61–70 of 165 posts
That means more choice, but can also weaken the protections for users. Alternative stores will likely have more loose policies for what apps/behavior they accept.
This feels like treating one particularly visible symptom of the problem instead of fixing the actual problem. What Google should do instead is prevent apps from refusing to work or disabling unrelated functionality just because some permissions are denied (e.g., if you deny your banking app permission to access your camera, everything but mobile check deposit should still have to work). They should use a two-pronged…
Additionally there should be a sandbox mode. While you give the app access to Photos and Contacts, it's an actual sandbox not containing any photo nor any contact. So the app gets what it asks for (the permission) while the user can still control the data.
- no photos - only specific photos (the system picker will appear to select them) - all photos
This feels like treating one particularly visible symptom of the problem instead of fixing the actual problem. What Google should do instead is prevent apps from refusing to work or disabling unrelated functionality just because some permissions are denied (e.g., if you deny your banking app permission to access your camera, everything but mobile check deposit should still have to work). They should use a two-pronged…
>2. Make Android present convincing fake data to apps when permissions are denied GrapheneOS can do this. I believe you can even choose to make only chosen photos visible to a certain app
I am so sad that I live in the society which is needed in such regulations. This change sounds like something good, but ability of vendor to do all kinds of things with a device makes me a smartphoneless person.
I think the OS should provide the ability to select items and then give opaque handles to applications. The app could send a message to the OS to display photo selector. The OS could send a message back with a handle to selected photo. One could then asks the OS to send a handle, which would forward selected item somewhere else.
The backwards compatibility of Android is a problem in this regard, because apps targeting old versions of Android get old, often less private, behaviour from the system to keep them working. Google has been forcing developers to upgrade their targeted version for a while now, though, so any app that still receives updates should be forced to use the modern API.
In the end, there will always be apps that need full media access. File managers, galleries image collage tools, you name it, you can't completely disable the generic file API. All other apps can use more appropriate APIs and often do, but those that hoover up data have little incentive to use the modern, privacy friendly versions. They're dragging every well-meaning app down with them through their terrible business practices.
I fully blame the advertiser laden crapware for the fact I can't sync my phone's clipboard in the background through KDE Connect anymore. The fact Google restricted the APIs instead of kicking the borderline malware out of their store irks me to no end and the fact Apple has placed similar restrictions onto their platform tells me it's not just Android.
This feels like treating one particularly visible symptom of the problem instead of fixing the actual problem. What Google should do instead is prevent apps from refusing to work or disabling unrelated functionality just because some permissions are denied (e.g., if you deny your banking app permission to access your camera, everything but mobile check deposit should still have to work). They should use a two-pronged…
Additionally there should be a sandbox mode. While you give the app access to Photos and Contacts, it's an actual sandbox not containing any photo nor any contact. So the app gets what it asks for (the permission) while the user can still control the data.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
These apps are literally just friendlier payday lenders. They will also go under soon because the unfriendliness of payday lenders is essential to the business model and it doesn't scale well. Dave's delinquencies are probably atrocious
Why would the unfriendlessness of payday lenders be essential to the business model?
Very few apps should have full contacts access. There should be a way to share a contact at a time with an app, like if I want to send an email payment through my banking app, it should call an android function to open a contact selector so I can share just that one contact. Or really, just the email address of that contact, not the rest of the data I may have associated with it.