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Major Android Bug Is a Privacy Disaster (CVE-2014-6041)

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Re: Major Android Bug Is a Privacy Disaster (CVE-2014-6041)

#171

Post by _pmf_ »

autism_hurts wrote: post #51
javert wrote: post #37

I am a big Linux fan and appreciate the openness and control that I can get with Android as opposed to Apple and Microsoft products, but... My Android experience has been shit, and I'm really getting sick of it. Admittedly, much or even most of the problem for me is the OEMs screwing things up and not sending out updates.

You're not the only one. I'm sorry, but the Android issue has devolved into a holy war but... .. support is terrible on the Android side. Really terrible.

> .. support is terrible on the Android side. Really terrible.

Buy a Windows Phone, then.

Re: Major Android Bug Is a Privacy Disaster (CVE-2014-6041)

#172

Post by kitd »

nkozyra wrote: post #92
AjithAntony wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. I was using a Nexus One for a long time until I had to prune so many apps due to space that it wasn't worth using. I got a new phone, HTC One S (I needed a t-mobile branded phone for wifi calling) with several gigs of system partition space, and now I have to play that game again. I recognize that there are a bunch of features now that I get to enjoy, but now I have to choose which ones I want to keep. When I s…

I have the latest Chrome for Android and it's 65MB for the app. Still large, but nowhere near 190MB.

Likewise on my Moto G running 4.4.4.

65Mb app

22Mb data

= 87Mb total

Cache is recorded separately, currently at 205Mb. I wonder if it is a question of how the figures are being displayed in different versions of Android.

Re: Major Android Bug Is a Privacy Disaster (CVE-2014-6041)

#173

Post by andor »

scintill76 wrote: post #159
hamburglar wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I'm going to be forced to switch to Chrome now for safety's sake, but I've been avoiding it because it has some major usability problems that Android Browser doesn't. In particular, not reflowing a web page when you zoom in is infuriating because I invariably end up zooming in order to be able to read an article, then I have to pan side to side for every line of text. Font sizing is bizarre too. Web pages sud…

> Font sizing is bizarre too. Web pages suddenly have font sizes increasing and decreasing seemingly at random, and to the point of illegibility I haven't tried Chrome, but I see this in CyanogenMod's stock browser (probably close to AOSP) and Firefox. In Firefox's case at least, my research pointed to "font boosting" being the cause of increasing/decreasing, but I haven't found a good fix.

Recent (CM11?) versions of the Cyanogenmod browser are actually based on Chromium.

Re: Major Android Bug Is a Privacy Disaster (CVE-2014-6041)

#174

Post by quarterto »

Pxtl wrote: post #85
chadzawistowski wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AOSP Browser is the unsupported one. Google deprecated it in favor of Chrome.

But AOSP is still a core part of the android OS because it's used by every app that wishes to render a page.

In 4.4, WebView is backed by Chromium.

Re: Major Android Bug Is a Privacy Disaster (CVE-2014-6041)

#175

Post by brudgers »

girvo wrote: post #83
allegory wrote: post #10

It's this sort of thing that puts me off Android as a platform. Even my mother got sold a 2.2 handset recently (Samsung Galaxy Ace) that hasn't been patched for the best part of 3 years. You never know when you're going to end up with a lemon on your hands. Big jump to this conclusion but I'm more inclined to trust Microsoft at the moment as they have a better reputation for lifetime (unlike Android), have a very pub…

Microsoft may update their older devices (well, once we moved to WP8 anyway, WP7 can go jump apparently), but my girlfriend's HTC 8X is half broken because her carrier refused to let the update go through. Absolutely frustrating... that's one thing I am happy about with my 4S, for sure. Screw carriers.

Microsoft upgraded WP7 to WP7.8 Mango when WP8 was released. It backported many of the new features to existing devices. including my Dell VenuePro.

Re: Major Android Bug Is a Privacy Disaster (CVE-2014-6041)

#176

Post by pmontra »

jarek wrote: post #168
pmontra wrote: post #165

This leaves us with little alternatives. Tint is affected. Dolphin is affected. Firefox is just horrible on mobile, come see this page and you'll understand why (they can't get font inflation right). Chrome and Opera are what's left. Anything else?

I'm using Firefox on Android 4.4 as my full-time browser, it is rather good most of the time. TBH HN is the only site I can think of that gives me trouble... and knowing the authors' attitude to HTML I'm prepared to accept the fault is not Firefox's.

There are many font inflation bugs open on Firefox mobile. One of them was opened about HN https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=707195 in 2011. Others are about reddit. Others are about other sites. Firefox didn't grok a way to handle font inflation in a reasonable way. All the other browsers did. I quote a Firefox developer:

------ From a UX perspective, we should really try to fix this somehow. Reddit and ycombinator look terrible in our browser right now. Some examples:

ycombinator http://cl.ly/0l2f2v0p3v0e290J0A0W

Reddit http://cl.ly/1M452m2a2D3D04070S1I

These pages look perfectly fine in stock Browser -- they are a little wonky in Chrome but still better than us ------

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=707195#c27

That was 2012-05-01.

Re: Major Android Bug Is a Privacy Disaster (CVE-2014-6041)

#177

Post by jarek »

pmontra wrote: post #176
jarek wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm using Firefox on Android 4.4 as my full-time browser, it is rather good most of the time. TBH HN is the only site I can think of that gives me trouble... and knowing the authors' attitude to HTML I'm prepared to accept the fault is not Firefox's.

There are many font inflation bugs open on Firefox mobile. One of them was opened about HN https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=707195 in 2011. Others are about reddit. Others are about other sites. Firefox didn't grok a way to handle font inflation in a reasonable way. All the other browsers did. I quote a Firefox developer: ------ From a UX perspective, we should really try to fix this somehow. Reddit and y…

1) reddit renders fine for me now, zoom is consistent (Firefox 32, Android 4.4)

2) HN uses HTML straight out of 90s (tables nested three deep, spacer images to indent threads) so I don't mind them not focusing on trying to salvage it. Also from the comments thread: "to fix this we'd want to know the widths of the containers of all the text, which requires doing layout on the whole subtree (or at least a decent part of it), but we need to know the inflation numbers before we do layout. (It's probably doable by constructing reflow states for the entire subtree as we walk it, but that would be a significant performance hit that I don't think we want to take.)" Don't abuse tables and you won't have a problem.

Re: Major Android Bug Is a Privacy Disaster (CVE-2014-6041)

#178

Post by downandout »

Android has its merits, but more and more I am reminded of this aptly titled article (proudly mentioned by Tim Cook during the WWDC keynote): "Android Fragmentation Turning Devices Into a Toxic Hellstew of Vulnerabilities" [1]. These kinds of incredibly serious, system level issues are a significant competitive disadvantage, and they keep happening. Google needs to build fast security update requirements into their Android license agreements with device makers. At least then, when these things are discovered and publicized, tens of millions of people won't be left vulnerable.

[1] http://www.zdnet.com/android-fragmentation-turning-devices-i...

Re: Major Android Bug Is a Privacy Disaster (CVE-2014-6041)

#179

Post by ZoFreX »

diminish wrote: post #146

As Firefox saved us from dangerous browsing circa 2004m from IE5,6,7, now I may save us from obsolete Android stock browsers. At least that's what I use.

Unfortunately a lot of apps embed the Android browser as well, and you can't change that.

Re: Major Android Bug Is a Privacy Disaster (CVE-2014-6041)

#180

Post by ZoFreX »

allegory wrote: post #10

It's this sort of thing that puts me off Android as a platform. Even my mother got sold a 2.2 handset recently (Samsung Galaxy Ace) that hasn't been patched for the best part of 3 years. You never know when you're going to end up with a lemon on your hands. Big jump to this conclusion but I'm more inclined to trust Microsoft at the moment as they have a better reputation for lifetime (unlike Android), have a very pub…

The continuing sales of the Galaxy Ace should be criminal. If you buy one and update all apps it comes with, bam: you're out of space. Not to mention even if you apply all updates available you're still a walking target for every Android exploit that's come out in the last 3 years. It is completely unfit for purpose, but even when replacements came out (Y, Ace 2) the shops near me were still pushing the Ace. Why??
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