Tracking my phone's silent connections • Hacker News Board

Re: Tracking my phone's silent connections

#81

Post by alasdair_ » Sun, Feb 24, 2019, 9:42 PM UTC

hueving wrote: post #74

throwawaymath wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With regard to your last paragraph: that would probably be an excellent application of Ben Thompson's aggregation theory. It would increase Apple and Google's moat by making them the hardware gatekeeper for all mobile app analytics. And battery life is also a strong cover for the business reasons for doing it. But the public claim, "it saves battery life!" would not make it defensible for most analytics companies, in…

>think the largest third party analytics providers would revolt Would anyone care? I don't think a game company is going to refuse to publish on iTunes or Google Play because some tool they use for analytics stops working. Nothing against analytics companies, but they just aren't a relevant party in Apple's (or Google's) ecosystem.

> Would anyone care? I don't think a game company is going to refuse to publish on iTunes or Google Play because some tool they use for analytics stops working.

I don't see why these companies can't simply push all analytics to their own servers then out to the analytics company, bypassing apple/google.

Most of the biggest mobile games companies have custom analytics engines and likely do this anyway.

Re: Tracking my phone's silent connections

#82

Post by bobbyi_settv » Sun, Feb 24, 2019, 9:54 PM UTC

Are the frequent apple.com requests the phone checking to see if it has a working internet connection?

And if so are those responsible for the http (as opposed to https) traffic because they want to see if you're on a captive portal?

Re: Tracking my phone's silent connections

#83

Post by z3t4 » Sun, Feb 24, 2019, 10:00 PM UTC

The CDN providers are also used for collecting data. Would be nice with a graph that show both downloaded and uploaded (data sent).

Re: Tracking my phone's silent connections

#84

Post by filleduchaos » Sun, Feb 24, 2019, 10:08 PM UTC

jlokier wrote: post #72

filleduchaos wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit annoying though how much a first-world-only solution this is. OpenStreetMaps was completely useless for my city/country the last five times I tried to use it.

I think you may be in the first world on this one. I saw a very interesting talk last year about how Google Maps is often useless in third world areas, and OpenStreetMaps provides the only useful coverage. It's due to armies of volunteers mapping an area during disasters, while Google has no economic interest in mapping the area. https://media.ccc.de/v/emf2018-157-how-the-internet-has-chan...

I live in West Africa, and yeah I think I'll take the difference between the two services that I've experienced for myself for what it is. Those "armies of volunteers" aren't exactly interested in the region either.

Re: Tracking my phone's silent connections

#85

Post by shostack » Sun, Feb 24, 2019, 10:14 PM UTC

HenryBemis wrote: post #21

Regarding iOS: I stopped using iPhones and (edit typo) quot the ecosystem altogether (apart from an app I still sell in apple app store) because with the lack of an untethered Jailbreak I could no longer install "Firewall IP" and I could not edit the hosts file. Regarding Android: I switched to Android for the "NoRoot Firewall" and since most Android phones are Root-able I can also edit my hosts file. The article giv…

Serious question--how does one verify the security and privacy of something like NoRoot Firewall?

It wants: - have full network access - view network connections - run at startup

That's a pretty serious list of permissions to consider giving something that while it would seemingly be beneficial, is also a great vector into my phone activity for a malicious actor (not accusing them of being such btw).

Re: Tracking my phone's silent connections

#86

Post by LeoPanthera » Sun, Feb 24, 2019, 10:28 PM UTC

jakejarvis wrote: post #61

DavideNL wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's not a proper solution (apps can simply communicate with their servers public ip instead of looking up a domain name.)

Wouldn't that loophole work on all DNS-based blockers/black-holes on any platform, namely Pi-hole (and the hosts file for that matter)?

Yes. I use a DNSBL in my router (pfBlockerNG), and I've been considering writing a small script to resolve every IP in the blocklist and then block outgoing connections to those IPs.

Of course this is only useful at home. As soon as my phone leaves the house, everything is open again.

Re: Tracking my phone's silent connections

#87

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Feb 24, 2019, 10:35 PM UTC

kgwxd wrote: post #11

xg15 wrote: post #6

I'm not sure how the situation is with Apple, but it always bothered me that on Android, apps can implement their own logic for TLS certificate validation. Apps can use this to hardcode key-pinning and make it effectively impossible (short of patching the app) to inspect an encrypted connection, even if you're the owner of the device. I feel the push for DoH will make this even worse - because then you won't even kno…

Once you install closed source software, you're no longer the sole owner of your computer. If an app wants to hide data, and they can't rely on tls to do it, they'll just add another layer of encryption.

[deleted]

Re: Tracking my phone's silent connections

#88

Post by jammygit » Sun, Feb 24, 2019, 10:37 PM UTC

mirimir wrote: post #79

Whenever I read stuff like this, I'm reminded how user-hostile Android and iOS are. Even compared to Windows. Or at least, to Windows XP and 7. Not that many years ago, I had imagined that microcomputers and cellphones would merge. But I was expecting something like Linux. Or at worst, like Windows. And it clearly didn't work out that way. We have smartphones that are never really owned by users. They run apps that h…

If the librem survives a few generations, it might change things

Re: Tracking my phone's silent connections

#89

Post by A2017U1 » Sun, Feb 24, 2019, 10:45 PM UTC

shostack wrote: post #85

HenryBemis wrote: post #21

Regarding iOS: I stopped using iPhones and (edit typo) quot the ecosystem altogether (apart from an app I still sell in apple app store) because with the lack of an untethered Jailbreak I could no longer install "Firewall IP" and I could not edit the hosts file. Regarding Android: I switched to Android for the "NoRoot Firewall" and since most Android phones are Root-able I can also edit my hosts file. The article giv…

Serious question--how does one verify the security and privacy of something like NoRoot Firewall? It wants: - have full network access - view network connections - run at startup That's a pretty serious list of permissions to consider giving something that while it would seemingly be beneficial, is also a great vector into my phone activity for a malicious actor (not accusing them of being such btw).

Netguard is an equivalent Android app, it is open source and available on fdroid / play store. The fdroid version has to match the source. I'm not sure how play store builds work.

Re: Tracking my phone's silent connections

#90

Post by dontbenebby » Sun, Feb 24, 2019, 10:46 PM UTC

ohnope wrote: post #47

krzbrg wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which app did you use? I’ve done similar things with Charles and Burp Suite.

It's this one: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/adblock/id691121579 I've got it on my list to play with Charles proxy. I'm curious to peer into a few of the requests if possible. But I've read that, especially with mobile apps, they may use cert pinning which defeats something like Charles.

Is this a VPN or just a dns? Will it play nice with my vpn?