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Battery power alone can be used to track Android phones

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Battery power alone can be used to track Android phones

#71

Post by freshhawk »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #68
romaniv wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am ver surprised there is still no mass outrage over Android permissions. 1. They are not properly named or explained. And no, this shouldn't be on some obscure website. This should be right there, in the menu that asks for them. 2. There is no way to filter apps in the play store by permissions. This isn't just a privacy thing. Apps that require the least permissions are often least bloated and the most skillfully…

>They are not properly named or explained. And no, this shouldn't be on some obscure website. Or worse, the developer might argue that he needs location via GPS for things like regional settings and time sentitive settings, but will also use them to sample your location to a T everytime you move to sell for advertisers. The permission system doesn't show me the difference. There was a report on those free flashlight…

> The typical FOSS coterie always reminding us that Apple and MS are the devil has performed a disservice here

I agree, but I would also say that subculture has the least support for Google of any of them. I'm sure there are plenty of people out of touch enough to still rant about MS but the actual discussions are mostly about Google (Apple is an unstoppable opportunistic juggernaut, Google is an ideological enemy).

Re: Battery power alone can be used to track Android phones

#72

Post by freshhawk »

PJDK wrote: post #8

This is really selling a quite interesting intellectual effort on meaningless paranoia. Who would have any interest in tracking people in this manner? Any government based group can grab the data much more conveniently via the phone towers. Anyone else? Well you've got to trick someone into downloading this thing, so it's probably not that good for targeting a specific individual. If you can think up some nefarious s…

Meaningless paranoia? If you already have a popular app recording this data would be fairly simple.

And if this approach is practical then you've got personalized location data easily linked to identity. That's worth a lot of money to data brokers and their customers. Adding location information and especially long term movement patterns bumps up the price you can charge for a user profile. Selling everything you can get your hands on about your users to data brokers is a way to monetize a user base.

Obviously getting location permissions is way easier, but it's good to know that apps without those permissions could still be selling your location data.

Re: Battery power alone can be used to track Android phones

#73

Post by shostack »

romaniv wrote: post #46
SifJar wrote: post #2

The article mentions that the required permissions are "very common permissions", and then in the next paragraph says that 179 apps on the Google Play store require those permissions. As of July 2014, there were 1.3 million apps in the app store [1]. That's ~0.014% of the apps on the store. Not exactly "very common" in my mind. Although the remark that they are "unlikely to raise suspicion" is valid, especially for t…

I am ver surprised there is still no mass outrage over Android permissions. 1. They are not properly named or explained. And no, this shouldn't be on some obscure website. This should be right there, in the menu that asks for them. 2. There is no way to filter apps in the play store by permissions. This isn't just a privacy thing. Apps that require the least permissions are often least bloated and the most skillfully…

While I fully agree with your reasons for why there SHOULD be outrage, I think the reason for why there is still NOT mass outrage is pretty obvious.

In short: Consumers don't know and don't care.

If they get an app they just click through whatever screens are needed until they can install it. Odds are they don't know what the concept of "permissions" means, or why they should care. Nothing in their phone tells them they should care. It is only fairly recently that some mainstream publications have written about this overreaching and even then the reach is limited. Then you have Google itself that realized it would need to increasingly ask for new permissions in the future, so it basically just asked for EVERYTHING for their apps, so that future updates wouldn't flag anything.

So in short, there absolutely should be mass outrage and more granular, user-controlled permissions on Android. Will that happen? Unlikely.

Re: Battery power alone can be used to track Android phones

#74

Post by gombotzd »

shostack wrote: post #73
romaniv wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am ver surprised there is still no mass outrage over Android permissions. 1. They are not properly named or explained. And no, this shouldn't be on some obscure website. This should be right there, in the menu that asks for them. 2. There is no way to filter apps in the play store by permissions. This isn't just a privacy thing. Apps that require the least permissions are often least bloated and the most skillfully…

While I fully agree with your reasons for why there SHOULD be outrage, I think the reason for why there is still NOT mass outrage is pretty obvious. In short: Consumers don't know and don't care. If they get an app they just click through whatever screens are needed until they can install it. Odds are they don't know what the concept of "permissions" means, or why they should care. Nothing in their phone tells them t…

i fully agree to both of you.

as a former apple user and now really happy android user this topic is such an utterly mess.

in a group of techs and lawyers we recently discussed the right of ones data. i agree that data protection should allow people and companies to agree on whatever they want, but it should also be possible to revoke rights at any stage and this is not showing in the system especially of googles android but also other systems

it is a very bad sign that in our society people have higher awareness that somebody might send them a paper with some advertising (address) than that some applications will send all the data out of their contact list plus their movement profile

pretty weird

Re: Battery power alone can be used to track Android phones

#75

Post by PhantomGremlin »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #68
romaniv wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am ver surprised there is still no mass outrage over Android permissions. 1. They are not properly named or explained. And no, this shouldn't be on some obscure website. This should be right there, in the menu that asks for them. 2. There is no way to filter apps in the play store by permissions. This isn't just a privacy thing. Apps that require the least permissions are often least bloated and the most skillfully…

>They are not properly named or explained. And no, this shouldn't be on some obscure website. Or worse, the developer might argue that he needs location via GPS for things like regional settings and time sentitive settings, but will also use them to sample your location to a T everytime you move to sell for advertisers. The permission system doesn't show me the difference. There was a report on those free flashlight…

> I have no idea what google is thinking nowadays.

Google's thinking hasn't changed. They've always wanted to vacuum up everything they could about you and your behavior.

> I think this N5 is my last android phone.

I don't trust Google either. But what about the 99% of smartphone consumers who just want a cheap phone and don't concern themselves about these things?

Google doesn't care about what you, part of the 1% on this issue, think. To update something that Lily Tomlin did many decades ago:

   We don't care.
   We don't have to.
   We're Google.

Re: Battery power alone can be used to track Android phones

#76

Post by PhantomGremlin »

digi_owl wrote: post #56
JoachimS wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if the "Who would have any interest in tracking people in this manner?" is really relevant. Based on the collect all, hoover all metadata etc that seems to be going on, _anything_ remotely possibly useful seems to be interesting. And the big thing is that this data can of course (and will be) correlated with things like cell tower location, wifi hotspots all kinds of other metadata.

Makes one wonder what STASI could come up with had it still been operating...

Given how bad NSA and GCHQ (the presumed good guys) have been, STASI would have truly been frightening. They probably would have terrified Sauron.

Re: Battery power alone can be used to track Android phones

#77

Post by on_and_off »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #55
Sidnicious wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, there's no way to download an app but deny it some permissions. iOS gets this right: apps don't get to ask for any permissions when you download them, they have to request them at runtime and the user can deny any of them (and the app is still expected to function)

This was briefly added in Android 4.something, but Google removed it.

It was a test tool and supposed to be hidden : you had to enter its Intent directly in order to launch it (if I remember well, they had also forgotten to hide it as a menu choice when creating a widget shortcut to the settings in one android subversion). Even if they repackaged it as a proper app (it really showed that AppOps was a test tool, the interface was pretty primitive), I don't see the point. Permission revocation is not that useful against an app like Facebook that will use its permissions to access your private data as soon as it is installed. What we need here is granular permission granting. Apps start with only inoffensive permission (bluetooth access ? internet ? I guess some reflection on what these base permissions should be would be needed) and only gain access to your private data (mail, contacts, calendar, ...) if they ask for it and you grant it to them. That way, apps can only collect your data if you let them.

Re: Battery power alone can be used to track Android phones

#78

Post by on_and_off »

shostack wrote: post #73
romaniv wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am ver surprised there is still no mass outrage over Android permissions. 1. They are not properly named or explained. And no, this shouldn't be on some obscure website. This should be right there, in the menu that asks for them. 2. There is no way to filter apps in the play store by permissions. This isn't just a privacy thing. Apps that require the least permissions are often least bloated and the most skillfully…

While I fully agree with your reasons for why there SHOULD be outrage, I think the reason for why there is still NOT mass outrage is pretty obvious. In short: Consumers don't know and don't care. If they get an app they just click through whatever screens are needed until they can install it. Odds are they don't know what the concept of "permissions" means, or why they should care. Nothing in their phone tells them t…

Consumers have been trained to click on any 'yes' box for decades. From 'do you really wish to exit?' to 'accept this licence', people have been trained to just click on the yes button.

Furthermore, it does not seem trivial to me to add a granular permission system to Android. Beyond the permission system itself, retro-compatibility and implementation by third party apps seems really problematic to me (not impossible, just a lot of work).

I just hope that it does not stay in 'low-priority vs high difficulty' hell forever.

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