedcrow

        today at 6:48 PM

        Profiles are a thing in "stock" Android too, they just don't have the toggle to disallow them working in the background, the "Install available apps" option and Google services also keep working across profiles.

        If you want something less disruptive for isolation, there's Private Space. What I like is that this can stop apps there from working in the background on stock Android as well.

    • ignoramous

      today at 10:09 AM

      > However, it is imperfect, since apps within the same profile can still communicate through IPC, so if apps cooperate, network access can still be achieved.

      Folks brings up 'IPC' as if this is some chink in the armour in AOSP. It isn't. 'Apps' pretty much on most consumer OSes can 'IPC' their way with other co-operating apps to 'achieve' network access from behind a firewall, just the same.

      > since many apps communicate with Play Services and as far as I understand (but I may be mistaken) Play Services does work that involves internet access on behalf of other apps

      If the OS or its privileged component will fchown the socket to the origin app, think the INTERNET permission will be enforced as expected.

      • saagarjha

        today at 12:42 PM

        There is very little IPC that is allowed for apps that do not share a development team on iOS.

  • Hoodedcrow

    today at 11:58 AM

    Can confirm Graphene also has it

• hellcow

  today at 7:29 AM

  GrapheneOS lets you restrict the internet access of any app on install.

  But yes, agreed it should be everywhere.

  • backscratches

    today at 8:17 AM

    And you can limit which contacts you share with nosy app like WhatsApp, and give access to only specific scope of file folders. Horrifying to think all the years every app got everything it wanted and did not have to ask and couldn't be stopped (I had a rooted phone for firewall capability for a while )

  • microtonal

    today at 8:46 AM

    See my comment upthread, it helps a bit, but does not close this hole since apps within the same profile can communicate through IPC, so other apps could provide network access on their behalf. I think the best example is probably Play Services, which provides functionality for a lot of apps and will communicate with Google, etc.

    (Yes, you can disable network access to Play Services, but it sometimes breaks things and the general point of IPC as a hole still stands.)

    • deanishe

      today at 9:13 AM

      I'm not an Android user. What's a profile? Is that a user thing or a developer thing?

      • inigyou

        today at 12:42 PM

        On GrapheneOS, it's like a container, or a virtual phone. Apps in different profiles (and you can install the same app in more than one profile) can't see each other and theoretically can't even tell they're running on the same phone (although I'm sure there are leaks like IP address)

      • Cider9986

        today at 9:40 AM

        You can make different profiles. They can have different unlock methods and can have different apps installed. If you have one app installed in both it's shared.

        They were designed so multiple people could use one device.

        Some people use them to separate identities or contain apps they view as bad. I'm not sure if the efficacy of this.

        Grapheneos improves them significantly https://grapheneos.org/features#improved-user-profiles

      • microtonal

        today at 9:39 AM

        It is a user thing, you can set up multiple profiles and install apps into each of them. These profiles are isolated from each other. I think they started out as a way of separating private and work apps/data, but you can have many of them. See e.g.:

        https://grapheneos.org/features#improved-user-profiles

  • Cider9986

    today at 7:34 AM

    Yeah it asks on app install if you want to grant network permissions. It's just a little checkbox. You can of course manage it afterwards in app settings or permissions manager.

    They also added the sensors permission.

  • nubinetwork

    today at 12:12 PM

    You don't need graphene for this, I've been able to do this on plain android for ages.

  • iLoveOncall

    today at 10:18 AM

    iOS lets you turn off data access (so outside of wifi) for apps as well, it's just not asked at install, which honestly makes sense given the demographics of iPhone users.

    • DavideNL

      today at 12:54 PM

      Which is useless for 99% of users since they use Wi-Fi at some point in the entire phones lifetime….

• nashashmi

  today at 2:28 PM

  The evolution of development was to make things easy and simple for the consumer. If internet was an opt-in (and it cannot be opt-out), then app function would be ostensibly limited. And the user would be given a harder time setting things up.

  This is the Apple mindset. Make things easy. Do not make things complicated.

  • throwaway27448

    today at 4:21 PM

    The attitude was never "don't give the user control", though. Until ios.

• mazzystar

  today at 10:38 AM

  This resonates from the dev side. I made an offline photo search app a while back — you search your library in plain language ("a boy and a girl by the river"), CLIP embeddings all computed on device. It needs full photo access but I deliberately requested zero network permission. Was kind of proud of that.

  Problem is there's no way for users to actually know that. iOS has no "this app can't reach the internet" indicator, so the whole guarantee is invisible. I even had people assume the opposite — app reads your whole library, therefore it must be uploading it somewhere. Exactly backwards.

  • subscribed

    today at 11:46 AM

    Fantastic work. I regret I can't use it, because this is exactly what I'm looking for for quite a while, but it seems to be an impossible task (I need it on android).

• today at 7:33 AM

• lapcat

  today at 12:31 PM

  Curiously, the Mac App Store sandbox has a com.apple.security.network.client entitlement that a developer must justify to Apple, whereas the iOS App Store does not, allowing unrestricted access to the internet.

Damn. The "iPhone last setup or erased on ..." is really nasty. What can a user really do about that? I feel like this should be fudged somehow by the OS.

• Gigachad

  today at 2:35 AM

  Seems like in general the iPhone was not designed to avoid fingerprinting from installed apps. Only protection would be avoid installing apps and use the web browser when possible.

  • camkego

    today at 5:36 AM

    This. This is why everyone who wants to fingerprint and collect tons of data on end users pushes them hard on installing an app. The amount of valuable data is 10x what’s available in the browser

    • microtonal

      today at 7:00 AM

      And it is not just the fingerprinting, it is also that a good number of people will install an ad/tracker blocker in their browser, but almost nobody knows or cares about the multiple trackers that most apps have.

      To make it worse, Apple's naming undermines consciousness about this issue, since they have an option to block cross-app/site tracking (which IIRC blocks access to the advertising identifier), but called it "Allow Apps to Request to Track". A lot of people seem to hold the belief that disabling this option blocks all in-app trackers. It just blocks one way to correlate, but as this app shows, there are other ways to correlate (as well as correlating server-side using IP addresses, etc.).

      On this topic, I somehow missed that Apple added a generic URL filtering API to macOS/iOS 26, which extends Safari filtering to the whole OS (well, as long as apps are using Apple's APIs). It's not perfect, but a nice addition to DNS-based blocking:

      https://adguard.com/en/blog/apple-url-filter-system-wide-fil...

      The author of Wipr added support to Wipr 2 as an extra in-app purchase:

      https://kaylees.site/wipr2-whats-new.html#filtr

      Aside from technical methods to address this, all this in-app tracking must be a violation of the GDPR, no? I can't imagine this all falls under legitimate interest.

      • today at 10:05 AM

      • deanishe

        today at 9:23 AM

        > all this in-app tracking must be a violation of the GDPR, no?

        Probably, but we're gonna have to wait for the courts to weigh in for a definitive answer.

        Same with the very popular pay-or-accept-tracking model. An Austrian court found it illegal, but we'll probably have to wait for a case to make it all the way to the ECJ.

  • saturn8601

    today at 4:52 AM

    Cut your selection of apps and find/build privacy respecting alternatives for the remainder. Im trying to do this. Music is now locally hosted, Youtube is sorta kinda coming along. I've been working on reversing some of my more basic iOS apps to extract the data/endpoints they use and write my own apps. Fable really helped with this and Opus just does not cut the mustard. I hope it comes back. :/

  • p-e-w

    today at 2:52 AM

    The intended “protection” is the ToS, which requires apps to disclose what they are tracking and whether they perform cross-premise tracking.

    • Barbing

      today at 3:40 AM

      Ah, that’s funny. Too bad those privacy nutrition labels are only honor system.

      They give that one completely up to businesses, then, to devs. They also thought they should let an app maker prohibit screen recording, which might promote development since it protects revenue of e.g. subtitling apps as one example. But end result is you even end up with a black screen when recording the iPhone Mirroring app from a Mac.

      Apple owes us a better balance here. iCloud Private Relay for all apps (why only Safari?! and Mail and HTTP) as a start, and plugging some of the privacy holes Loupe exposes. They don’t want us abusing free trials I suppose.

    • paytonjjones

      today at 3:24 AM

      Often it's not the app itself doing tracking or cross-premise tracking, but data is passed to installed third party SDKs that do.

  • cute_boi

    today at 3:41 AM

    These days many things don't work on browser. Even reddit is very difficult as we get constant nagging.

    • Gigachad

      today at 4:29 AM

      That’s usually a warning the service is malware that wants you to install an app for deeper tracking.

    • water-drummer

      today at 10:50 AM

      LinkedIn is the worst offender imo. I am not gonna list every shitty thing they do that goes away the moment you switch to desktop mode but the worst one is that they keep showing you the same feed for weeks if you're on mobile web.

      • Laurel1234

        today at 12:11 PM

        https://browsergate.eu/

        • inigyou

          today at 12:44 PM

          .EU? I'd be scared to publish something like that under EU jurisdiction. I could be fined for full actual damages to Microsoft's reputation and I might even be jailed for defamation.

    • Cider9986

      today at 7:37 AM

      Brave blocks those switch to app notices by default.

    • potatoproduct

      today at 4:09 AM

      old.reddit.com

      • brador

        today at 5:22 AM

        For now but you know they’re coming for that ass.

        • inigyou

          today at 12:45 PM

          It used to be widely thought they were keeping it around because the most important users who actually posted the content preferred it. But they drove all those people away in 2023 by blocking apps except for their spyware one, and everything is posted by LLMs now anyway.

• dylan604

  today at 5:26 AM

  Maybe I'm being really thick, but why is this information that the OS would make available to apps?

  • UqWBcuFx6NV4r

    today at 6:45 AM

    Maybe it’s derived

    • LoganDark

      today at 7:12 AM

      It's probably the app checking the last modified timestamp on some filesystem location that's only touched during setup.

      Edit: It's not a last modified timestamp, it's a volume creation timestamp: https://github.com/mysk-research/loupe/blob/2262efd4456ecba8...

      • dylan604

        today at 4:44 PM

        Again, why is this something that an app would need access? The next test under the creation timestamp value is a test for getting the UUID of the volume. Again, why is an app allowed to access the unique identifier? Apple knows this type of thing is precisely what deanonymizing people would drool over, so why is this accessible. What part of iOS would even need to know this for a legitimate purpose? Are these calls using private methods that Apple does not intend for use being abused for purpose? I'm not an iOS dev, so I have no familiarity with this.

• matthewfcarlson

  today at 1:27 AM

  Is the threat model tracking across multiple apps to correlate what you're doing? In that case, a single app wouldn't show you the fudging.

  • ramses0

    today at 1:52 AM

    ```Based on a binomial/Poisson distribution and a baseline of 21 million U.S. device sales per release, a fingerprint relying on "seconds since setup" fails to uniquely identify individuals. In the high-density Early Adopter phase, you will share your exact setup second with an average of 1.01 other people (a total matching pool of ~2 people). Six months into the cycle, you will still share that second with an average of 0.68 other people.```

    In the U.S., device setup time (to the second) very conservatively gets you clubbed into a single group of 100 individuals as an "advanced persistent threat" tracker. Even compressing activations to "80/20 during business hours" the math kindof maxes out at a pool of ~5 people, and assuming worst case "20x" of that still means you're still pretty darned identifiable.

    If you get ~6-8 more bits of entropy (eg: Device Type + Capacity is easily 2-3 bits, and Time Zone is probably another 2-3 bits) you're cooked!

    • withinboredom

      today at 10:48 AM

      Reminds me of a meeting I was party to with the Safari team. We worked with them on some standards stuff at an old job. They claimed to have creepy-level tracking of users back then. We were discussing how to identify users for an A/B test across millions of sites and comparing what fingerprints we could both derive to most likely end up on the same user.

      If you use a closed source browser. That’s the kinda shit they do.

      • saagarjha

        today at 12:45 PM

        Are you claiming the Safari team is fingerprinting their users?

    • cute_boi

      today at 3:43 AM

      Just using IP address, device storage, device name, and similar signals, we can identify a user. It isn’t difficult to correlate these data points. Apps like Facebook also force developers to use their SDKs for even small features.

      • ramses0

        today at 12:53 PM

        Yeah, but IP address is "obviously" correlated with a distinct/persistent tranche of users. It's surprising that volume c_time is both more persistent as well as more unique than IP.

One correction to some comments here: an iOS app cannot list all apps that are installed. You can only check for specific apps/schemes (LSApplicationQueriesSchemes) by specifying apps you are looking to query for installation status or open. You cannot provide a large list of unrelated applications since Apple rejects that during app review.

Apple added these restrictions because installed app lists can be used for fingerprinting and privacy invasive profiling.

• nomilk

  today at 8:46 AM

  But a single app can request to know the presence of up to 50 apps, right?

  And a data broker/aggregator can purchase such data from many (e.g. thousands) of apps and aggregate it, then sell it.

  • isodev

    today at 9:05 AM

    Yes indeed, the limit is 50 which is of course enough to fully profile "regular people" who only have a handful of apps. Also don't forget, Meta/Google/TikTok/WhateverPalantir are updated weekly which means they can tweak their LSApplicationQueriesSchemes list and cover even more apps if they want to.

    • ksec

      today at 4:06 PM

      Are there legitimate reasons why an App should know I have installed?

      • developerDan

        today at 4:29 PM

        Back before Apple allowed users to set the default browser I had a feature in my app that presented a list of installed browsers when a user opens an external link, giving them the option to choose where it opened.

        • rationalist

          today at 6:20 PM

          Android gives me that option at the OS level.

      • hnav

        today at 4:35 PM

        E.g if gmail knows that you have maps or chrome it can deep link you into a particular view instead of opening safari.

        • rationalist

          today at 6:21 PM

          At the IS level, Android gives me the option to open links in the corresponding app.

• microtonal

  today at 9:04 AM

  You cannot provide a large list of unrelated applications since Apple rejects that during app review.

  Thank you for the clarification!

  You cannot provide a large list of unrelated applications since Apple rejects that during app review.

  It does not need to be a large list though I think? You just need a small list that is very discriminative and adds enough additional entropy to uniquely identify you in combination with the other data leaked.

• solarkraft

  today at 9:04 AM

  It is terrifying to learn that apps are allowed knowledge about any other app being installed on my phone. Where can I see that list?

  • saagarjha

    today at 12:43 PM

    Info.plist

• NietTim

  today at 9:13 AM

  > Apple added these restrictions because installed app lists can be used for fingerprinting and privacy invasive profiling.

  And this was heavily exploited by Facebook before Apple patched it

Volume creation date is pretty egregious. I don't see any reason that and Pasteboard changeCount should be so granular.

The "Installed Apps Probe" leak also surprised me. It is better than the current state of Android, though.

• xenator

  today at 3:08 AM

  Pasteboard counter exists to help apps to not ask again about the same item in the buffer.

  And nothing stops from using reset it every day.

  • echoangle

    today at 8:06 AM

    Why do you need a count for that? Couldn’t they just generate a UUID every time the clipboard changes?

  • dylan604

    today at 5:29 AM

    Allowing an app to access the pasteboard without the user explicitly pasting into the app is weird to me. Maybe the thing I have in the pasteboard is not for this app but left over from use in another app. Since there's no easy way to clear the pasteboard, this will happen often. Maybe it's because I'm not an app dev that this doesn't make sense to me????

    • aalimov_

      today at 5:41 AM

      iOS will ask for pasteboard permission every time an app wants to read the actual contents.

      • Barbing

        today at 6:27 AM

        & we can set ask each time, always allow, never allow per app.

  • Barbing

    today at 4:00 AM

    Would you elaborate on both points?

    Any way to reset it as an end user? (Not enough awareness of the issue for search engines to find much.)

  • RedComet

    today at 5:04 AM

    I think something like a per boot delta added to a (per app?) random base would preserve such functionality.

    • echoangle

      today at 8:06 AM

      Just generate a new random value instead of incrementing

      • RedComet

        today at 8:12 AM

        Even that is overkill if all you're interested in is if a change occured.

        • echoangle

          today at 9:03 AM

          What’s an easier way? I’m assuming they want the app to be able to detect when “a”, was copied, then “b” and then “a” again, so just looking at the value probably isn’t enough.

          • maccard

            today at 11:07 AM

            I don’t think an app should have access to that (without some sort of very special permission).

• backscratches

  today at 8:36 AM

  Graphene is way ahead of this

  • Cider9986

    today at 8:46 AM

    Apps on grapheneos can see a list of other apps in the same profile.

For anyone without an iPhone or doesn't want to install the app you can see a demo here (same video different platforms):

https://odysee.com/@techlore:3/permission-not-required-the-o...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_n_SpEWtqog

https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=_n_SpEWtqog

https://techlore.tv/w/d7dh4P7y4dVngNoL7u7s3B

This is excellent. Seeing this makes me appreciate how much visual awareness tools like this are needed.

I built something similar, for the web. https://neberej.github.io/exposedbydefault/

Github: https://github.com/neberej/exposedbydefault

Why does a random app (with no special permissions given to it) get access to so much info, and why doesn't Apple tell users this (important) info? Why can't Apple make a long list of check boxes so users can dis/allow on a per-category and per-app basis?

E.g. I had no idea a random app you install (and give no permissions to) instantly has a list of every app installed on the device (e.g. can infer whether you're dating [or cheating!] from presence of tinder/bumble/hinge). That alone seems instantly monetizable by unscrupulous actors via 'is-my-partner-cheating' as a service: charge $10 to give a probable answer.

• wiseowise

  today at 8:13 AM

  That’s a stupid idea, how would you even get this “is-my-partner-cheating” on your partners phone?

  • nomilk

    today at 8:20 AM

    Loupe itself can see if you have tinder/bumble/hinge installed (verify for yourself: install tinder, then install loupe, don't give it any permissions, and it can tell if you have tinder installed or not). So the answer is: buy the data from any app your partner has installed! Or more easily, a data aggregator which will have already combined data from hundreds/thousands of apps.

    So your partner only needs to have had 1 single app from the list that sells user data to a data aggregator for this to work. They do not need to have installed some special app.

    Here's a random Slate article about apps getting your data and selling it to aggregators/brokers, who sell it to third-parties (you, or I, could be one of those third parties).

    > How Shady Companies Guess Your Religion, Sexual Orientation, and Mental Health And sell that data to the highest bidder.

    https://slate.com/technology/2023/04/data-broker-inference-p...

  • latexr

    today at 10:05 AM

    It already happens all the time. It even has a name.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalkerware

• echoangle

  today at 8:04 AM

  And how would the is-my-partner-cheating get their app onto the victims device to detect the other apps?

  • nomilk

    today at 8:07 AM

    They don't, utilise the fact that every single iPhone app has access to what other apps are installed! - purchase that info from literally any iPhone app or aggregator that has it for that user. Curious how much this would cost to purhcase - a working credit card goes for $5-10 on the black market so 'apps installed on X's iphone' might be, like, 10c?

    • echoangle

      today at 8:16 AM

      Which even halfway credible app developer would sell you that info? You know that’s illegal right? You might get some stupid indie developer to do this but no chance for anything even half big.

      But if you can get actually get this data, maybe try to do this on yourself and write a blogpost about it. I highly doubt you’ll be able to.

      • nomilk

        today at 8:24 AM

        I've never made an iOS app and don't have plans to. But my assumption is ~every >= medium-sized iOS app would be monetised by selling data to aggregators.

        • 9dev

          today at 8:28 AM

          Even if that was the case - which it isn't - the aggregator data isn't keyed by the user in question. That is highly illegal pretty much everywhere and would get you in a lot of trouble. You can't "just" find out which apps an arbitrary person has installed on their phone. That's not how it works.

          • nomilk

            today at 8:37 AM

            My understanding is it's common practice. E.g. How Shady Companies Guess Your Religion, Sexual Orientation, and Mental Health And sell that data to the highest bidder. https://slate.com/technology/2023/04/data-broker-inference-p...

      • solarkraft

        today at 9:13 AM

        Most app publishers are halfway credible at best, so it's not much of a problem. Even the halfway credible ones often use SDKs that do this.

        • echoangle

          today at 9:56 AM

          Ok but if the SDKs do this they use it themselves to serve ads and don’t sell the raw data, right?

      • maccard

        today at 11:12 AM

        Get your hands on a random selection of 10 iPhones and look at the apps installed. I suspect you’d be horrified. As an example - any parent who has installed a free game for their kids likely has all of this info, plus more via tied in logins.

        That said, I agree with the rest of your point - you’re not going to go to a developer and offer them $100 for this data on a person (and if you could, you’d still need to tell them which person, which if you could do you could just get the data yourself)

  • latexr

    today at 10:16 AM

    Ask any domestic abuser. Most of them seem to be successful at it.

    https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2014/09/15/34...

    It’s crazy to me that people are being so skeptical of the idea. A lot of people share their logins freely with their spouses. I have never done it nor would I condone it, but it would be trivial for me to install spyware on the devices of many people I know, because they rightfully trust me. Not only do I know some of their device passwords¹, being “the computer guy” I could just outright ask for it or get them to input it anywhere while fixing some issue they have.

    ¹ And many more I have forgotten, because I make it a point to not record them, even mentally.

    • echoangle

      today at 11:23 AM

      If you can get the app onto my phone in person, you can also just check which apps I have on my phone

      • latexr

        today at 2:33 PM

        That assumes continued access, which may not be true. Installing spyware gives you information down the line.

    • maccard

      today at 12:06 PM

      But if you have credentials and physical access you can just ask for their phone and straight up read their messages/apps.

      • latexr

        today at 2:34 PM

        Yeah, once, possibly under time pressure, and not at all times. Spyware gives you continued access.

• idiotsecant

  today at 7:56 AM

  Of all things, this is where you went?

  • nomilk

    today at 8:03 AM

    Okay it's weird but the first thing that came to mind. Logic: if I can think of a monetisable, nefarious application in 10 seconds, then it stands to reason that very many nefarious applications would be possible with more time/effort.

    • backscratches

      today at 8:35 AM

      Not just possible, currently being implemented. People are murdered every year using this information. Last year a US politician was assassinated by someone who tracked them by buying this information from aggregator. You thought of a tame use case!

      • inigyou

        today at 12:48 PM

        Which politician? I want to read more

        • backscratches

          today at 4:40 PM

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_shootings_of_Minnesota_le... search for 'data broker' in page. Nightmare world we live in.

On a tangential point, one thing that should definitely not be possible for apps these days is determining whether you enabled a VPN. AFAIK, it’s possible indirectly in iOS by enumerating network interfaces with specific/telling names.

Holy cow, did not know ios lets apps access so many finger printable information such as apps installed, last wipe and number of copy actions. Installed the browser as I am confident it will be good also.

Thank you!

• ololobus

  today at 3:09 PM

  Idk, I actually got the opposite impression. Most of the info is just what I would expect everyone to see: date formats, languages, various webview kind of stuff, network info. This is already more than enough for fingerprinting

  > information such as apps installed

  This is what surprised me too, but if you read their hint, it’s not like list API. They probe various ‘open URL in app’ to see what apps registered them, so are installed. I guess this i) won’t allow you to track apps that don’t have ‘open in app’ urls, and ii) probably hard to limit without affecting UX

  > number of copy actions

  This is odd, yeah, not sure why is it exposed

  > last wipe

  They deduce this from the volume creation date. Probably possible to hide, but also not really that important, at least to me. Fingerprinting will work with way fewer info anyway

  To summarize, I think iOS is still very solid in terms of involuntary info exposure (if you trust Apple itself). Most of really sensitive info requires separate permissions. Yes, you can harden it further, but that will be more like a paranoid mode

Is something similar already available for Android phones?

• nobody42

  today at 12:53 PM

  Outdated, but gives the general idea: https://github.com/nandan-desai-extras/PrivacyBreacher

I must say, I like the Mysk team, and wish them well; AI or not.

It seems a bit quixotic, but anything that goes against $_BIGCORP is tilting at windmills, anyway.

Of course, the one narrative I almost never hear, no matter who it is, is "Simply don't collect any extra data."

It's that simple. If you don't have the data, your app could be Swiss cheese, and no one can get anything dangerous.

But, in today's tech world, data is money, so every app and Web site out there, goes to any length, to hoover up as much data as possible.

I regularly get prompted to join "teams," and "leaderboards," or do "challenges," on my solitaire games.

Wonder if there's anything like this for Android? If not, it might make for a pretty fun/interesting side project

This is why I avoid installing apps and don’t have a lot of them.

• iririririr

  today at 3:46 AM

  ...wouldn't it be better to have a pocket computer you own?

  • dylan604

    today at 5:31 AM

    It would be even better if app devs weren't pieces of shit making apps whose sole purpose is to gather all of this data to sell to other pieces of shits while skinning their app as a game or other app to trick users into thinking it's worth installing.

    Fighting devs being able to make money in this manner is not dissimilar to getting made a drug dealers. As long as users want their product, they will sell the product.

    • inigyou

      today at 12:48 PM

      Or if every time someone wrote an app that did this, we arrested them.

    • downrightmike

      today at 6:15 AM

      Most people don't know and we are seeing that things get slipped in at a later date

  • throawayonthe

    today at 6:34 AM

    if you think "desktop" operating systems aren't even worse on this, you're very mistaken

  • api

    today at 3:08 PM

    That’s not the problem though. The problem is that most apps are malware.

  • normie3000

    today at 4:20 AM

    Phones are quite useful.

  • NietTim

    today at 9:15 AM

    Just use the browser, it's fine 99% of the time.

Huh, I was under the impression that Apple protected us against all this through the app store review process.

Sweet, been wanting this a while. Just mentioned last month and here it is! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48187972

Privacy is a real issue! Does the iOS allow an ext dev app to read its system info? If yes, does it easily comply?

/me wonders of the privacy label should actually mention that it reads everything and the kitchen sink!!!

Would love this for MacOS as well.

• weikju

  today at 12:03 AM

  Fortunately, if you read the README (and decide to go past the “this was mostly built by AI” part,

  > Loupe also builds for macOS. The Mac version is mostly complete, but a few things still need work before it's polished.

  • heavensteeth

    today at 1:45 AM

    > and decide to go past the “this was mostly built by AI” part

    I got that feeling just seeing the title use "native" as a synonym of "not a website".

• bethekidyouwant

  yesterday at 11:53 PM

  What “apps” do you use on a mac?

  • VertanaNinjai

    today at 12:39 AM

    Probably a ton since macOS apps are literally distributed as .app bundles.

    • winstonwinston

      today at 1:14 AM

      Though there is a difference what store apps and non-store apps can do. I think is about store apps which are “sandboxed” and have to use public api to request then access information which non-store apps can access without.

  • internet2000

    today at 1:01 AM

    Google Chrome, VS Code, among others

    • bethekidyouwant

      today at 1:29 AM

      Well “they” can technically “read” anything your user can.

      • iancarroll

        today at 1:46 AM

        Apps installed via the MAS have sandboxing applied to them, so this isn't really true.

        • winstonwinston

          today at 1:58 AM

          Yes but chrome is not from MAS. I have none MAS apps installed because they are simply not available via MAS.

Today I have simply given up trying not to share my personal information. What I do instead is simply blocking all ads and don’t use apps/websites that can’t be used without ad blocking. They may have many personal details like my favorite ice cream flavor but I get zero ads so I don’t care that much (I would prefer no one having this information but I’m pragmatic in such terrible society).

• Cider9986

  today at 12:07 PM

  Unfortunately ad blocking is not effective against current cross-site and anonymous user tracking.

  Fingerprinting is extensively used and can't be defeated without a decent hit to browsing experience. Mullvad and Tor browser are likely the best at anti-fingerprinting.

  The only completely reliable way to avoid this tracking is by not visiting websites with fingerprinting. A tool that can help with this is LibRedirect which redirects you from sites like Twitter to privacy front ends like xcancel.

  The extensive web tracking is detrimental to privacy, but it doesn't compel you to add additional PII like phone numbers, which is much worse than cross-site tracking for a surveillance capitalism threat model.

Yeah what's worse...

I have a LG modern TV. Smart shit. I also use a Linux install on a NUC. HDMI.

For some godsdamned reason, the TV was able to initiate an IP bridge with the Linux NUC and get an IP address on my network.

Nobody typed it in the TV. And I'm unsure how it did so itself.

What I do know is that Mikrotik allows DHCP-server blocks of wildcard MAC addresses. Blocked the whole fucking 24 bits of their allocation.

AND if it does get back online, I also shitcanned its routing on the IP side based on hostname.

• rationalist

  today at 6:28 PM

  This would be quite the scandal if you can substantiate/document it.

  People always say, "jUsT dO nOt CoNnEcT your TV to you WiFi" which is asinine.

  People say that theoretically TVs can get an internet connection through HDMI, but apparently none are actually doing so.

  The only solution I suggest is physically removing WiFi cards from the guts before turning on.

Yea, it's infuriating that most of the HN crowd thinks the apps are better then web. Apps can spy on you way more than web. It's the reason every website says "please download the app". If it was better for them to spy on you via the website they wouldn't ask you to download the app.

• yreg

  today at 5:36 AM

  There are plenty of other (better?) reasons why developers might want to push apps.

  More APIs, less friction selling stuff, business presence right on the homescreen.

  • Gander5739

    today at 11:32 AM

    And people want apps, believe it or not.

• inigyou

  today at 12:50 PM

  They are technically better. They can do more stuff and integrate with the OS better in general. That includes fingerprinting stuff and fingerprinting integration.

This is neat and interesting, truly, but the classic “what now?” emerges. I guess the only answer is “throw out my iPhone”? Otherwise this kind of seems like a circuitous ad to make people get worried and download Psylo, which I see has in-app purchases. I’m not trying to come at you here, but it’s just hard not to feel suspicious online these days.

• aggregator-ios

  today at 3:21 PM

  Apple has been very good about public perception of its products and privacy. They just spent a lot of this year’s WWDC talking about the latter so I’m sure someone at Apple is aware of this.

  I have not spent a lot of time thinking about why certain things like 50 apps install queries, boot volume timestamps, etc are provided to developers. But I think Apple will close these loopholes.

  Also love the idea of outbound network connections being disabled by the user per app

• microtonal

  today at 8:58 AM

  Don't install apps outside trustable apps that don't embed tracking. Even if you cannot uninstall every app, the fewer you have, the less cross-app tracking. Also donate to and consider installing privacy-conscious alternative phone OSes. They may not have closed all holes (yet), but at least their incentives are aligned with yours.

  • Forgeties79

    today at 6:42 PM

    > Also donate to and consider installing privacy-conscious alternative phone OSes.

    iPhone

• Cider9986

  today at 7:10 AM

  The only way to prevent this right now is to avoid installing apps that are doing this.

  • Forgeties79

    today at 8:36 AM

    “Just don’t use it” only gets you so far and isn’t always an option. Also, as some have mentioned in this thread, many sites now make the mobile experience so painful (or remove key features) so as to force you onto the app.

    I am against cars for the most part, but I can’t just get rid of my car. In this case, I can’t get rid of Slack (and other apps) because of work and unfortunately I do not work at a company that will buy me a work phone for work things.

    Ultimately this has to start at a more root level. We need to claw back privacy.

    • Cider9986

      today at 8:50 AM

      I'm not saying it's not a problem and I understand you have to use some apps. I'm just saying that currently the only way to effectively prevent apps gathering and selling this info is to never install the app in the first place.

      • Forgeties79

        today at 9:40 AM

        Fair enough

this is fantastic, just great really, and honestly makes one stick out so easily, reminfs me a lot of that license plate xkcd

• fragmede

  today at 7:14 AM

  https://xkcd.com/1105/

  • today at 8:52 AM

Apps like TikTok can know which username we logged in with, even if we uninstall and reinstall the app. This is egregious, as many companies like Facebook have SDKs embedded in many apps, allowing them to accurately interconnect user activity.

Apple should be ashamed that they aren't putting effort to randomize these fingerprints....

• gene91

  today at 6:36 AM

  That’s just keychain. It’s not even fingerprinting.

• diebeforei485

  today at 5:09 AM

  This is probably Keychain, right?

  • cute_boi

    today at 5:39 PM

    Probably, the most stupid thing with apple is there is no way to clear this keychain AFAIK without resetting whole phone.

    • today at 6:05 PM

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It's likely to be trolled by the WPA folks, who will insist that WPAs are just as insecure as native apps, so there's no difference ...

But very cool.

• njsubedi

  today at 1:47 AM

  You mean PWA?

  • ChrisMarshallNY

    today at 1:47 AM

    Yes. Got my ps and ws mixed up. I was just reading about the Mt. Rushmore project (I was curious whether or not it was a WPA project -it wasn’t, officially).