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Betrayed by an app she had never heard of

privacyinternational.org

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Re: Betrayed by an app she had never heard of

#161

Post by londons_explore »

gcb0 wrote: post #38
duxup wrote: post #2

This is one of my concerns ever since the first app asked for my contacts. You could be a mountain man and value your privacy.... but if you just know someone who uses tech you are exposed in any number of ways. In the US things like third-party doctrine have not aged well in the information age as just communicating with people can expose you in ways you can't ever control.

Blackberry android phones have a feature where it notifies you when any app accessed some resource that requires OS level permissions, such as contacts, gps, etc. Whatsapp and other facebook apps, access my contact list every 3 minutes.

Whatsapp needs to know when you add a phone contact so it can lookup the corresponding whatsapp contact.

Even the 3 minute delay is annoying - it's common I meet someone, add them to my phone, and then want to send them a Whatsapp message and they don't appear in the list. I have to awkwardly hang around for a minute or so before being able to send them the message I wanted to send.

(for context, in most of Europe, Whatsapp is used pretty much like iMessage or SMS is used in the USA - wouldn't it be annoying not to be able to SMS a new phone number without waiting 3 minutes?)

Re: Betrayed by an app she had never heard of

#162

Post by neilalexander »

Piskvorrr wrote: post #131
neilalexander wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the end of the day, someone somewhere is granting robocallers access to the public telephone network. Hold those service providers legally responsible until they start taking action - it's not like there is no way to find out who they are.

A shell company, operating out of Vanuatu, with VoIP servers in Vietnam and Venezuela? Gl;hf.

At some point those VoIP servers connect to PSTN. Someone is responsible for that.

Re: Betrayed by an app she had never heard of

#163

Post by jmiserez »

jannes wrote: post #121
jmiserez wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Settings -> Phone -> Call blocking and Identification -> "Allow these apps to block calls and provide caller id" You can add phone book apps there. Seems to be an iOS 12 feature, it wasn't there before. Otherwise it will just use your contacts.

Is this a regional feature? I don't see it on my phone with iOS 12.3. I am located in Europe.

I'm in Switzerland, so Europe as well. iOS 12.2. Maybe you need a phone book app installed for it to show up.

Re: Betrayed by an app she had never heard of

#164

Post by nutjob2 »

yesforwhat wrote: post #10
nutjob2 wrote: post #9

The problem here is that once you give out a number then it's public in some sense. The person you give it to can pass it on, even inadvertently. The smart thing to do is to have a public number and a private number. It makes no sense to call cabs with the same number you use to contact sources or whatever. This is easily done with dual sim phones and can be taken much further with Google Voice or other dial-in phone…

> The smart thing to do is to have a public number and a private number. What's the easiest way to do this?

Try anveo.com, they have numbers globally which start at less than $1 per month but with a setup fee of a couple of dollars and a per-minute fee of around 1 cent per minute. You can also pay more per month charges for no per minute charges.

You'll also need a SIP client. Some Android phones have these built in but you can also use things like Grandstream Wave. I have no idea about iOS, MAc aor Win but there should be several options for those.

Re: Betrayed by an app she had never heard of

#165

Post by dingaling »

londons_explore wrote: post #161
gcb0 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blackberry android phones have a feature where it notifies you when any app accessed some resource that requires OS level permissions, such as contacts, gps, etc. Whatsapp and other facebook apps, access my contact list every 3 minutes.

Whatsapp needs to know when you add a phone contact so it can lookup the corresponding whatsapp contact. Even the 3 minute delay is annoying - it's common I meet someone, add them to my phone, and then want to send them a Whatsapp message and they don't appear in the list. I have to awkwardly hang around for a minute or so before being able to send them the message I wanted to send. (for context, in most of Europe, W…

Just install 'Open in WhatsApp' from F-droid and you can immediately start a conversation with an arbitrary number. And without polluting your Contacts with numbers you'll maybe never use again.

WhatsApp used to function like that, too; you just added a new number in the UI. That was until FB decided that syphoning Contact info was lucrative. On my phones WhatsApp is still denied Contacts permissions and it works fine.

Re: Betrayed by an app she had never heard of

#166

Post by londons_explore »

sk0g wrote: post #43
baroffoos wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would be nice if mobile OSs had a permission that let apps save photos but to read photos it has to make an api request which opens the system photo picker and when you select a photo the app gets given access to only the photo you selected.

I think Android does/ can do just that? There's a native photo picking intent, and the app just gets back a photo. Whether it was from the camera, the gallery, etc, who cares? In practice, most apps would rather have their own in-app photo grid. Nothing to do with wanting to violate your privacy, I'm sure :)

The photo picking intent leads to a confusing UI - it's common for phones to have many photo picking intents, so a typical flow would be:

* User clicks "attach photo"

* Phone asks, do you want to use "Photos", "Gallery", "Google Photos", "Camera".

* User wants to share a screenshot - so they don't know which to pick. They choose "Gallery".

* The built in gallery app doesn't show images apart from those taken with the camera. User goes back.

* User picks "Google Photos"

* Google photos only shows screenshots under a confusingly named "device folders" link in a hidden-by-default side menu. User doesn't find that.

* User tries "Photos".

* That turns out to be an alias of Google Photos put there by the phone manufacturer.

* User tries "Camera". That lets them take a picture, or to scroll through another list of past camera photos.

* User gives up.

And we wonder why apps don't use that feature of the platform...

Re: Betrayed by an app she had never heard of

#167

Post by dsfyu404ed »

vanderZwan wrote: post #107
Kaiyou wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem I see is that politicians don't seem to have any good days.

You are living in a complex, mostly functioning nation state where the majority of conflicts is resolved in a civil manner. Not in a small tribal society where you might be murdered by someone physically stronger than you simply because he lusts after your partner. That simple fact proves how hyperbolic and naive your statement is.

Your statement is equally naive and hyperbolic. It's preposterous to think that humans haven't always had rules (well defined or not) to prevent petty BS from escalating. Of course the rules are different for a bunch of cavemen living in a group of <50 but rules and norms still existed.

Re: Betrayed by an app she had never heard of

#168

Post by stOneskull »

ktpsns wrote: post #156
blackbrokkoli wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can somebody enlighten me why robo-calls are such a problem in the US? I'm completely ignorant of any relevant legislation or enforcement, but as a young German I can literally remember exactly two unsolicited survey calls in my whole life, both on a landline. This suggests some fundamental difference compared to the US which maybe should be changed instead of a third party band-aid app with lots of problems, but aga…

Can confirm, being also a (not-that-young-anymore) German. Scam calls or phone marketing is very seldom here. I always assumed this is due to strict laws in Germany. Another thing is also that most people I know no more publish their telephone number in a (public) phone book, as it used to be still common 30 years ago. That's something where you easily can grab tons of private information from. How common are phone b…

the scammers can't speak german

Re: Betrayed by an app she had never heard of

#169

Post by Mirioron »

CaptainZapp wrote: post #139
DarkWiiPlayer wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm just naively applying my programmers sense of beauty to legal stuff, but the main problem I have is complexity. I'm OK with google having to spend some money on lawyers to work out what they can and cannot get away with, but smaller busynesses seem to be pretty lost right now. This is partly because it's a new thing and we need to wait and see how judges ultimately interpret things, which will give people s…

Maybe I'm just naively applying my programmers sense of beauty to legal stuff I see that happening a lot. Actually, it's more trying to apply tech skills to societal issues, often without really thinking through the consequences or the bigger societal impact. Sidewalk Labs Toronto experiments provides a nice illustration of such issues.[1], [2] & [3] One of the buzzwords that really gets my blood boiling is "Governme…

A simpler and more elegant solution wouldn't screw over small businesses and individuals as much. An individual running a forum from their basement has to follow the same rules that Google spends tens of thousands on lawyers fees to figure out. Maybe exemptions or less strict rules for smaller companies should've been added. The EU isn't exactly a bastion of internet technology enterprises, so we probably shouldn't throw the few that try under the bus.

Re: Betrayed by an app she had never heard of

#170

Post by asveikau »

diebeforei485 wrote: post #22

I have mixed feelings this. Spam calls are very much a real problem in the US as well - I get around ten per day and it's a constant annoyance.

The spam calls are all using fake caller ID. So tagging them as spam only hurts the real owner of that number.
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