91–100 of 254 posts
dont worry, samsung knows only 300 people will actually care. As for me, I already swore off Samdung for their whole Samsung account bs and apps they bundle and won't let me remove (or disable).
As someone who roots single-purpose Android devices, this is one of those things that sucks big-time but makes total sense. The only reason one would unlock a bootloader is to root the system partition. It is impossible to protect data on rooted phones and makes data exfiltration attacks significantly easier to do. This is a huge problem for banking and music apps that absolutely rely on this capability. Samsung is,…
> It is impossible to protect data on rooted phones What makes securing rooted phones different from securing rooted PCs?
It is, and always was a flimsy excuse to the strip user of control over his own device.
"Secure Boot" isn't actually there to protect the device from an attacker. It's there to "protect" the device from its own user. It's used to "secure" DRM schemes and App Store revenue streams.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Whatever floats your boat. I'll remain with the latest vendor making custom OS possible. FYI Pixels still allow flashing custom ROMs, they've just slightly inconvenienced developers.
It's not necessarily about it being possible, but the level of support and refinement. The future I'm seeing is one in which custom ROMs still exist as hobby projects, but aren't suitable for use in "production".
The future is as bleak for the custom ROMs as is their past. They are aftermarket modifications of the phone software, entirely dependent on the manufacturers and Google, and these release new things yearly.
Pixels are a good choice I think because they come with the least amount of bloat, and with Android, the connection to Google is always there anyways.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google is first and foremost an advertising company. They're going to do whatever makes them the most profit. It always had razor wire fences unfortunately.
It's a datamining company, and there are many ways to profit off of that...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep. Everyone I know who bought a Samsung anything (TV/Phone/Washer/Dryer) last time said it's their last Samsung product. Samsung sure know how to piss off customers.
Is the alternative really better overall. We upgraded to a samsung fridge last year from two consecutive cheapo-chinese-local walmart-brands and it was worth every penny. It will pay itself in energy savings in less than two years.
As someone who roots single-purpose Android devices, this is one of those things that sucks big-time but makes total sense. The only reason one would unlock a bootloader is to root the system partition. It is impossible to protect data on rooted phones and makes data exfiltration attacks significantly easier to do. This is a huge problem for banking and music apps that absolutely rely on this capability. Samsung is,…
In the case of banking, unlocking the bootloader usually requires a full device reset and leaves a very obvious message when you boot up the phone—you can't grab someone's locked device, root it, and grab their financial data just like that.
As for music apps and other apps that download copyrighted content to the user's device, leaving the moral aspects of stripping the user of control of files on their own device aside, preventing their use on rooted devices just loses them users since
- Those are by no means essential apps
- If you know how to root your phone, you probably know how how to pirate media as well
- People can just use computers to exfiltrate copyrighted media instead since most of those apps have PC versions
It "doesn't make total sense", it never has. It's just a kneejerk reaction that conveniently aligns with stripping the user of control.
As someone who roots single-purpose Android devices, this is one of those things that sucks big-time but makes total sense. The only reason one would unlock a bootloader is to root the system partition. It is impossible to protect data on rooted phones and makes data exfiltration attacks significantly easier to do. This is a huge problem for banking and music apps that absolutely rely on this capability. Samsung is,…
As someone who roots single-purpose Android devices, this is one of those things that sucks big-time but makes total sense. The only reason one would unlock a bootloader is to root the system partition. It is impossible to protect data on rooted phones and makes data exfiltration attacks significantly easier to do. This is a huge problem for banking and music apps that absolutely rely on this capability. Samsung is,…
- If you're capable of rooting a device then you're capable of understanding the risks which come with doing so.
- The number of users who root their devices will always be so comparitively tiny that the increased risk of data exfil is incredibly small. Also, similarly to above, if you're technical enough to root your device then you're probably not regularly putting yourself at risk by downloading shady apps etc. anyway.
- Rather than decreasing security, rooting allows you to enhance the security of your device by installing lower-level tools and, most importantly, removing all the bloatware crap which comes on most phones. This reduces the surface area of attack.
Let's be honest and admit that the only reason to prevent users from rooting their phones is to protect companies' profits by ensuring users can't fight back against the blatant tracking, data mining, and analytics capture which is so valuable to companies.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve got five bucks on this being a new requirement from Google to Tier 1 OEMs to eliminate bootloader locking.
Google's own Pixel devices have easy unlocking, so this would surprise me. Google's strategy to keep devices users actually control from being too mainstream is remote attestation.