I sympathize with people’s concern and anger when they learn more about Apple’s atrocious APIs that let developers run off with consumer data. In the most recent revelation
Accepting an iOS prompt that asks permission to access location data can also allow copying of private photo and video libraries, the Times said yesterday. Because these devices often save coordinate information along with photos, it might also be possible to put together a user’s location history, as well as recording current location.
Apparently in an attempt to make photo apps more efficient, access to private photos has been available since the fourth version was released in 2010.
All of this, however disturbing it might be, make a lot of sense. Apple is a consumer company that aims to engineer products so that users can best enjoy them. This means they don’t want to throw a whole lot of security warnings in front of you, for two reasons: First, you’ll just ignore them anyways; second, they’ll annoy you and thus could reduce your iDevice usage.
Very few mobile companies ‘do’ security. The much-maligned Research In Motion is actually about the only mobile company that sells its products on security grounds, though the need to have secured code reduces the rate that they can bring new, highly innovative, product to market. Consumers, businesses, governments, and the market point to their slower rates of innovation as indicative of RIM’s forthcoming doom, but in so doing miss that the ‘cost’ of RIM’s death would be a near-absolute dearth of secured mobile platforms.
If you’re interested in reading about the economics of ignorance and mobile security, check out a piece that was written last year on this very subject.
Excited Pixels 