201–210 of 257 posts
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This is how it works in Android 6 - permissions are requested as needed and user can deny them individually. Unfortunately apps have to be build against the new API, so it does not happen automatically for old apps.
You can deny permissions individually for older apps as well.
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On the internet permission - its a difficult business decision for Google to allow users to restrict the Internet permission. If they did, every ad-supported app would overnight become an ad-free app.
On one hand: That's a really good point. Thanks. On the other hand: Everything can now steal my data " just " so adverts can be shown. Really?! To me that's more outrageous than the original points I listed. My device and my data are left permanently insecure, all to protect their adverts. Even though I purposefully don't use applications with in-built advertising (because they can't be trusted with permissions), I c…
I am sure there are people at Google who are tearing their hair, screaming about these issues. But management wants more money, not security or privacy.
As long as people vote with their wallet and buy Google products, they are supporting this. Yes, "I just don't care" is implicit support.
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Either that's not entirely truthful, or the app permission system is totally broken... Need to find out when you last opened the app? "Get running apps"...?
This page has more detail on Android's permissions model: http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/security/permissio... I don't really understand the point of having fine-grained permissions (like READ_CONTACTS), when the user only sees broader permission groups. Can someone shed light on this?
"By limiting access to resources on a per-app basis, App Sandbox provides a last line of defense against the theft, corruption, or deletion of user data if an attacker successfully exploits security holes in your app or the frameworks it is linked against."
As such, from the developer's perspective the ideal permissions system should actually be as fine grained as possible to let the developers minimize the exposure of their apps. Android's permissions system was probably designed from this point of view.
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Not OP but I found Lollipop pretty laggy and that it didn't add much I wanted, most of Google's updates come via Play now anyway. So also no reason to upgrade to Marshmallow either.
Marshmallow fixed many of the issues in Lollipop, plus you get security updates.
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I don't think that will solve this particular problem. It wan't your browsing history from the device. What we desperately need is a UL for privacy. Just like UL tests electronics, we need a lab to test these apps for what data they access and how they make use of that data. Then assign a score so consumers can chose not to use services that request unnecessary permissions and misuse your data.
Sure it does: my browsing history, contacts, etc are separate and distinct for each profile. To the best of my knowledge there is no Android permission that'll let you cross that boundry. Please, if you know of evidence to the contrary please share a link to the Android docs. That would be a reason to root my phone and run a release with a privacy plugin.
I can't find a page from the official docs from my phone, but there's a list of permissions on Stack Exchange: http://android.stackexchange.com/a/38389/150855
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This page has more detail on Android's permissions model: http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/security/permissio... I don't really understand the point of having fine-grained permissions (like READ_CONTACTS), when the user only sees broader permission groups. Can someone shed light on this?
The permissions system does not exist only for the user. In fact, as described here ( https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Securi... ), the primary purpose of sandboxing apps is to help developers secure their apps. "By limiting access to resources on a per-app basis, App Sandbox provides a last line of defense against the theft, corruption, or deletion of user data if an attacker successfully exploi…
This is why such things should be enforced in the OS, with a strict security model, and such shady permission overreach should be frowned upon.
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You can deny permissions individually for older apps as well.
They aren't capable of handling the case where they aren't given access to a permission though, so that makes them potentially more prone to crashing.
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I don't even understand why they need local access to figure this out. Poll the web API for last_login and be done with it. Surely they're already tracking and storing this kind of data on their end.
Doesn't uber have tight integration with other apps that could be running? e.g. Google maps? I assume the handoff from Google Maps doesn't require any kind of check to running apps from Uber, but I am curious if it is something along these lines.
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> I don't think I've changed my settings from the default and for me at least (Nexus 5, Lollipop) If you have a nexus 5 why aren't you on marshmallow?
Not OP but I found Lollipop pretty laggy and that it didn't add much I wanted, most of Google's updates come via Play now anyway. So also no reason to upgrade to Marshmallow either.
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No, what we need is the ability to modify the system software on our phones easily to stop this kind of thing. On a normal Unix system you would just run the app as a separate user (or worst case, sandbox it) but on android non of the interfaces (or really much of anything at all) can be controlled by the user.
Exactly. I don't get why there is no root account on most android phones. Why is "rooting" a hack that voids your warranty? Why can't we have our smartphones like our computers?
If you treat a smartphone as a normal computer, you would expect to be able to use a service such as Uber by means of a modern web browser providing a sandbox for their web application, like you do on Linux, Mac OS X, or Windows. Installing someone's stand-alone software only to access an on-line service would probably seem invasive and absurd.
Broadly speaking, on a smartphone people probably accept this because of the trade-off. Apple and Google keep your mobile computer stable, fast, and free from viruses and malware by managing your operating system and vetting the software you can install through their app-stores. For a lot of people this trade-off seems preferable to an alternative.