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Massachusetts health notifications app installed without users’ knowledge

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Re: Massachusetts health notifications app installed without users’ knowledge

#221

Post by stevewodil »

maxerickson wrote: post #217
stevewodil wrote: post #211

Interesting. I started getting the COVID exposure opt-in message a few days ago. I've declined both times it's popped up (it's already too late to be contact tracing, no need). This app is already installed on my phone apparently despite declining to opt-in.

I don't think it will happen or that we particularly need to do it, but at this point, contact tracing (I'm talking about in the US) would be cheap and effective. Especially if it traced back to likely exposure events.

I'm already vaccinated and so is everyone I'm around. It's something I would have enabled maybe 10 months ago but not even worth it at this point

Re: Massachusetts health notifications app installed without users’ knowledge

#222

Post by marvindanig »

serial_dev wrote: post #210
arpstick wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MA resident as well, what worries me more is that someone thought that this method of installation was a good idea and even more worrying is that they were also able to execute on it. It feels rather shady and nefarious the lack of public announcement on it. Shenanigans like this how you get the populace to trust the local government less, which is the last thing this country needs.

I don't see anything bad with people not trusting their local government... Exhibit A

Well, given that a significant percentage of citizenry is anti-vaxxer-level-stupid, there isn't much improvement over people trusting their local Government either…

Re: Massachusetts health notifications app installed without users’ knowledge

#223

Post by tyingq »

pharrington wrote: post #112

From what I've read (I don't live in Massachusetts), the app is installed via the auto update channel, but it explicitly asks permission to activate. If you think this is bad, the commercial apps that have been auto-installing for years, without notifying the user , should have you throwing a conniption.

I also see lots of comments that it doesn't create a visible icon, that you have to go to the applications list to see it. That seems shady.

Re: Massachusetts health notifications app installed without users’ knowledge

#224

Post by aceazzameen »

TomOwens wrote: post #140

Most of the comments on that app as well as here are probably wrong. I'd suspect that everyone who had the app "installed without their permission" opted into the Android COVID-19 Exposure Notification program. This was deployed by Google as part of an update to Google Play Services. When you go to your phone's settings with this update, there's an option to enable COVID-19 Exposure Notifications. When you turn it on…

Another MA resident here. Never opted in and it still shows I'm not. The app was silently installed on my Android. There's no icon so I thought it didn't install at first, until I looked at my app list in settings.

I'm curious to know if there's any MA Android users that previously removed Google Play, and if they still have the app or not. My guess is no?

Re: Massachusetts health notifications app installed without users’ knowledge

#226

Post by mandmandam »

kuschku wrote: post #209
mandmandam wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People here are downvoting you, but you were 100% right to doubt: https://www.iccl.ie/news/serious-privacy-and-data-harvesting... An excerpt: > While Android users can, in theory, opt to turn off Google Play Services, users of the Covid-19 contact-tracing app in Ireland cannot turn the surveillance off if they want the contact-tracing app to work. This means the collection and use of this data is unavoidable for peop…

MicroG implements the same contact tracing functionality. If you install MicroG, you can avoid all the tracking Google Play Services does usually.

Interesting, I hadn't heard of that.

Still, the point I was making is that Google absolutely lied about what their app was sending; and people who distrust them are more than justified to. The privacy virtues of the Irish app in particular were the subject of much lauding - when it was shortly after :proven: to be bullshit, that story got less than 1% of the traction.

Re: Massachusetts health notifications app installed without users’ knowledge

#227

Post by kortex »

bonoboTP wrote: post #150
marcan_42 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edit: Surely we can come up with a more approachable explanation for less technical folks, though? Here's an attempt: "Contact tracing respects your privacy and does not send your location to the cloud. Instead, your phone makes up a new random name every 15 minutes and broadcasts it to nearby phones. It remembers the last two weeks of names it used, as well as the last two weeks of names it heard from other phones.…

Still too complicated. I saw a comic version once, working through an actual example with some example IDs and it used phrases like "sends to the hospital" or "asks the hospital" etc. instead of downloading from the cloud. Very non-technical people are not familiar with the basic concepts involved. "Makes up a new random name and broadcasts it to nearby phones" is something they'd struggle with if they never heard or…

> Also don't underestimate learned helplessness.

Learned helplessness is so real. My partner works at a help desk, and I constantly hear stories of older folks just mentally shutting down as soon as she has them open the start menu or a settings menu.

I even see it in myself, a super curious neophile software/hardware hacker. Sometimes I'll come across some particularly arcane API docs and it's like my brain just goes "tl;dr" to the whole thing and tries to immediately find a way to avoid interfacing with it.

That mental switch of "ah this is overwhelming, eyes glaze over" is all too easy to trip, even if you push through it and it really is not that bad after the fact.

Re: Massachusetts health notifications app installed without users’ knowledge

#229

Post by digitalsin »

And to think I was upset that I couldn't uninstall Facebook from my Galaxy S10 (only 'disable it', for whatever that's worth) and got rid of that phone yesterday. I mean, I paid $700 or so for an unlocked phone and I can't uninstall the biggest piece of spyware in modern history.

This kind of stuff is out of control and consumers need to seriously stand up to this in court.

Re: Massachusetts health notifications app installed without users’ knowledge

#230

Post by kuschku »

mandmandam wrote: post #226
kuschku wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MicroG implements the same contact tracing functionality. If you install MicroG, you can avoid all the tracking Google Play Services does usually.

Interesting, I hadn't heard of that. Still, the point I was making is that Google absolutely lied about what their app was sending; and people who distrust them are more than justified to. The privacy virtues of the Irish app in particular were the subject of much lauding - when it was shortly after :proven: to be bullshit, that story got less than 1% of the traction.

The contact tracing apps send basically nothing.

It's the rest of Android that's the issue.

The point is that installing the contact tracing apps doesn't track you any more than before, neither on microg+fdroid than on a google stack.

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