Why does android trust developers so much? Just lock down the apps already, and make microphone usage obvious.
More Android phones than ever are covertly listening for inaudible sounds in ads
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Re: More Android phones than ever are covertly listening for inaudible sounds in ads
#12I wouldn't be surprised if Google, Apple or Amazon are doing (or going to do) something similar. It doesn't create much traffic at all, a couple of bytes is enough and they can be tacked on to the data stream without anyone noticing. Someone should build an ultrasonic detector that can recognize these kind of packets and have a look how wide spread this technique already is. We could also need an ultrasonic jammer an…
Apple would never do something like this. It's totally against their MO.
You're putting way too much trust on a company that constantly screws over it's customers to earn some more money by removing ports, putting functionality behind paywall (looking at you Safari extension costs), etc. They're better than Android phones in these matters but their financial position might change some day and they might do it.
Re: More Android phones than ever are covertly listening for inaudible sounds in ads
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple would never do something like this. It's totally against their MO.
Apple is made of people. People who change, people who come and go. Maybe Apple today wouldn't, but tomorrow Apple will be a different company.
Apple's OS design philosophy makes this extremely difficult, even if someone wanted to sneak it in. The OS notifies of such activity (mic active) on a system level, and the permission model requires explicit permission at time of first access attempt, even for most of Apple's own apps.
Re: More Android phones than ever are covertly listening for inaudible sounds in ads
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes there should be an icon when your mic is active. I tried to build a service in Android to do this but there's no API to get whether the mic is in use or not AFAIK. I ended up disabling mic access for almost all apps, but the Google App and Google Play Services complain when you do this.
I'd go even further and light the notification LED the entire time something is reading the camera/mic from the firmware (such that applications can't disable it via software). The indicator works well for the webcams on most laptops.
Notification LED? A majority of phones(in the US) don't come with this and the ones that do need root permission to access it.
Re: More Android phones than ever are covertly listening for inaudible sounds in ads
#15Why does android trust developers so much? Just lock down the apps already, and make microphone usage obvious.
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Re: More Android phones than ever are covertly listening for inaudible sounds in ads
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes there should be an icon when your mic is active. I tried to build a service in Android to do this but there's no API to get whether the mic is in use or not AFAIK. I ended up disabling mic access for almost all apps, but the Google App and Google Play Services complain when you do this.
I'd go even further and light the notification LED the entire time something is reading the camera/mic from the firmware (such that applications can't disable it via software). The indicator works well for the webcams on most laptops.
I'd go even even further and have a physical switch on the device. I want absolute certainty that my devices are incapable of spying on me when they are switched off.
Re: More Android phones than ever are covertly listening for inaudible sounds in ads
#17I'd like to be able to find an Android utility that shows me apps/processes that are auto-launching in the background and kill them, but my last attempt yielded two that I tried and blacklisted (a feature it has) some apps, yet after booting I was still able to force stop them, implying they still had launched on their own. Is there any app that actually works for this, or is it somehow not possible?
Not sure if it's exactly what you're looking for, but greenify might do the trick. You might need root.
Also Android now has the doze feature that should hibernate apps by default when not used.
[0]https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.oasisfeng....
Re: More Android phones than ever are covertly listening for inaudible sounds in ads
#18I'd like to be able to find an Android utility that shows me apps/processes that are auto-launching in the background and kill them, but my last attempt yielded two that I tried and blacklisted (a feature it has) some apps, yet after booting I was still able to force stop them, implying they still had launched on their own. Is there any app that actually works for this, or is it somehow not possible?
Autostarts - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.elsdoerfer...
The apps might be started using misc broadcasted events, not only on boot. If you want to prevent them to start, you will need root.
Re: More Android phones than ever are covertly listening for inaudible sounds in ads
#19ArsTechnica unfortunately again misleads people due to limited expertise.
On modern Androids (6.0+) accessing the microphone requires an explicit permission granted by user (just like on iOS). Furthermore, due to Doze mode implemented in 6.0 and expanded in 7.0 running these kind of services without notifying the user cleary (with permanent notification) has become pretty much impossible and unreliable. To run in background when the phone isn't in active use the service needs to be marked "Foreground" which demands a permanent notification.
Having said that - Google is failing here in several ways. First, they STILL let apps be published that don't target Android 6.0. Apps that target older Androids get permissions granted at install time (those can be revoked, but user needs to go to settings for that). There's no reason to let people publish new apps that don't adhere to new permission model, but Google just doesn't care.
They also need to clearly mark use of system resources in the background - just like we have the GPS icon, we need a clear indication of active microphone, speaker and other hardware modules while running in the backgorund.
Re: More Android phones than ever are covertly listening for inaudible sounds in ads
#20Why does android trust developers so much? Just lock down the apps already, and make microphone usage obvious.
Because we already have a locked-down platform and you're welcome to use it.