Live data from Hacker News

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

theregister.com

311–320 of 320 posts

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

#311
I find it... sad? how knee-jerk people are, especially with the expectation of "perfect privacy" in a country where millions of people's SINs got leaked and that company still functions.

Looking forward to that $1/month I'll get if it goes class action though...

The cause is always glass half empty isn't it?

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

#312
post #311

I find it... sad? how knee-jerk people are, especially with the expectation of "perfect privacy" in a country where millions of people's SINs got leaked and that company still functions. Looking forward to that $1/month I'll get if it goes class action though... The cause is always glass half empty isn't it?

I use Linux primary, but also Android, Win10, iPadOS, iOS, macOS every day. Pick a side though.

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

#313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess what people want when they say they want a "Linux phone" is a phone that allows them to hack, mix and match their system the way they can on a desktop Linux system.

They can do that with many Android phones it’s not hard to find ones with a boot loader you can open including the Google Pixel. I used Android from day one till the LG Nexus and I switched to an iPhone after having to spend yet another weekend compiling a kernel to update my phone. Most people want a device that “just works”. Overall I would be good money on the fact that the percentage of people that say they want…

I've been using LineageOS for some years now, on 5 phones so far, and it has been, apart from initial installation, 'just works'. It auto updates, I never have to compile anything, I wouldn't know how to.

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

#314
post #246
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been trying to execute on this approach, as I'm very interested in checking out of the tracking-by-default ecosystems. We're using some Xiaomi devices we purchased, and I'm currently seething. I can't root without 'unlocking', which is a process that requires me to activate a Mi Account, which then requires my email and a SIM (?!), and 'find my device' (location) to even allow installation of apps via USB. To un…

Xiaomi phones and their apps especially the freaking weather app are routine offenders on my firewall. I use NoRoot Firewall (beta version), that runs a local VPN, to whitelist connections and man, it's horrifying. I've enabled the "Always on VPN" and "Block connections without VPN" settings (Android 10) so NOTHING goes out unless through the firewall

You should be able to disble those apps for your user with adb without root:

  adb shell pm uninstall -k --user 0 com.[miui,android,xiaomi].
Have you investigated if xiaomi.eu firmwares successfully curtail those connections?

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

#315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been trying this, and let me tell you, the user experience is absolutely terrible. The Play store and what it gives you is incredibly hard to live without, unless you really just want to use your phone for texting, browsing, and calling. If you're a minimalist, then great. If you're accustomed to what a smartphone can do, not so great. The alternative app stores are full of unimpressive, small scale apps. Dozens…

Can I ask what you use Sheets for? For anything a little more serious I always use my desktop, as even typing on my phone is very frustrating.

I've been in love with the concept of spreadsheets for as long as i can remember :)

I use them all the time for tracking expenses, tracking information for myself, creating forms and responses, etc.

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

#316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I ordered my Pinephone this month and patiently awaiting it. Despite what may currently be lacking, it's in a good enough place to be a daily driver for myself. My Blackberry Q10 served me well for years but the battery is starting to go and the OS + apps are no longer supported. I can actually say I've skipped Android/iOS entirely.

The brick wall I noticed was MS Outlook and Teams on Android didnt let me copy paste text to any non-MS app, other apps just got a plaintext error message. To open any link, I had to install Edge for Android. The phone also has policies enforced by MS Intune. How will a new player break into this market?

This is on a phone managed by your employer I assume? Intune protects the data in your employee accounts from leaking outside of those apps. In a regular Outlook without Intune installed you can copy/paste just fine.

Source: I've used the Outlook app before my phone was enrolled with my company so I noticed the differences :).

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

#318
post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you imagine a class action lawsuit for not removing null characters at the end of strings in order to save bandwidth? A 2x multiplier barely reaches the level of noteworthy. I look forward to my $12 class action payout, but let's be honest, this isn't going anywhere, and would almost certainly be a bad precedent. Legally requiring premature optimization would be the real world result of a ruling in favor of the…

We aren’t talking about premature optimization, we are talking about Google forcing customers to pay to be spied on. Assuming there are ~100 million Android phones in the US and this is costing individual consumers ~10$/year that adds up to 1 billion dollars per year across the US. Which seems like the point of class action lawsuits and far more significant than most of them.

Counterpoint: The lawsuit isn't alleging that Apple doesn't do the same thing. It only alleges that the data is more than necessary.

So the case is purely about whether it's too much logging data, not whether there is any logs at all. And since we measure that logging in actual bits sent over the air, then yes, it comes down to a technical spec.

I would be absolutely shocked if the court ruled as you suggest. That would be tantamount to suggesting that the business model of every website is illegal.

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

#319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well what's wrong with a bootloader unlocked if your device is encrypted?

If left unattended, an attacker could install bootable code that impersonates your normal startup sequence, prompting for your encryption key and booting as normal, but secretly storing or forwarding the key to the attacker. (I believe this is an example of an evil maid attack, although that name for it is somewhat new to me.) A locked bootloader would prevent such code from being installed, or at least refuse to run…

I think the missing part is generating your own key inside the secure boot mechanism, and the disk encryption being tied to that. Evil maid re-unlocks it -> encrypted data is lost.

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

#320
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://e.foundation

just please don't put this shit as a real alternative! Other ones mentionned all have their pros and cons imo but are worth the mention :)

what's wrong with it?
Post reply on HN