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[–] 23 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

I think Apple is shining light on an important reality here:

In the modern era, the populace is practically required to use technological devices that it is unreasonable to expect them to fully understand. So, rather than leave the consequences of that lack of understanding to fall on them with a shrug, it is better for everyone if those devices and their makers do their best to help them by limiting the impact of their ignorance of that particular technological niche.

In that vein, I feel that it is long overdue to apply "the principle of least privilege" and a "defense in depth" philosophy to home computing devices and operating systems. Compartmentalizing data and functionality behind fine-grained permissions with verbose, plain speech descriptions of what those permissions are for, along with what should and should not be requesting those permissions, would go a long way to prevent these sorts of data abuses. It would also help to limit how much damage viruses and malware could do if installed.

For example. I'm frankly struggling to come up with any valid use cases for full disk access on a computer beyond file backups. I'm sure there are some, but almost nobody would need to use them, so a dire, flashing warning seems in order.

It is clear that sane regulation of unscrupulous software behavior won't be forthcoming any time soon, but even then, you still should lock your doors even though trespassing is illegal, metaphically speaking. "Trust but verify," one of the only good statements out of Ronald Reagan's mouth.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 hours ago* (1 child)

    The apps i use have to request disk access which i can approve or not. I always assumed that meant problems like this were not possible. I think many of us have been under a false impression because of this. I assumed the other apps were secured, which was foolish of me, I admit.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 hour ago

    I don't think you have to be so critical of yourself. Everyone here uses things every day that they have incomplete or maybe even even no understanding of how parts of it work. Its just a reality, maybe an unfortunate one, of the level of technological advancement we're at and how we've incorporated it into our societies.

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