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Netflix socks detect when you've dozed off and pause your TV show

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Re: Netflix socks detect when you've dozed off and pause your TV show

#181
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't say which phone, but this behavior sounds like Samsung Smart Pause[0]. It's possible that it was not related to the app/ad vendor. [0] http://www.samsung.com/uk/support/skp/faq/1053479

I don't care who causes a thing like that. If it's the app I'll get rid of it, if it was the phone, id return it. That is way too intrusive.

Smart pause is a feature you have to explicitly enable. Just like smart-something that prevents your phone from auto-locking after a certain period of time if it sees you're still looking at it.

Re: Netflix socks detect when you've dozed off and pause your TV show

#182

I RTFA, I know this an arduino-based DIY hobby project. But if something like this ever comes out for real, the ability to doze off and pause your TV show will be a trojan horse... You've seen those charts where people use their smart watch to record their heart rate during the game of thrones finale? (No? Here you go: http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/08/13/what-game-of-thrones-... ) Sure, downloading the Netflix pau…

Oh its a lot more sinister than that, and its already here. An app I tried to run on my Android phone would run a video ad before it started, it used the front facing camera to determine if someone was looking at the phone. I looked away and started typing on my laptop and the ad paused, I looked back and it restarted, I looked away and the ad paused. I looked back and deleted the App.

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."

I believe there is a lot of good men, here. So, what can we do to fight this evil Android app (appart from not installing it)?

Re: Netflix socks detect when you've dozed off and pause your TV show

#183
post #147

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This is not the case with iOS snapchat. Disabling the camera prevents app use.

I haven't used Android, but culturally it seems like iOS developers try to deliver as much as they can with the permissions you give them. A voice recording app would probably just refuse to function without microphone access, but a video app will typically simply record a silent video if you give camera access but deny microphone access. I don't know if this is enforced by Apple's review process or whether it's an e…

Snapchat records silent videos if you disable microphone access, but disallows access to the entire app if you disable camera function.

You cannot even read other people's snaps without enabling camera. I deleted the app because of this function.

Re: Netflix socks detect when you've dozed off and pause your TV show

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the parent comment says, this is now fixed. Android has moved to an iOS style permissions system in 6.0

It isn't fixed on my phone, and we've already suffered through years of it.

root your phone and install a permission manager. or use cyanogenmod and enable the built-in.

Re: Netflix socks detect when you've dozed off and pause your TV show

#185
post #104

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This is why I don't use Android. On iOS, you install the app and at some point you see a prompt "This app would like access to your camera. Allow?" and you can click "Don't Allow" and keep using everything else. Versus Android, which at install time asks "This app wants access to these 37 different things. Allow everything and install, or would you prefer to kindly fuck off?"

its not really that simple, even on iOS. I'd like to allow facebook to access the camera so I can take a picture to send to someone directly from the app. But that means I've given it permission to access the camera period at that point. Not just permission to take a single picture. Similarly I'd like to give an app permissions to save pictures to the os level photo db. But the permission isn't 'save' it's 'access yo…

Yes, that would be a possible evolution of permissions. If an app lets you choose a picture from your photo library, iOS swaps you to your camera roll where you select the image and then click "Share this image with app". You then get redirected back to the app and iOS sends the app only that image.

Currently, for things like camera, microphone, location, etc. you can always revoke that permission after granting it via Settings.

Re: Netflix socks detect when you've dozed off and pause your TV show

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the parent comment says, this is now fixed. Android has moved to an iOS style permissions system in 6.0

It isn't fixed on my phone, and we've already suffered through years of it.

The quickest solution to your years of suffering would be getting an iPhone.

Re: Netflix socks detect when you've dozed off and pause your TV show

#187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can anyone confirm if that is the case with uber? On Android, if location isn't enabled, you can't use uber. And before anyone claims location services are necessary to find the user and stop ddos attacks - I've ordered uber before for people in other parts of town, and I'm a signed in user with a track record of making payments.

As much as I respect not wanting to share location, the average user tends to be quite un-tech-savvy. Say that on average users without location services enabled makes 5x more wrong requests - that can result in hundreds of thousands of lost driver hours.

Yes, and if that were a problem, we would not have Uber for iOS. There are whole classes of apps that cannot be made for iOS (it used to be the case of custom keyboards & ad blockers, for example). Because security in general, and privacy in particular, are non-negotiable on iOS.

Re: Netflix socks detect when you've dozed off and pause your TV show

#189
post #8

I'm mostly sad that Netflix detects nothing and pauses my show anyway after a couple episodes. : (

That pisses me off to no end. What's even worse is that now some of their movies start playing as soon as you select them from the main screen. I'm still reading the description, trying to understand if I want to watch it, and while I'm reading, it fades out and starts playing anyway. Of all the dumb things they could do

Re: Netflix socks detect when you've dozed off and pause your TV show

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution here is to clearly tell those apps to fuck off. Though, the latest version of android odes allow you to "allow" or "don't allow" features like that. Its the only reason that I finally installed the facebook app.

You might like this alternative: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.danvelazco...

I do indeed... Though, I am on the new android, so its mostly a moot issue for me now. I also was using the mobile website before, so this may not have provided much for my use case. Thanks for the link though!
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