[sneak]

> I WANT to be able to download any stupid thing in there without a care in the world re: viruses or other damaging experiences.

The Apple ios app store is positively chock full of spyware. You can’t download apps without a care in the world. This is why Apple put a privacy label on the apps (which is still woefully inadequate; it is self-reported).

[crummy]

surely any "spyware" on the app store is going to include a ton of permissions alerts when it does anything? do you have any egregious examples?

[klabb3]

The permissions alerts don’t come from the App Store, they come from sandboxing and the permission model. This is a property of the OS, and everyone agrees that this is better than the anarchy of desktop OSs. But they were created decades earlier, sandboxing was obvious in hindsight only.

> surely any "spyware" on the app store is going to include a ton of permissions alerts when it does anything?

Not really. Push notifications is enough. I can send you a push notification and get loads of details from your phone, including cross-app fingerprinting. Iirc Apple allows ~3 silent push notifications per hour so they can be completely hidden.

https://gizmodo.com/iphone-apps-can-harvest-data-from-notifi...

But really, your search is as good as mine. The entire digital economy is based on personal data collected from your devices, and yes, that includes the iPhone. How is this news? What’s your definition of spyware?