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Google Removes Vital Privacy Feature From Android, Claims Release Was Accidental

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Re: Google Removes Vital Privacy Feature From Android, Claims Release Was Accidental

#41

Post by CalRobert »

thecodeore wrote: post #39
CalRobert wrote: post #24

I'm probably going to turn in to that old guy with tin foil who can't play any games because nobody supports his choice of platform, but I really miss when computers were devices you could buy and then put your choice of OS on. Phones are pretty much just little ARM computers, why the hell don't I just install Ubuntu, Firefox OS, Android, WinPhone, Symbian, whatever? I could format a microSD card to boot from and go…

Because while the ARM processor is probably supported, most of the other sensors, camera, cell radios, etc have proprietary binary drivers that are not. Just read the problems Replicant, the true FOSS android, has had getting all components to work correctly.

An excellent point, and a bummer.

Re: Google Removes Vital Privacy Feature From Android, Claims Release Was Accidental

#42

Post by Nursie »

CalRobert wrote: post #24

I'm probably going to turn in to that old guy with tin foil who can't play any games because nobody supports his choice of platform, but I really miss when computers were devices you could buy and then put your choice of OS on. Phones are pretty much just little ARM computers, why the hell don't I just install Ubuntu, Firefox OS, Android, WinPhone, Symbian, whatever? I could format a microSD card to boot from and go…

One of the issues with that is that devices on ARM systems are not as discoverable as a lot of other systems. You tend to need a kernel built for a particular processor variant, and it needs a device map of some sort for your specific device or it won't know how to find any of the stuff on the board and may just crash. Without this map you just can't boot.

Graphics are also very non-open at the moment, so it can be very hard to install other operating systems in a useful way for that reason.

In theory though, I agree entirely, that would be nice :)

Re: Google Removes Vital Privacy Feature From Android, Claims Release Was Accidental

#43

Post by Nursie »

They still need to split the permissions more. READ_PHONE_STATE is nasty.

Apps ask for the permission because they (for instance) need to pause playback on a video because you have an incoming call. But it covers all the phone details (numbers, IMEI etc) and who the call is coming from and a hell of a lot of other stuff.

Who the hell thought that was a good idea?

Re: Google Removes Vital Privacy Feature From Android, Claims Release Was Accidental

#44

Post by nhaehnle »

kmfrk wrote: post #17
SamReidHughes wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The changed block feature on Twitter didn't do anything negative for privacy.

It took away users' ability to block other users from viewing their tweets? How is that not privacy?

I think the point is that if Alice hopes to hide her tweets from Eve by blocking Eve, then Eve can always log out of Twitter to see those tweets again.

Conclusion: Blocking users cannot ever be a privacy feature. You cannot prevent a specific user from seeing your tweets without preventing every un-logged-in person from seeing your tweets.

Edit: Though admittedly, that's a bit of a black-and-white perspective. I suppose blocking a user from seeing your tweets could work in the same way that hell-banning works: If Eve never logs out to check whether you blocked her, she won't find out. It's a bit of security through obscurity: far from ideal, but it might work for some practical problems.

Re: Google Removes Vital Privacy Feature From Android, Claims Release Was Accidental

#45

Post by Nursie »

DanBC wrote: post #34
ansible wrote: post #19

The original intention (as explained by Dianne Hackborn among others) is that if the user sees the app requesting too many capabilities... the user should simply choose not to install the app. Having the user needing to understand all the different capabilities is too much. Having a bunch of pop-ups ( cough Vista) is also bad UI design. The current set of capabilities is too technical for end users to really understa…

> Have a single fake IMEI number, for example. How would that work in countries where modifying the IMEI is illegal? UK law (note prison sentence) http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2002/31/section/1 I don't know if this is current US law or not. Here's one example http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:S.3186.IS :

I don't think android would affect the IMEI that gets sent to the network, and the intent of the law was to allow tracking of phones by IMEI (kinda scary in itself, kinda useful for law enforcement) and to allow stolen phones to be blocked from the network and rendered useless, which AFAICT has had a huge impact on levels of phone theft.

>> But a person does not commit an offence under this section if—

>> (a)he is the manufacturer of the device, or

>> (b)he does the act mentioned in subsection (1) with the written consent of the manufacturer of the device.

Perhaps the manual that comes with your phone could come with a line in the license saying that modifying the IDs for the purposes of stopping apps snaffling data is allowed.

Re: Google Removes Vital Privacy Feature From Android, Claims Release Was Accidental

#46

Post by uniray »

I'm surprised at the EFF. this post seems intended to save face for them rather than anything else.

They had a post recently lauding App Ops although it was never officially released, announced nor documented. And it certainly was not accessible to the average user.

Also it was obviously not compatible with most apps, as they didn’t fail too gracefully. Again: App Ops Was Never Meant For End Users, Used For Internal Testing And Debugging Only

http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/12/11/googler-app-ops-was-...

I do hope Google is working on something similar on an OS level for future releases, but this hack job by the EFF is disappointing and unnecessary.

Re: Google Removes Vital Privacy Feature From Android, Claims Release Was Accidental

#47

Post by josteink »

raverbashing wrote: post #16
oceanstone wrote: post #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.

Yeah, because checking return codes and error values is overrated Thanks Google, for making my phone less secure .

Yeah, because checking return codes and error values is overrated

Even Google's own non-AOSP camera is guilty of this too.

The API docs says an app should check for camera capabilities before using them. Still the PhotoSphere feature in Google's non-AOSP camera attempts to set Flash-settings on devices with no flash-capability.

To overcome the issue you have to rewrite the camera-interface code to ignore API calls to SetFlash, SetLightmode etc when not supported, instead of throwing as you should be doing according to the docs.

So yeah. Even Google is guilty of this one.

Re: Google Removes Vital Privacy Feature From Android, Claims Release Was Accidental

#48

Post by hrjet »

salient wrote: post #7

I 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 introd…

I don't have hopes of Google restoring the AppOps functionality in the future. Most of the apps require these excessive permissions because of third-party ad libraries. Google's AdMob library is the most popular of these libraries, being used in 36% of Android apps [1].

[1] : http://www.appbrain.com/stats/libraries/ad

Re: Google Removes Vital Privacy Feature From Android, Claims Release Was Accidental

#49

Post by kiallmacinnes »

rtpg wrote: post #5
davedx wrote: post #3

I 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

Have you tried not opening it?

Seriously, if you use any of facebooks stuff, you clearly value something they offer more than your privacy. Everybody, and I'm not just talking about the HN crowd, knows how bad Facebook is when it comes to privacy.

Re: Google Removes Vital Privacy Feature From Android, Claims Release Was Accidental

#50

Post by dictum »

throwwit wrote: post #20

This is a pretty disturbing trend. Just recently I ran into problems with a TV station's app on iOS that refused to play video without Location Services Enabled. I don't mind a general region being disclosed, but the house-level accuracy of the location data definitely creeps me out. I don't think the general public realizes location can be equivalent to a person's id.

> I don't mind a general region being disclosed, but the house-level accuracy of the location data definitely creeps me out.

This is exactly what I want most of the time. My ISP's servers are usually in neighboring cities, so geoip isn't precise enough, but GPS is too precise for my needs. I just want to disclose what city I'm in. This is enough info to give me useful results (e.g. I search Google for "italian restaurants", it gives me results for my city first) without violating my privacy by giving Google my location habits. Maybe OSes could give an option to reduce the granularity of the location reported, so you could disclose the town or state, but not the exact street, for instance.

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