All the people involved in this product need a significant public award for their efforts.
I Tested an HDMI Adapter That Demands Your Location and Spams You with Ads
61–70 of 132 posts
Re: I Tested an HDMI Adapter That Demands Your Location and Spams You with Ads
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not really, lots of companies use .co instead of .com because there's different availability. It's been a second tier alternative to .com for years.
Technically, it's still the ccTLD for Colombia, even though anyone can register a .co domain, similar to .io (for British Indian Ocean Territory). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.co
There's a lot of ccTLDs that are considered to be "generic": .ai, .as, .fm, .io, .me, .tv, .ws...
For example Google search will treat them the same as .com, while others like .de or .fr are gonna be interpreted as if your website is targetting a specific market.
Re: I Tested an HDMI Adapter That Demands Your Location and Spams You with Ads
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think this flow sort of supports that. https://9to5mac.com/2020/10/07/limit-third-party-iphone-phot... If I remember right, there’s a way to get a “take picture” option in the chooser. I’m not sure how the qr code would then be recognized, though I’m not sure why you wouldn’t have them get the qr code via the system camera app.
That’s intended for selecting a pre-taken photo without giving an app library access. You’d have to get the user to take the picture then come back to your app. What you really need is a system dialogue that pops up the camera and only returns the QR code to the app, the way the photo picker can see the whole library but only gives the app the one selected photo.
Pretty sure Android has this. You can make an app without camera permissions, send an intent that opens the built-in camera to take a picture and you are given access to only that picture. It means you cannot record things in the background all the time, and users don't need to make a decision about a sensitive permission.
Re: I Tested an HDMI Adapter That Demands Your Location and Spams You with Ads
#64And yet, we can't have side loaded apps because somehow that would make the App Store worse. Phooey!
This is not the gotcha you think it is. Imagine how awful the apps we would be forced to sideload would be, if companies like the one that made this dongle were allowed to make them.
I don't know. This app from the app store is already near 80% of the worst I could imagine. Only formatting the storage might be worse... and then they wouldn't get any more juicy location data.
Re: I Tested an HDMI Adapter That Demands Your Location and Spams You with Ads
#65> I decided to connect the cord using an old iPhone that I no longer use and that no longer has anything I care about on it.
Uh oh. Hope that means securely wiped and not just "I deleted the notes and photos and put in a drawer."
Re: I Tested an HDMI Adapter That Demands Your Location and Spams You with Ads
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
The adapter flashes a QR code on your monitor. It's not plug-n-play.
Requiring the use of an app, in order to use some kind of adapter cable? I must be getting old, feel like I've just crawled from under a rock... :-) That would also mean this cable becomes useless the moment URL encoded in the QR disappears? As for the app: even if it's total crap, if only 50% of cable-buyers proceed to install the app, that 50% is still gained as potentially spied-upon subjects. There's a new please…
The nice thing about such a cable is that it could connect to the cloud to display that screen without plugging the other end.
Re: I Tested an HDMI Adapter That Demands Your Location and Spams You with Ads
#67And yet, we can't have side loaded apps because somehow that would make the App Store worse. Phooey!
This is not the gotcha you think it is. Imagine how awful the apps we would be forced to sideload would be, if companies like the one that made this dongle were allowed to make them.
Computers have been that way since forever. It wouldn't be nearly as bad as you make it out to be.
Re: I Tested an HDMI Adapter That Demands Your Location and Spams You with Ads
#68Not related to this story specifically, but I've been very impressed with 404 media's stories thusfar. They haven't been around long, but they've already done a lot of impressive journalism. I'm glad we've finally got a tech media outlet with teeth.
Re: I Tested an HDMI Adapter That Demands Your Location and Spams You with Ads
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not really an adapter cable. It's got a little SOC in there that streams your iPhone's display from the app to the HDMI port. Meanwhile, your personal data is being streamed back to China...
Part of me is looking forward to the time when a government activates a significant part of all the spyware/adware/backdoors/etc in the world as part of a cyberwar. COVID would be a child's game compared to that, but that disaster would at last make people understand how bad tech has become at this point. Double points if the operation is started by another state/group that stole those backdoors.
The worst part of adult life is realizing you already live in a world where this happens. Regularly. And no-one bats an eye. And you try to maintain sanity by adding hypothesis (“But I mean, with the government giving the keys to…”) and all of the evil you can think of, also exists.
Re: I Tested an HDMI Adapter That Demands Your Location and Spams You with Ads
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have always assumed that is a way for Google to normalize granting the position permission. You could "pair" apps with devices if Bluetooth position spyware was a concern.
Before Android required that permission, there were marketing companies selling malls the ability to see who was around by the ID of their Bluetooth beacon.
But pairing work well without the app involved, we could just give a permission to a specific already-paired devices and keep location for apps that actually need to scan.