^^ Good point and it’s true. I personally prefer Replicant but jeez, take a look at Purism and the Librem 5.
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I would say that’s a bit hyperbolic. We can suspect back doors but to my knowledge there is not incontrovertible evidence. I think realistically, the concern is with data mining, careless handling of anonymization and that sort of thing (which are well documented).
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Kind of a hot take, maybe, but I believe that non-free (proprietary, non-libre) software is inherently insecure. It could hide malware/spyware, it could have unfound bugs due to less eyes on the code and less auditing.
There’s a fork of Signal on F-Droid called Silence, but Signal itself isn’t on there. They don’t exactly work together either. You’d have to get your friends to switch over to Silence. A better alternative to these might be avoiding SMS for communication and using something more secure such as Matrix. Purism seems to be using Matrix as the primary way to chat on the Librem 5 they’re working on. It actually seems like a good idea. It’s free software, decentralized, and federates (like email). Plus, outside of the US, a lot of people are using alternatives to SMS, such as how popular Whatsapp is in Europe.
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Signal does not use SMS for communication, at least not when both parties are using Signal. It is more or less similiar to WhatsApp in that regard.
Define secure, what is an acceptable degree of increased security and how secure do you want to be?
What do you want to protect yourself from?
Automated drive-by exploit malware, automated phishing, scammers, script kiddies, Purse & wallet thieves, carders & gangs, blanket surveillance, targeted surveillance & malware, private investigators, skilled hackers, gangs, the mafia, nation state agents?
Any OS and the services you use are only as secure as the user and/or the person that set it up and use it.
Doesn’t matter how locked down it is, If I get you to click the phishing link it’s owned. You can be phished via signal or PGP encrypted e-mail if preferred. 
If I convince a salesperson at your telco to give me access to your phone account. Bingo. *Shockingly easy with most telco's*
If I get to someone at the company hosting any of the services you use (e-mail, messaging etc), you’re owned.
If I get a copy of your emails from the email provider… Guess what.
If I co-opt the baseband chip or the simcard on your phone to run malicious code. Same as before.
Run cellular surveillance at city scale.
If someone steals your phone at gunpoint forcing you to remove all locks, you could be hurt and owned or worse.
If I get to your workstation where you plug in your phone and install a script that modifies your phone?
If I get the active directory server in a company it doesn’t matter how secure the individual workstations are.
If I can target someone else close to you or in your family I can use them to get to you. In person or otherwise. Their device can also be used to pivot into your network to your device.
Think like a blackhat, actually no, be an absolute psychopathic asshole. Like someone that wants to make money from this. That sees you as their paycheck.
Or alternatively someone that is convinced they are doing the right thing, someone working in law enforcement, who does this as a job. Who is convinced that you are a criminal.
The software & hardware security of your devices is just one part of the security equation, they are not the end goal, but a means to an end.
You and your assets are the real target. That’s what the bad guys are after.
In security, All Roads Lead to Rome - there are many ways that can lead to a result.
With a competent technical user iOS, Android, Mac OS X, Linux, Windows, FreeBSD can try to protect you from the first 3.5 types of security threats I mentioned. The rest… that’s all on the user and how they conduct themselves. But even then there’s nothing you can do about most targeted threats.
For an average person most the security protections break down to malleable unknown state. Many people are easily fooled by basic phishing and scammers. And ignore security warnings designed to protect them in order to get to what they want.
In this regard, for device and os security it’s a level playing field.
The question you where originally asking really is then: are you yourself more secure with an iOS device or with another device? What technologies do they offer that you can use to better protect yourself from a specific threat?
Ultimately you are protecting yourself and your assets, not the device. You must decide what features they offer that can enable you to better reach that goal.
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Couldn’t sum it up better if my life depended on it.
It really is all about deciding what “convenience” features you use.
I’ve always felt that security is the anthesis of convenience, but necessary.
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All these replies are great insights but I was thinking more along the lines of physical security. Similar to the gray key unlocker. I’m just kind of curious as if there’s anything similar on Android
Heartbleed (and the mess that is/was OpenSSL in general - for DECADES) called to say hello. Open source can have unfound bugs hidden in plain sight too. Your claim that closed source has less auditing is entirely anecdotal… and here’s why.
I get it, people CAN audit open source but the number of eyes, and the number of eyes that are actually competent that are eyeballing it are a lot fewer in reality than some might hope for.
The flip-side is that with closed source, qualified people are actually being paid to audit the code as their day job. In some cases, the reputation/share price/profits of the company depend on it. So there’s often a real incentive there beyond hobbyist end user interest. Sure, there are people who get paid to do open source too, but claiming open source is audited more because the code is open is a bit of a leap, IMHO. The potential is there, the reality differs. You only have to look at how “hard” things in the open source world get ignored or half-assed (like the desktop UI for example). Security is one of the “hard” things. So my confidence in it being audited as hard as some seem to fantasise about is just not there.
In terms of open vs. closed source, after doing this stuff for 20+ years, I’d say its a wash. Assume everything has bugs in it. In terms of architecture, iOS is pretty good. Sure there may be implementation details that mean there are holes but they can be fixed as they are discovered.
The core security architecture seems pretty sound (and that’s the important bit, doesn’t matter how bug free your code is if your design isn’t good to start with).
Open source has plenty of benefits and in theory security is one of them, but in reality the benefit is minimal at best IMHO.
For another few anecotes that sway my personal decision:
- The US government isn’t complaining about being unable to break into Android devices (my suspicion is because most of them in the wild are low end garbage and easily hacked as things like full device encryption aren’t turned on by default. the number of android users running high end handsets AND making use of the available security features is relatively few vs. the entire android market).
- apple leadership have publicly (at least) told the government to get fucked.
- Apple are not in the business of monetising your data as their business model, thus end to end encryption is less of a conflict with their business model
As an aside…
Id laugh my arse off if the jailbreaks for mobile devices are actually NSA malware (or a vector for future NSA malware installation)… if i was in that position it’s totally what i’d be putting out…
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There is always a way to break into something if you have physical access. It just depends on how much effort you’re willing to put forward.
iOS might make the initial barrier slightly more difficult than android, by disabling the USB protocol or whatever when the device is locked, but that can’t be too difficult to get around.
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It really comes down to idealogy.
A centralized appstore where you decide like the king/queen of england which apps make it through to the public, aswell the decentralized model opensource where the SRC is open to anyone for review, and find flaws.
Will allways beat a open appstore like googles, where it’s a matter of throwing a few $ at it, and your software is released in the store.
The latter obviously being the less secure.
Im not a proponant of Apple at all, infact ill quote Grizzle here “Don’t buy apple products”, but they do rule that app store with a iron fist. And they do lock down that platform like there is no tommorrow, excluding you from doing anything they dont want you to, which is more secure.
That is a great question, that I never researched. I googled around and people on forums said that you would loose sandboxing if you rooted/jailbroke your device, so I just took their word for it with out doing the research.
find my iphone and remote wipe is a wonderful thing. 
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If you root/jailbreak your device, all bets are off (whether it is iOS or android). and whether sandboxing supposedly works or not.
The whole point of a jailbreak is that you are circumventing the security controls to run arbitrary code, so if your device can be jailbroken, it is wide open to malicious code. Jailbreak software is basically doing the exact same thing as malware.
If you have jailbroken it, then closed the jailbreak hole (maybe?) and are then running third party code - who is auditing it? Do you trust them? Do you trust all the random third party software that is not permitted into the play/app store for whatever reason?
2c, but in my book, if you’re rooting/jailbreaking a mobile device your security has gone completely out the window.
At least if the device is locked down to the vendor signed code, you just have to make a decision on whether or not to trust the vendor. If you’re running arbitrary third party code that couldn’t make the app store… well… good luck with that.
People seem to think they can make a judgement call on jailbreak software (or unauthorised apps loaded post-jailbreak) based on trusting the developer (i.e., some random third party hacker from “the internet” hiding behind a psuedonym) without examining the source, but then in the same breath don’t want to trust the hardware OEM.
I don’t get it.
Unless you are personally auditing the source (“ain’t nobody got time fo that!”), you’re flying blind…
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By looking at other peoples phones (coworkers, mainly), iPhones tend to have more resistance against app embeded malwares.
Can’t really elaborate on that, just sharing what i’m seeing.
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That is true. It’s an awesome feature. Too bad android doesn’t have something similar. I wonder if we could petition for it.
This is one of the benefits of an integrated hardware/software solution i believe.
If you were to petition for it, who do you petition? Google? Why should they support third party hardware?
Samsung? They don’t seem to give a shit once they’ve sold you the device… if your device gets stolen because remote wipe/brick makes it more attractive and you need another device, that’s another sale 
But yes, if someone in the Android market could offer that feature, it would be a plus.
Sure you can do it via Exchange server and/or MDM, but most home users don’t have those things.
Maybe its something the telco(s) could offer, but i have no doubt you’d need to run the telco-branded crapware filled image to get it.
That’s a whole other reason I choose iOS… but /tangent…
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That’s a good question. I didn’t really think it through much, just a “shower thought” sort of thing.
I completely agree that the integrated hardware/software makes this a main benefit.
If Samsung or whoever would do that, I’d move to them within the month, assuming headphone jack.
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You can install pretty much everything on Android (even if not rooted). You just aren’t able to hand out root access to apps. On the Google Play Store there are plenty of apps that require root (regardless of wether or not you have root, it just won’t work if you don’t). It’s not something you have to do, but you got the freedom to do so without anyone standing in your way. While on IOS, well you first gotta go threw apple to do that for things that you dont even need root on android.
There are really only two things that really annoy me as far as IOS goes. First iTunes, second I cannot have my own apps on my phone without having to buy an mac, a apple developer account and by the way I also don’t have an iPhone. Even if you program with react or xamarin you still need a mac to compile the damm thing and also want at least one iphone to make sure it actually still works on ios. On android if you can also just upload the apk to your site and people will be able to use it. Do i trust it? Well depends. For instance my dads aquarium lights come with an android app thats not in the store and does not have an ios app. Why? Well you just bought the product with a manual in the box explaining for dummies how to install the apk. Sure, you are able to download the apk without having bought the lights, but then what do you do with it?
You dont have to go around and install all the cr4p you find just because you can. But its nice that you can. Especially, because you actually can make your own stuff without much hassle.
What would you say if Microsoft decides to go all out windows store and you have to ‘jailbreak’ your pc to install an exe.
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