Google Removes Vital Privacy Feature From Android, Claims Release Was Accidental
1–10 of 207 posts
Re: Google Removes Vital Privacy Feature From Android, Claims Release Was Accidental
#2> When asked for comment, Google told us that the feature had only ever been released by accident — that it was experimental, and that it could break some of the apps policed by it.
Oh, it would definitely break some apps. Considering it would introduce new uncertainty. It's still an amazing feature.
Re: Google Removes Vital Privacy Feature From Android, Claims Release Was Accidental
#3I think it's a great feature. There have definitely been some apps where I would have liked to use them but they've had permissions requirements that I did not believe the app's core functionality needed.
Re: Google Removes Vital Privacy Feature From Android, Claims Release Was Accidental
#4I'm surprised this feature wasn't in place from day 1. It probably involves almost no implementation overhead on the OS side of things.
Apps, on the other hand, would have an extra error case to deal with, but they should be dealing with other error cases anyways.
Re: Google Removes Vital Privacy Feature From Android, Claims Release Was Accidental
#5I think it's a great feature. There have definitely been some apps where I would have liked to use them but they've had permissions requirements that I did not believe the app's core functionality needed.
every time I open facebook messanger with gps enabled, I see it querying my location. I hate it so much. Would love to be able to turn that off
Re: Google Removes Vital Privacy Feature From Android, Claims Release Was Accidental
#6It's been a pretty shitty week for privacy, hasn't it? First the Disqus hack, then the changed Block feature on Twitter, and now this?
Re: Google Removes Vital Privacy Feature From Android, Claims Release Was Accidental
#7I hope it wasn't just an "accident" and Google really was working on a way to make it work for both developers and users, and perhaps it was there much like the ART runtime is in there, even though it's not ready for primetime.
I think Google can make it work, but they need to be committed to it. Surely there's a way for the apps to gracefully transition to not needing certain permissions. Google just needs to introduce the proper rules for developers to make this work.
Re: Google Removes Vital Privacy Feature From Android, Claims Release Was Accidental
#8It's been a pretty shitty week for privacy, hasn't it? First the Disqus hack, then the changed Block feature on Twitter, and now this?
Twitter has gone back on that after listening to user feedback. I honestly think this 'App Ops' feature will also return, it was only found by sniffing about in the APKs and could only be activated (easily) by installing an app which surfaced the settings pane; that's not the same as it being a default menu option that was removed - it wasn't meant for public release yet. I appreciate the EFF and their stance on this but I'm giving Google the benefit of doubt on this one, hopefully we'll see it soon in its full glory.
Re: Google Removes Vital Privacy Feature From Android, Claims Release Was Accidental
#9I didn't use App Ops. Did it allow a general policy to be set? I can see you can set permission per app from the screen shot.
I'm not sure I buy Google's excuse. Any app worth it's salt should be able to cope with not having the permission set. I'm guessing this was impacting their own core apps.
Re: Google Removes Vital Privacy Feature From Android, Claims Release Was Accidental
#10It's been a pretty shitty week for privacy, hasn't it? First the Disqus hack, then the changed Block feature on Twitter, and now this?
The changed block feature on Twitter didn't do anything negative for privacy.