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Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

peabee.substack.com

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Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#131

Post by josephg »

pizza wrote: post #129
codethief wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A property that tells the OS “my app is related to domain example.com”. Make it an array of domains if you must. Elaborating on the sibling's comment: There is already such a property that apps must set in their manifests in order for them to be able to react to links/intents for domain-associated-with-the-app.com. But it doesn't address the question of how a browser is supposed to be able to open links to domain-a…

I mean, do Windows or macOS tell the browser which mail apps you have installed when it handles a mail:// URI?

No, but web browsers do have the ability to ask the OS which application is associated with a certain url type.

But it doesn’t leak that information to web pages.

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#132

Post by cAtte_ »

izacus wrote: post #114
whatevertrevor wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that congruent with the article's claim that 31 out of 47 apps they tested had this filter?

No idea, but we did have apps rejected because of similar permissions.

"similar". so what you said isn't true then?

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#133

Post by josephg »

WuxiFingerHold wrote: post #125
andsoitis wrote: post #26

> everyone knows all the alls on your phone On Android phones. iPhone doesn’t have this privacy deficiency.

iPhones are less of a privacy nightmare. One of the biggest incentives for creating apps is to scrape all kind of data from the users. Look at how many apps require permission to see you contacts. And how many actually need your contacts to function. That's why I'm still a bit surprised that many seem to be surprised by findings like this one here.

I wish there was an option for “give bogus contacts” which showed the app a list of contacts - but it was all randomly generated junk. Make it so the app can’t tell if the contacts it gets are real or fake.

I read a fiction book years ago where there were cameras everywhere. To get privacy, instead of hiding their identities the protagonist paid companies to insert bogus information into the information brokers’ network. So if they tried to figure out where they were on a certain day, 20 records would match. I think this is a much more likely vision of the future.

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#134

Post by danparsonson »

billfruit wrote: post #78
wkat4242 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because it stores the files there so you can sync them with other permissions. And also that your notes aren't deleted like they would be if they were stored in the internal app storage. There's more granular options for filesystem access available but if you implement them you limit yourself to the latest Android releases. According to Exodus it has no trackers and it's an open source app also so you can see wh…

Obsidian isn't open source by most reports. Surely Obsidian do not to see all files on the device, it only really needs to see the files the user needs it to see.

There isn't a permission for that though - it's all or nothing. I agree that it should be more granular; each app should really have its own scoped file storage area by default, with "access anything" being reserved for file browsers, backup software, etc.

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#135

Post by 3np »

josephg wrote: post #133
WuxiFingerHold wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iPhones are less of a privacy nightmare. One of the biggest incentives for creating apps is to scrape all kind of data from the users. Look at how many apps require permission to see you contacts. And how many actually need your contacts to function. That's why I'm still a bit surprised that many seem to be surprised by findings like this one here.

I wish there was an option for “give bogus contacts” which showed the app a list of contacts - but it was all randomly generated junk. Make it so the app can’t tell if the contacts it gets are real or fake. I read a fiction book years ago where there were cameras everywhere. To get privacy, instead of hiding their identities the protagonist paid companies to insert bogus information into the information brokers’ netw…

I guess rather than closing my Google account I should have removed the 2FA and changed the password to a weak one on the HIBP list (:

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#137

Post by turblety »

I still, will never understand the need for native "Apps". To this day, I have never seen an "App" that couldn't simply have been a website/webapp. Most of them would likely be improved by being a webapp.

The only benefits I can see of "Apps", are the developer get's access to private information they really don't need.

Yeah, they get to be on the "App Store". But the "App Store" is a totally unnecessary concept introduced by Apple/Google so they could scrape a huge percentage in sales.

Web browsers have good (not perfect) sandboxing, costs no fees to "submit" and are accessible to everyone on every phone.

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#138

Post by billfruit »

danparsonson wrote: post #134
billfruit wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obsidian isn't open source by most reports. Surely Obsidian do not to see all files on the device, it only really needs to see the files the user needs it to see.

There isn't a permission for that though - it's all or nothing. I agree that it should be more granular; each app should really have its own scoped file storage area by default, with "access anything" being reserved for file browsers, backup software, etc.

Android already has support for scoped storage. So it is not clear why Obisidian needs the whole file system permission.

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#139

Post by zer0zzz »

turblety wrote: post #137

I still, will never understand the need for native "Apps". To this day, I have never seen an "App" that couldn't simply have been a website/webapp. Most of them would likely be improved by being a webapp. The only benefits I can see of "Apps", are the developer get's access to private information they really don't need. Yeah, they get to be on the "App Store". But the "App Store" is a totally unnecessary concept intr…

The most basic app, a notepad, I often prefer native. When I go between google keep or notion to apple notes I can tell the difference. If the text is long enough, the web apps just can not load the content.

Just to confirm:

I dumped all of my notes from my insanely large apple notes (about 16000 lines of text) and pasted them into Google Keep, Notion, Google Docs. With the exception of Google Docs the rest of them flat out froze and I had to kill my browser. Stop trying to tell us that the browser is the answer to everything when most web apps cant do the job of Notepad.exe or vi

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