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Posted by _-x-_ 20 hours ago

Tell HN: An app is silently installing itself on my iPhone every day

Every day for the past 3 days around 1pm EST the 'Headspace' app has been silently appearing on my iPhone (13 Pro). Automatic downloads are turned off and I've updated to the latest iOS since this started happening.

I googled around and found a couple reddit threads with people reporting the exact same thing starting 2 or 3 days ago. There were reports from people on iPhone 12 and iPhone 17 so it doesn't seem device-specific.

Anyone else seeing this? Does anyone understand how or why this is happening?

455 points | 169 commentspage 6
userbinator 10 hours ago|
Now you understand how it feels to be reminded that the device you "bought" from Apple isn't actually yours as they still have control over it, and if they decide to do something you don't want, you're powerless to stop them.
meloyc 17 hours ago||
jailbreak phone?
_-x-_ 16 hours ago|
Negative
throwaway5465 19 hours ago||
Maybe a competitor is trying to FUD them?
_-x-_ 18 hours ago||
I would imagine that this isn't (or at least shouldn't be) possible based on Apple's security. The app is automatically downloading to my phone without my permission.
pando85 12 hours ago||
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tokenhub_dev 11 hours ago||
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3vo-ai 14 hours ago||
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xinji-standard 18 hours ago||
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lovich 17 hours ago||
[flagged]
anon84873628 17 hours ago||
At least they're exposing their nefarious plans for the purposes of... Offering people mental healthcare?

It's probably just some Apple bug.

lovich 16 hours ago||
Why did a mental healthcare company have the ability to exploit this?

Do you think they accidentally found this 5 seconds before their exploit was launched or do you think they might have actually put some effort into doing this since they are an organization of people.

kennywinker 16 hours ago|||
I am pretty skeptical it’s intentional. Very risky move. If they make apple look bad they can say goodbye to getting featured in the app store, or could even get pulled from the store completely.

I can see a fucked up ceo greenlighting a trick to get their app installed on your phone without asking. I can’t really see them having it repeatedly download.

I suspect it’s a bug, or worst case a backdoor that’s been triggered with a commercial app instead of spyware accidentally or “accidentally”.

altairprime 15 hours ago|||
I cannot possibly imagine the company as a whole would approve of this, much less anyone at the company who wants to keep their job. If it’s found that they exploited Apple to cause this, Apple might force-remove their app worldwide and definitely will kill their developer account pending any lawsuits. That’s the sort of thing that gets a CMO fired. Seems extremely unlikely, but if their C_O gets fired on Monday or Friday, then we’ll probably know why :D
firecall 16 hours ago|||
> The fact that it’s happening shows that they always had the ability...

That may not be the case here, and certainly isn't the assumption we can make more generally.

We regularly see regressions in platform security.

lovich 17 hours ago||
[flagged]
slater 17 hours ago||
Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

lovich 16 hours ago||
When this forum handles the bot and propaganda problem I might consider those rules.

Currently we are inundated by accounts who don’t give a shit and make a new automatically 3 seconds after their flagging.

As long as those accounts are allowed I don’t really care for the stated rules that aren’t actually enforced.

agentbc9000 9 hours ago|
[flagged]