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Massachusetts health notifications app installed without users’ knowledge

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Re: Massachusetts health notifications app installed without users’ knowledge

#391

Post by mixmastamyk »

yunohn wrote: post #118
ElViajero wrote: post #56

It is obvious that we need better legislation to deal with all the new possibilities that technologies have opened. The installation of this app, even done with good intent, open a lot of questions on what should be possible or not to be done by government and corporations. When you get a device with pre-installed, uninstallable, or auto-installed apps. What are the rules? > "By enabling this service, you can be quic…

> instead of the silent install the government could have spend money in advertisement campaigns This absolutely does not work. Here, the NL gov tried this and almost nobody installed the app, despite it using the privacy-safe google/apple API.

Freedom at work is a beautiful thing.

Re: Massachusetts health notifications app installed without users’ knowledge

#392

Post by musicale »

mrtksn wrote: post #326
madars wrote: post #261

I was reading about this yesterday and confirmed that I did not have gov.ma.covid19.exposurenotifications.v3 nor gov.ma.covid19.exposurenotifications installed. I turned off auto-updates in the Play store (Settings -> Network preferences -> Auto update apps -> Don't auto update apps) and went to sleep. This morning I woke up with a cheerful notification that Google can help with COVID notifications and gov.ma.covid19…

Remember when Tim Cook put Bono's album in the iTunes library of everybody? That's when it felt that the smartphones are not our devices. Someone you don't know can and U2 album to your library without you ask for it or being able to do anything about it. You can understand it with an OS update. It's the new shiny thing that comes with bunch of stuff and this new one has this new app. However, getting it without acti…

That was completely bungled.

If they had simply made it free to download for 24 hours, or pay-what-you-want donated to charity, few would have complained, and it would probably have generated a lot of positive rather than negative publicity.

Re: Massachusetts health notifications app installed without users’ knowledge

#394

Post by hungryforcodes »

dTal wrote: post #153
tdeck wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is that it's the Play Store app itself that does this (con.android.vending). That app is responsible for both updating itself regularly and installing/updating other apps. One possible way: There is a daily job run in the Play Store called "daily hygiene" that performs various configured tasks based on device state and device targeting. It would not be difficult to add some code to install this app for MA us…

They don't have to add any code or push a Play Store update or wait for a daily cronjob. Listening for remote installation requests is a core feature of Google Play Services. It is not a mystery how this was done.

So you keep "claiming", but where is this documented?

Re: Massachusetts health notifications app installed without users’ knowledge

#395

Post by colejohnson66 »

rhn_mk1 wrote: post #378
webinvest wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I quite like Bono’s U2 album. Also it doesn’t come with any downsides like the Massachusetts app does.

Wouldn't it bloat the album collection, making it harder to search/skim the list?

I’d say that if a single album is a minuscule change to the list and wouldn’t make finding music any harder. If it is a major change (such as a list of 10), then I could see it being “bloat”, but it’s not like you couldn’t delete it.

Re: Massachusetts health notifications app installed without users’ knowledge

#396

Post by account42 »

cblconfederate wrote: post #293
beprogrammed wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just software updating software, so a switch would just be a token gesture, unless it wasn't, in which case you need to have the software be loaded from some ROM and the ROM only writable when the switch was activated, in which case that would be a fantastic device.

all diskettes used to have read-only locks

... which does not actually make the medium non-writable but only acts as an indicator to the drive, which with the right firmware could just ignore it.

Re: Massachusetts health notifications app installed without users’ knowledge

#397

Post by LorenPechtel »

_y5hn wrote: post #315
bonoboTP wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also an ego-threatening thing. Often the older folks or otherwise nontechnical people are socially higher status and being lectured about something that they may not understand sounds dangerous to them or they take it as being challenged by them, especially if the person explaining it is lower social status, younger, "just a kid" etc. It's easier for them to just refuse to participate and dismiss the topic as ir…

When someone has lived 70+ years and done fine for most of those years. What is the use for them to learn what an "icon" on the "desktop" is, and why should they care about "browsers"? This very much feels like justification for victim blaming.

Because the world changes. You don't change, you get left behind, sometimes in very important ways. (For example, my wife's licensing board now sends the renewal stuff only by e-mail, not snail mail. There are a few old-school people who have to get someone else to get the form for them.)

Re: Massachusetts health notifications app installed without users’ knowledge

#398

Post by LorenPechtel »

dTal wrote: post #340
015UUZn8aEvW wrote: post #328

I emailed massnotifyhelp@mass.gov to ask why the app was on my phone, and I got the following response: Hi [my name], In order for MassNotify to be available to users in their phone’s settings, an update was made by Google that resulted in some users seeing MassNotify appear in their app list in the Google Play Store. Apologies if this caused any confusion. The appearance of MassNotify in the app list does not mean t…

This raises an interesting point. Android subdivides much of its core functionality into various hidden "apps". Everyone's all up in arms about this, but I don't remember a similar outcry when the Covid-19 exposure API was "forcibly" added to the Google Services Framework. This isn't really any different from that, or any other OS update. I naturally agree that Google's remote-root is creepy and weird, but why is thi…

Also because there's a substantial portion of our population that is radically opposed to anything that acknowledges the virus as anything but business as usual.

Re: Massachusetts health notifications app installed without users’ knowledge

#400

Post by fomine3 »

mrtksn wrote: post #326
madars wrote: post #261

I was reading about this yesterday and confirmed that I did not have gov.ma.covid19.exposurenotifications.v3 nor gov.ma.covid19.exposurenotifications installed. I turned off auto-updates in the Play store (Settings -> Network preferences -> Auto update apps -> Don't auto update apps) and went to sleep. This morning I woke up with a cheerful notification that Google can help with COVID notifications and gov.ma.covid19…

Remember when Tim Cook put Bono's album in the iTunes library of everybody? That's when it felt that the smartphones are not our devices. Someone you don't know can and U2 album to your library without you ask for it or being able to do anything about it. You can understand it with an OS update. It's the new shiny thing that comes with bunch of stuff and this new one has this new app. However, getting it without acti…

Let's see what will happen with Apple's upcoming U2 chip.
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