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Jailbreaking iOS frees you from Apple but exposes you to malware
While Apple’s Mac OS X reputation for superior security to Windows has little technical basis, iOS (the operating system for iPhones and iPads) is a very different story. As such, when nearly a quarter of a million Apple accounts were compromised by malware recently, it was a big surprise for many people.
So far Apple has been able to keep the iPhone and iPad almost completely free of malware. While iOS malware – some of it apparently created by intelligence agencies – does exist, only a minority of users have been vulnerable to most of it.
And to be vulnerable, an iOS device must first be “jailbroken”.
iOS’s “jail” – or to put it more diplomatically: its “walled garden” – is at the root of its impressive security record. But this comes at a price that some users are not willing to pay, and this places them at greater risk of being hacked.
While Apple’s Mac OS X reputation for superior security to Windows has little technical basis, iOS (the operating system for iPhones and iPads) is a very different story. As such, when nearly a quarter of a million Apple accounts were compromised by malware recently, it was a big surprise for many people.
So far Apple has been able to keep the iPhone and iPad almost completely free of malware. While iOS malware – some of it apparently created by intelligence agencies – does exist, only a minority of users have been vulnerable to most of it.
And to be vulnerable, an iOS device must first be “jailbroken”.
iOS’s “jail” – or to put it more diplomatically: its “walled garden” – is at the root of its impressive security record. But this comes at a price that some users are not willing to pay, and this places them at greater risk of being hacked.
