Android or iOS? Which phone is more secure: iPhone or Samsung? 📱 Defender Mobile Security

After talking about VPNs on Lord Draugr’s channel I was left with some questions hanging in the air: is Android or iPhone safer? Telegram, Signal or WhatsApp? Since I’m not the greatest phone expert, I bring in Luis Márquez, a data scientist and engineer, who together with a colleague uncovered a WhatsApp flaw that some outlets went as far as calling the biggest in its history.

The flaw didn’t have a single line of code, it was pure business logic. With nothing but your phone number, an attacker could force your session to close and then lock your account through repeated attempts until you were shut out for good. What’s striking is how hard it was to get anyone to take it seriously, from small outlets to WhatsApp’s own support, which answered with automated emails and even said they had no intention of fixing it. In the end Forbes published it.

We also talk about why an app being on a store doesn’t guarantee it’s safe, about how Signal is the one he chooses even though he still uses WhatsApp because of his contacts, and about the eternal Android versus iOS. His conclusion is a sensible one: security depends less and less on the manufacturer and more on the user, on the care and hygiene with which we use our phones.