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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

#141

Post by eropple »

awjr wrote: post #9

I 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.

> Any app worth it's salt should be able to cope with not having the permission set.

That doesn't in any way follow. My Android application handles the expected failure cases enumerated in the API. It does not handle the "permissions granted when the user saw your manifest and agreed to grant those permissions disappear because reasons" case because they're is no reasonable expectation that case is necessary. The APIs don't allow for that case, if it throws a catchable exception at all it'll be an undocumented one, I can't differentiate between it any other exception that might roll out of Android. Why would be anything other than unhandled?

Which isn't to say that data permissions should not be mockable; they should. But your "anything I don't understand is easy" post is straight-up bad.

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

#142

Post by SmileyKeith »

jxf wrote: post #122
exodust wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't sound right to me. I don't think developers are doing this.

I don't think developers should do it, but there's no question that they're doing it. For example, Facebook requests almost every permission under the sun. But if you look at the average user's permission profile for their Facebook app, they'll only show a tiny fraction of the overall permissions that Facebook originally requested.

And that's the really scary part. Is that so many applications do this for just unreasonable permissions. Then you get one of the bad applications that's actually using that data for something nefarious and it destroys trust in the process. For me at least.

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

#143

Post by 10098 »

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…

> I really miss when computers were devices you could buy and then put your choice of OS on.

uh, those are still around you know. You can even carry them in a backpack.

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

#144

Post by nitrogen »

Nursie wrote: post #136
nitrogen wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the next step is convincing manufacturers to put the .dts at a predictable location on a small flash or EEPROM.

I wish you the best of luck in convincing MS to make it easier to install linux on their phones, and convincing embedded system builders to spend extra on hardware. Either way, I was talking about what we have now , and even if we have device tree now it doesn't solve this problem without other pieces to the puzzle. And that's without even getting on to the mess of closed source graphics drivers that exist in the arm…

I thought Linaro was a consortium to do exactly that, minus the Microsoft part. As you say this doesn't help us now, but hopefully some day there will be a widespread ARM equivalent of the BIOS and UEFI. It will probably start (or has started?) with ARM servers.

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

#145

Post by annoyedgoogler »

kllrnohj wrote: post #127
cognivore wrote: post #97

There is another point here, one I think even more important and more disconcerting. Google released an entire feature of their Android OS BY ACCIDENT. W...T...F?! How do you release a feature "by accident?" By having awful quality control? How does that make me feel about the rest of their Android OS now? Either this, or they're lying through their teeth in an effort to cover up. In either case, it's evil.

No, EFF is simply wrong. The feature was never released, and instead of posting a "we screwed up" retraction EFF is now trying to shift blame.

If you put software into the wild - you have released it. Just because the cycle has sped up, you didn't document it properly, and your QA failed, does not mean you didn't release it.

I'm not taking sides here, but you have to call a spade a spade.

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

#146

Post by tomrod »

nitrogen wrote: post #130
tomrod wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The main obstacle to boot-your-own-phone in the US is of course the carriers. Surely if it were profitably one of them would break ranks, right? I mean, we have intelligent businesspeople in telecoms at least occasionally?

By this assumption, surely everything that can be invented already has, right?

Within telecom pricing strategy? Yes, given current technology.

One can go back in the lit to Bell Labs research in the 60s for all the pricing strategies. Jean Tirole fleshed most of it out with help by Jean Rochet.

Source: Economist, network industries are my object of research

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

#147

Post by Nursie »

nitrogen wrote: post #144
Nursie wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish you the best of luck in convincing MS to make it easier to install linux on their phones, and convincing embedded system builders to spend extra on hardware. Either way, I was talking about what we have now , and even if we have device tree now it doesn't solve this problem without other pieces to the puzzle. And that's without even getting on to the mess of closed source graphics drivers that exist in the arm…

I thought Linaro was a consortium to do exactly that, minus the Microsoft part. As you say this doesn't help us now, but hopefully some day there will be a widespread ARM equivalent of the BIOS and UEFI. It will probably start (or has started?) with ARM servers.

Cool.

All the more reason for me to get up to speed with Linaro then, thanks for the heads up :)

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

#148

Post by richbradshaw »

fooqux wrote: post #131
auctiontheory wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pointer has been dereferenced, if you will. I do not think dereferenced means what you think it means.

Holy shit, I feel like an idiot. Still, thanks for pointing it out.. keeps me humble. Kids, if you're curious what we're talking about, look up dangling pointers in C, which is what I should have 'referenced' in the first place.

It's OK – I hadn't realised that's what dereferenced meant either! Has been 10 years since I wrote any C though.

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

#149

Post by Groxx »

annoyedgoogler wrote: post #145
kllrnohj wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, EFF is simply wrong. The feature was never released, and instead of posting a "we screwed up" retraction EFF is now trying to shift blame.

If you put software into the wild - you have released it. Just because the cycle has sped up, you didn't document it properly, and your QA failed, does not mean you didn't release it. I'm not taking sides here, but you have to call a spade a spade.

Arguably true, but if you rely on a hidden, undocumented feature and it changes or goes away and you don't like it, I'm not sure you have any right to complain since its volatile nature was quite clear from the start.

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

#150

Post by ben1040 »

annoyedgoogler wrote: post #145
kllrnohj wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, EFF is simply wrong. The feature was never released, and instead of posting a "we screwed up" retraction EFF is now trying to shift blame.

If you put software into the wild - you have released it. Just because the cycle has sped up, you didn't document it properly, and your QA failed, does not mean you didn't release it. I'm not taking sides here, but you have to call a spade a spade.

But with no clear user-facing way to activate it, meaning you have to use some unofficial app that accesses it in an undocumented manner, it has the smell of something that you could not rely upon as a "feature."

If it's there and it works, then great for you, but you can't expect a whole lot more. It sucks that they didn't actually make it a published feature with an actual means of accessing it, and take on the responsibility of maintaining it, because it seems like something I'd like to use.

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