Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Taek 1855 days ago
This is also a Facebook problem. A responsible company would have disclosed a vulnerability instead of exploited it
1 comments

Well of course, but we all know Facebook isn't a responsible company and Apple shouldn't assume that every app in its store is made by a responsible company.
They're currently in court arguing about how they make users safer by curating the available software. Issues like this don't reflect well on that argument.
They reflect very well.

Now that this vulnerability has been identified, they can fix it and solve the problem for their users.

They could fix the problem regardless of whether the app was downloaded from the app store, a third party store, or just sideloaded, so I don't see what you're getting at.
It sounds like you are saying this issue is irrelevant to the App Store.

So how can it reflect badly on their case?

The way it reflects well, is to notice that this is a small hole in their privacy measures which can easily be fixed, and the only reason we are talking about it is that for the most part their privacy controls work well. I.e. it demonstrates their seriousness about privacy.

> So how can it reflect badly on their case?

Because these privacy violations are happening despite their locked down App Store.

> The way it reflects well, is to notice that this is a small hole in their privacy measures which can easily be fixed

Sure, it reflects well on Apple as a whole, but not on the app store. This issue is just as easy to fix for sideloaded apps because it's related to OS level permissions which sideloaded apps would still be subject to.