> But in my mind, the point of bringing up individual malware examples is not to say that all regulation is worthless, it's to drive home that perfect security doesn't exist, that we shouldn't be striving for perfect security in the first place, and that the real world is about balancing security with other concerns.

I certainly agree that perfect security doesn't exist and we need to balance security with other concerns. However, I believe that a platform with strict controls directly contributes to increased security and privacy on that platform, and those factors are important to me, so the balance is worth the trade off. You are of course free to prioritize other concerns and purchase the device that best fits your concerns.

> There is no such thing as a malware free world, and saying, "this would increase malware" is not an immediately persuasive argument.

It is to me, because (as I said in my original comment in this thread) we already have two decades of history of malware on Windows and Android to show us what happens when you expose non-technical users to a highly popular, but unrestricted operating system.

> What are those risks? You want to get rid of cherry-picking, what kind of change in malware would we be talking about if we got rid of sideloading on Android or introduced it on iOS?

Nokia's latest threat intelligence whitepaper [1] says:

Among smartphones, Android™ devices are the most commonly targeted by malware. In mobile networks, Android devices were responsible for 47.15% of the observed malware infections, Windows©/ PCs for 35.82%, IoT for 16.17% and iPhones© for less than 1%.

I think the numbers speak for themselves and side-loading is exactly the reason why.

In 2018 Android based devices are once more the main target in mobile networks. In the smartphone sector, the vast majority of malware is currently distributed as trojanized applications. The user is tricked by phishing, advertising or other social engineering into downloading and installing the application. The main reason that the Android platform is targeted, is the fact that once side-loading is enabled, Android applications can be downloaded from just about anywhere. In contrast, iPhone applications are for the most part limited to one source, the Apple Store.

> The best data I'm seeing online suggests possibly an impact to 0.5% of current devices based on Android statistics,

I'm curious where that number came from? Individual Android malware attacks have affected up to 25 million devices [2], so that number doesn't really make sense to me.

> and that's assuming we can't get any other gains from sandboxing and user-education.

Note that most of of the counter examples in the comment I replied to were examples of developers abusing legitimate APIs. (Except the photo leak which IIRC was based on a phishing attack). Sandboxing is great for operating system level security but does nothing to help prevent these types of privacy violations, which are enforced via developer guidelines and the review process instead. Protecting privacy cannot merely be treated as a technical problem to be solved via OS-level security restrictions. User education also does not help here because the users have no idea what developers are doing under the hood.

> that's not a number that's big enough to justify abandoning a user's fundamental right to control what code runs on their device.

I'm not opposed to the idea of adding some sort of "developer mode" that allows advanced users to load third-party binaries after some very strict and specific warnings, so people who really know what they're doing can use it. I just think its a very bad idea for side-loading to become a primary method of app distribution, especially for general users.

[1] https://onestore.nokia.com/asset/205835

[2] https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/10/20688885/agent-smith-andr...