Comment by realusername
1 month ago
Well no, if your parents truly are tech illiterate, I would give them Ubuntu and not an iPhone.
With the iPhone they get the risk of answering to a scam call or scam sms and giving them the access of their bank account.
Ubuntu is almost bullet proof for beginners.
In fact, that's what I've done for my parents and I had to retire the computer and get another one because it's the hardware which became too old after 15 years of running Ubuntu without any problem.
Security for users isn't just about bootloader expoits.
Like the parent said Ubuntu has horrible security. It would be better to just not buy a phone line for the iphone if you don't want phone calls or texts.
It hasn't, security isn't just technical features but a social contract.
Even on an iPhone without a sim card, they can download one of the scam casino games from the appstore and give away a lot of money, on Ubuntu they can't do that.
There's more to security than just bytes.
The threats to your average user isn't a bootloader exploit built by some Israeli firm but privacy breaches, social engineering and scams.
Sure; but technical features can certainly make security better.
Like, iOS makes most unsafe actions incredibly clear. Apple pay always requires the user to double tap the power button. The OS makes it impossible for an application to charge you money through apple pay without an explicit user action.
Phone apps also can't take control of my entire device, or steal my cookies or cryptolocker my hard drive. Any program you download and run from the internet on a desktop computer can do all of this stuff and more. We shouldn't allow that stuff by default on desktop computers either.
Phones have the right idea. I just don't want Apple and Google to be the only ones who can modify the system at the OS level.
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