Opinion: A call for better iPhone application security
Now that I've started adding applications to the iPhone in earnest, I'd quite like a way to secure them, plus core phone functionality, to stop malicious or unintentional misuse.
Of course, it's possible to lock the whole iPhone with a password, but suppose I want to allow a friend to play Bejeweled 2 or listen to some music, but don't want them to access my contacts book, call them up, add or remove notes, Twitter for me, delete or mess up an ongoing game of Aurora Feint, or a myriad of other things?
As far as I can tell, once you're in to the iPhone interface, you can pretty much do anything you like, unless an application has password or other security functionality built in.
The easy answer is not to give my iPhone to anyone else, but that's mean because everyone wants a go (have you found that, too?)
Only give it to trusted people? Well, I wouldn't give it to someone I didn't trust, but there's always the possibility they'll press something by accident and start calling people (it's very easy to call people in the contact list -- funnily enough, the iPhone is a mobile phone)
What would be great is something in the settings menu which lets you set some kind of password or lock for applications, either temporarily or permanently. It wouldn't be able to offer detailed security options for each app -- that would be down to each piece of software -- but it would act as a gatekeeper.
Perhaps you could show and hide icons (and thus, whether they can be 'launched' or not) based on a "public" or "owner' profile -- in fact, why not allow a "guest" log in, just as in OS X, which disables phone and SMS functionality, and only allows access to sanctioned applications?
It wouldn't be hard to add, and would only add complexity if a user wanted to turn the whole system on -- otherwise the iPhone could act exactly as it does now.
How about it, Apple? This is a mini computer, after all, not just a phone.
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