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Google sued: Idle Android eats mobile data to send telemetry and preload ads

theregister.com

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Re: Google sued: Idle Android eats mobile data to send telemetry and preload ads

#81

Post by NeutronStar »

blfr wrote: post #67
cstross wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether or not google are "stealing" data allowance from customers, or acquiring this right voluntarily/contractually from customers is interesting in the abstract Specific example of harm: international roaming data fees are outrageous and even a small use of data can stack up. If I visit Canada using my UK mobile phone, I have to be sure to keep data roaming turned off because I get dinged for £6/Mb (about US $7.50…

The real problem in your example are absolutely abusive and exploitative roaming charges, not Android or search/advertising business model. Should the phone sit quiet when you're not using it? Sure. Is £6/Mb even close to a reasonable rate? Not unless you're on Mars.

So it ok because hypothetically another company unrelated to them has set the price for roaming data artificially high?

Re: Google sued: Idle Android eats mobile data to send telemetry and preload ads

#82

Post by crazygringo »

dsr_ wrote: post #75
crazygringo wrote: post #74

Per the link [1] the article refers to, if I understand correctly, Google isn't preloading ads. Google is making it possible for applications that show ads to choose to preload them. And they're not preloaded hours/days in advance -- it's a UX pattern to load them a tap before. So that part of the suit looks like it will fall apart. As for sending telemetry, it's $1/month in data assuming you never use Wi-Fi. Doesn't…

I think a reasonable person has never wondered if their OS is doing something in the background, is shocked when I tell them about it, and then shrugs and goes back to using it because the alternative is to learn something new.

Why would they be shocked?

How else would their phone know there are apps to be updated, notifications received, etc.? (On a computer, anti-virus updates too.) How would it know the temperature or stocks as soon as it's brought up, even when there's no cell service? It's pretty common sense.

And on iOS and Mac you prominently choose to enroll in analytics when you set up your phone, so the idea of analytics isn't a shocker either. I'm not sure if Android or Windows has the same setup choice.

Re: Google sued: Idle Android eats mobile data to send telemetry and preload ads

#83

Post by 1996 »

izacus wrote: post #14
geogra4 wrote: post #3

I wish Microsoft didn't kill windows mobile. The Android monopoly is terrible

Why would Microsoft help here? Windows has bunch of telemetry too.

Windows Mobile had some kind of minimal data mode that worked very well.

I don't remember the specifics, but do I know that with WM I used less than 10Mb a month roaming abroad, without doing anything special. I was just using a dedicated email address so I might send email if needed, but not receive all the crap and attached files I usually get.

I was shocked when I moved to IOS and couldn't make it consume less than 20x as much per month.

Re: Google sued: Idle Android eats mobile data to send telemetry and preload ads

#84

Post by tomrod »

izacus wrote: post #15

> Under active use, Android devices transfer about 11.6MB of data to Google servers daily, or 350MB per month, it's claimed, which is about half the amount transferred by an iPhone. Interesting, so 350MB of data per month is abuse, iPhones 175MB per month isn't. I guess Google now has to half their data use for it to be at parity with Apple and we're all fine?

As others mentioned, you have the value backwards.

That said, the right amount of auto transfer of content should be close to 0,a few bytes to notify of updates may be reasonable. Certainly we don't need to have books-worth of software and content transferred without the phone's owner agreeing with that agreement used with extremely narrow scope (I use the word owner here colloquially, as the user paid for the phone).

Stop the abuse of "could" and begin questioning with "should."

Re: Google sued: Idle Android eats mobile data to send telemetry and preload ads

#85

Post by mschuster91 »

swiley wrote: post #79
aboringusername wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer here has been obvious for many years. Clearly, there is a conflict of interest in having an organization interested in selling ads to also make one of the worlds most widely used operating systems. So we break them up. We regulate their conduct, we interrogate their business and ensure there is no apparent conflicts of interest going on. Mobile OS solutions LTD would develop Android OS, wouldn't unduly fav…

It doesn't really matter who's involved, the security model in android is extremely user hostile. Many organizations are given super user access on device and the end user isn't. Only one of these needs to be poorly behaved (not even selling ads) for the device to be full of unremovable malware. There's definitely a social problem here, but I think for once people HN are underestimating the importance of a technical…

> Many organizations are given super user access on device and the end user isn't.

That depends. Assuming an uncorrupted chain of delivery between you and the manufacturer, if you're running a vanilla AOSP, the only organization having root access is Google and you. Even with Samsung and other manufacturers, they are the only additional party whose packages have admin rights.

The situation is more nasty with devices bought/leased from a carrier because these insist on preloading all kinds of crapware - which is why I would strictly recommend everyone to work out their own financing and buy a stock device independently from a carrier. Chances are it's gonna be cheaper in the long run anyway.

Re: Google sued: Idle Android eats mobile data to send telemetry and preload ads

#86

Post by mattlondon »

I wonder what people want out of these kind of lawsuits.

If you can clearly identify exactly how much data is consumed, and you have a service plan that tells you exactly how much that data cost to use then the damages are precisely computable. So a judge can turn around and just award these people $4.72 in damages or whatever and case closed?

What is the angle here, or is it just another "google-is-evil-but-i-still-want-to-use-their-services-for-free" thing?

Re: Google sued: Idle Android eats mobile data to send telemetry and preload ads

#87

Post by jsjohnst »

dogma1138 wrote: post #47
samoa42 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

likely depends on the settings. iphones i have set up use about 30MB per month for "System Services" dont know how much of that is from real usage vs. telemetry an stuff.

You have a breakdown of individual services also on iOS push notifications are accounted for in system services. If there is any OS level telemetry it would fall under general which for my iPhone is 105MB in total since I activated it about a year ago. In general over a year+ (11 Pro Max) its 2.5GB with software updates and document sync accounting for over half of it both of which can be explicitly set to use WiFi o…

Kinda surprised to see “DNS Services” is the number three in my list of System Services’s data usage.

Re: Google sued: Idle Android eats mobile data to send telemetry and preload ads

#88

Post by asutekku »

mattlondon wrote: post #86

I wonder what people want out of these kind of lawsuits. If you can clearly identify exactly how much data is consumed, and you have a service plan that tells you exactly how much that data cost to use then the damages are precisely computable. So a judge can turn around and just award these people $4.72 in damages or whatever and case closed? What is the angle here, or is it just another "google-is-evil-but-i-still-…

It's that the device should not use user's data at all when it's not in use, considering google does not pay for it.

Re: Google sued: Idle Android eats mobile data to send telemetry and preload ads

#89

Post by refulgentis »

asutekku wrote: post #88
mattlondon wrote: post #86

I wonder what people want out of these kind of lawsuits. If you can clearly identify exactly how much data is consumed, and you have a service plan that tells you exactly how much that data cost to use then the damages are precisely computable. So a judge can turn around and just award these people $4.72 in damages or whatever and case closed? What is the angle here, or is it just another "google-is-evil-but-i-still-…

It's that the device should not use user's data at all when it's not in use, considering google does not pay for it.

Are there consumer computers that don't use the user's data at all when they're not in use?

Re: Google sued: Idle Android eats mobile data to send telemetry and preload ads

#90

Post by onion2k »

blfr wrote: post #67
cstross wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether or not google are "stealing" data allowance from customers, or acquiring this right voluntarily/contractually from customers is interesting in the abstract Specific example of harm: international roaming data fees are outrageous and even a small use of data can stack up. If I visit Canada using my UK mobile phone, I have to be sure to keep data roaming turned off because I get dinged for £6/Mb (about US $7.50…

The real problem in your example are absolutely abusive and exploitative roaming charges, not Android or search/advertising business model. Should the phone sit quiet when you're not using it? Sure. Is £6/Mb even close to a reasonable rate? Not unless you're on Mars.

The real problem in your example are absolutely abusive and exploitative roaming charges, not Android or search/advertising business model.

They're both problems.

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