So, my brother called me today

[Garz]

I’ve had a virus on my Mac, despite people saying that Macs can’t get viruses.

Security is a bigger problem then people think. They just assume Apple is super safe. They have vulnerabilities just like everybody else. The first time I was hacked summer of 2015 on my 6 plus, I was without a phone for a week. Had to open up a case with Apple Care and they were slowwwwwww to resolve it. It had to be escalated to an engineer and well at that point, you will be waiting awhile.

 

[ItnStln]

Security is a bigger problem then people think. They just assume Apple is super safe. They have vulnerabilities just like everybody else. The first time I was hacked summer of 2015 on my 6 plus, I was without a phone for a week. Had to open up a case with Apple Care and they were slowwwwwww to resolve it. It had to be escalated to an engineer and well at that point, you will be waiting awhile.

Well said @Garz
people just assume that apple is safer than Android despite that not being true.

 

[Jude526]

I made the complete switch. Apple Watch. iPad Pro and Nac
I do have a virus protector on my Mac. Force of habit from PC days

 

[Ledsteplin]

Security is a bigger problem then people think. They just assume Apple is super safe. They have vulnerabilities just like everybody else. The first time I was hacked summer of 2015 on my 6 plus, I was without a phone for a week. Had to open up a case with Apple Care and they were slowwwwwww to resolve it. It had to be escalated to an engineer and well at that point, you will be waiting awhile.

How did they do it? Were you jailbroken? Were you using any enterprise profile apps?

 

[MooMooPrincess]

I'm definitely picking up the Note 8. But I'll return it if I think the next iPhone will be better.

BTW, my Samsung Galaxy S8 is very secure. I never once feel like it's been compromised. The "iOS being more secure than Android" thing needs to be put to rest.

It really does, it's getting old now. BOTH platforms are secure.

For sure, fragmentation is the main issue regarding security. Android is dependent on their partners to push security patches out and, just being honest, most aren't overly interested in keeping older devices up to date. A device that's say three years old and on Android L, is one that has a very high chance of having stale security.

Not many people are actually getting hacked/viruses though on either platform

Which is probably why a lot of government agencies issue Android phones instead of iPhones.

Knoxx IS a huge pain, and its good....android phones are cheaper-ish as well.

Eh...a lot of this is because Apple feels the need to baby sit it's users far greater than Android. The insecurity of Android largely is because you're permitted to download apps from wherever you choose. Apple is a much more closed eco-system and they don't permit you do have the same level of freedom you get with Android.

Mainly, this constant fear of "security" as it relates to us iPhone owners in our defense of iOS is by and large a non-issue for the majority of cell phone users. It's just something that allows us to sleep better at night. The chances of the majority being affected by these things is quite low.

Actually you can download apps from the web like tweakbox that allows you to download cracked apps, you can side load apps via xcode and you can get apps from places like ipastore, so it's pretty much the same as android. Also you pretty much summed up my feelings with your last paragraph, thank you

I still love  and my iPhone no doubt

Ps-  had known about a exploit that allows hackers to hack ANY iPhone on iOS 10-10.3.2 using public WiFi for almost half a year and that's a huge security threat and that didn't get fixed till 10.3.3(Google had people do an emergency patch before apple)....theres now a Icloud lock bypass in 10.3.3 that hasn't gotten fixed yet and it works in iOS 11....
them security patches tho.

 

[Garz]

How did they do it? Were you jailbroken? Were you using any enterprise profile apps?

No to all the above. Apple never had an answer to what happened except it must be a security vulnerability. Macrumors is a much bigger forum than iMore. There is a thread with 100’s of people it happening to on there. The thread started last summer I believe.

 

[Garz]

It really does, it's getting old now. BOTH platforms are secure.



Not many people are actually getting hacked/viruses though on either platform



Knoxx IS a huge pain, and its good....android phones are cheaper-ish as well.



Actually you can download apps from the web like tweakbox that allows you to download cracked apps, you can side load apps via xcode and you can get apps from places like ipastore, so it's pretty much the same as android. Also you pretty much summed up my feelings with your last paragraph, thank you

I still love  and my iPhone no doubt

Ps-  had known about a exploit that allows hackers to hack ANY iPhone on iOS 10-10.3.2 using public WiFi for almost half a year and that's a huge security threat and that didn't get fixed till 10.3.3(Google had people do an emergency patch before apple)....theres now a Icloud lock bypass in 10.3.3 that hasn't gotten fixed yet and it works in iOS 11....
them security patches tho.

Several good points here showing Apple needs to work on better security. People always assume they are perfect on that. They are far from it. Of course when they find out about a vulnerability, they try and fix it right away. But that activation lock vulnerability that many people were getting took Apple a couple of years until they got it figured out. Or at least I think they did.

 

[ItnStln]

Knoxx IS a huge pain, and its good....android phones are cheaper-ish as well.

My Uncle’s law firm uses Samsung devices running Knox and it’s impressive what they can and can’t control. Plus the security it offers is excellent.

 

[anon(10092459)]

C'mon now... The conversation is more granular than this. By all means modern and up to date Android is as secure as anything in tech. However, Android IS very fragmented and security isn't the same across all devices like it is with Apple.

My Pixel is as secure as Fort Knox. It's on 7.1.2 and gets every security update within days. My Samsung Note tablet 10.1 (2014) is on 5.1.1 and the last security update was May of 2017. There are older devices out there with older OS and not up to date security as a result. Kit Kat or older is still about 25% of active devices and Kit Kat had all kind of problems.



That kind of fragmentation causes issues with support. However, with Apple it's like 97% or something that run at least iOS 9 and with that, up to date security.

 

[MooMooPrincess]

How did they do it? Were you jailbroken? Were you using any enterprise profile apps?

contrary to popular belief it's hard to get hacked jailbroken unless you download pirated tweaks/from dodgy repositories. More iPhone's are hacked while on stock firmware. Any app can cause it, meitu a app company has malicious code in all of their apps and have 100s of millions of downloads and they heavily spy on you more than other apps and a bunch of other crap but they werent made to change their code by apple nor Google. So literally any app on the app store or Google play store can do this.

My Uncle’s law firm uses Samsung devices running Knox and it’s impressive what they can and can’t control. Plus the security it offers is excellent.

HATE knoxx cause it prevents rooting

C'mon now... The conversation is more granular than this. By all means modern and up to date Android is as secure as anything in tech. However, Android IS very fragmented and security isn't the same across all devices like it is with Apple.

My Pixel is as secure as Fort Knox. It's on 7.1.2 and gets every security update within days. My Samsung Note tablet 10.1 (2014) is on 5.1.1 and the last security update was May of 2017. There are older devices out there with older OS and not up to date security as a result. Kit Kat or older is still about 25% of active devices and Kit Kat had all kind of problems.



That kind of fragmentation causes issues with support. However, with Apple it's like 97% or something that run at least iOS 9 and with that, up to date security.

This is true and Google is definitely at fault for this but, at the same time we know that anything below KitKat was horrible anyway. Shame on Google and phone manufacturers for not keeping up to date with most of the phones. There's really no reason as to why people should still be on gingerbread to KitKat. Google needs to limit these devices like apple does. If you have below iOS 9/10 a lot of apps stops support. The same needs to be for android. But people have to be aware like you said, the older your device the less secure it is.

 

[Rob Phillips]

Mainly, this constant fear of "security" as it relates to us iPhone owners in our defense of iOS is by and large a non-issue for the majority of cell phone users. It's just something that allows us to sleep better at night. The chances of the majority being affected by these things is quite low.

Totally agree with this. The chance of facing a security issue is pretty low, whether it be iOS or Android. Honestly, security is pretty far down on my list of reasons I use iOS rather than Android. I do like knowing that, if **** hit the fan, Apple can push out an update very quickly. It’s very well known that this is an issue with Android because of the number of firmware iterations required for all of the different Android devices out there and what they have to go through to get pushed out (carrier, manufacturer, etc.).

 

[Quis89]

Well @Jude526, without even knowing it, you created quite the discussion here lol. Great job! Lol.

 

[Quis89]

Totally agree with this. The chance of facing a security issue is pretty low, whether it be iOS or Android. Honestly, security is pretty far down on my list of reasons I use iOS rather than Android. I do like knowing that, if **** hit the fan, Apple can push out an update very quickly. It’s very well known that this is an issue with Android because of the number of firmware iterations required for all of the different Android devices out there and what they have to go through to get pushed out (carrier, manufacturer, etc.).

True. I think that's what Google should figure out. How to keep the carriers hands out of the update process.

 

[Rob Phillips]

True. I think that's what Google should figure out. How to keep the carriers hands out of the update process.

I’m surprised they haven’t already figured it out. Apple did it a long time ago. It’s obviously not impossible.

 

[MooMooPrincess]

Tell that to @MooMooPrincess. Apparently my comment that Apple does a better job pushing out security patches is laughable, even though the majority of tech publications (not just those that are Apple-centric) will agree with me.

You didn't say that, if you had I would've agreed but the part I laughed at was  patching a fix within a day, the only time in the past 3 years  updated within a day was to stop pangu. Even with the WiFi vulnerability issue it took them 4+ months, when iPad bricked it took them a week to fix.

 

[Rob Phillips]

....this made me laugh so hard, I'm sorry. Well just agree to disagree

How is this funny? Name one Android device that can possibly get a security patch as fast as almost any iPhone?

 

[Rob Phillips]

You didn't say that, if you had I would've agreed but the part I laughed at was  patching a fix within a day, the only time in the past 3 years  updated within a day was to stop pangu. Even with the WiFi vulnerability issue it took them 4+ months, when iPad bricked it took them a week to fix.

Fair enough. I guess what I was saying is it could be done if Apple deemed it necessary. Google couldn’t make it happen even if they tried.

 

[robertk328]

I’m surprised they haven’t already figured it out. Apple did it a long time ago. It’s obviously not impossible.

What do the carriers pay google to get their crapware on there that apple won’t allow? That’s why they haven’t “figured it out”!

 

[MooMooPrincess]

What do the carriers pay google to get their crapware on there that apple won’t allow? That’s why they haven’t “figured it out”!

Has to be a good amount LOL Prolly. Actually if I read somewhere they do it for free, like they request the phone has it and the manufacturers follow suit... Like with knoxx,  just rejects. Could be wrong on that

 

[anon(10092459)]

What do the carriers pay google to get their crapware on there that apple won’t allow? That’s why they haven’t “figured it out”!

That has nothing to do with anything. Google doesn't negotiate terms for LG or Samsung or anyone else for that matter... That's up to the OEM partner.

Google's hardware doesn't have any bloat, but that's because they control those terms.