Google to ban financial lending apps from accessing user photos, contacts
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Re: Google to ban financial lending apps from accessing user photos, contacts
#2I 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.
Re: Google to ban financial lending apps from accessing user photos, contacts
#3I reality, very few apps should have access to that data in the first place.
Re: Google to ban financial lending apps from accessing user photos, contacts
#4It's "good" in the same way that "google stops punching man in the face" might be good.
In a sea of predatory applications, why is lending the only one that gets blocked here? A whitelist would be better (say approved photo and contact apps could access photos and contacts), and better still would be the app can only access what you transfer to it and doesn't get blanket permissions.
I also agree with the other comment that this shouldn't be within Google's power to decide, it should be regulated - if you force a closed OS on users, you should be limited in what it can access
Re: Google to ban financial lending apps from accessing user photos, contacts
#5> predatory loan apps
Loan sharks?! We reached a point when I don't even allow chat app (WhatsApp) to access my contacts. Banks' apps love contacts as well ("send money to phone number"). With "convenience" bait they get birth dates, physical addresses, emails, profile photos, and whatnot. I see from behind my keyboard how banks salivate to calculate some credit worthiness from the contacts uploaded (and confirmed by the entry in the other person's address book).
Re: Google to ban financial lending apps from accessing user photos, contacts
#6This 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 approach to do so:
1. Make that a rule in the Play Store and ban apps that violate it
2. Make Android present convincing fake data to apps when permissions are denied
Re: Google to ban financial lending apps from accessing user photos, contacts
#7It's "good" in the same way that "google stops punching man in the face" might be good. In a sea of predatory applications, why is lending the only one that gets blocked here? A whitelist would be better (say approved photo and contact apps could access photos and contacts), and better still would be the app can only access what you transfer to it and doesn't get blanket permissions. I also agree with the other comme…
There is such a thing as going too far though. An app I'm familiar with had Apple rejecting the app for accessing contacts, even though the contacts stay on device at all times and the only way they are exported is if you send a debug log which has a warning modal about their contacts being logged and gives the user the chance to edit those out.
There was nothing to be done that would satiate Apple besides disabling the contacts permission, so the user experience is now worsened. It's still death by a thousand cuts when working with these app stores.
Re: Google to ban financial lending apps from accessing user photos, contacts
#8> predatory loan apps Loan sharks?! We reached a point when I don't even allow chat app (WhatsApp) to access my contacts. Banks' apps love contacts as well ("send money to phone number"). With "convenience" bait they get birth dates, physical addresses, emails, profile photos, and whatnot. I see from behind my keyboard how banks salivate to calculate some credit worthiness from the contacts uploaded (and confirmed by…
I just immediately uninstall any app that requests access to contacts without me first indicating I'd like to use that app to share something with my contacts.
Re: Google to ban financial lending apps from accessing user photos, contacts
#9It's "good" in the same way that "google stops punching man in the face" might be good. In a sea of predatory applications, why is lending the only one that gets blocked here? A whitelist would be better (say approved photo and contact apps could access photos and contacts), and better still would be the app can only access what you transfer to it and doesn't get blanket permissions. I also agree with the other comme…
There is such a thing as going too far though. An app I'm familiar with had Apple rejecting the app for accessing contacts, even though the contacts stay on device at all times and the only way they are exported is if you send a debug log which has a warning modal about their contacts being logged and gives the user the chance to edit those out. There was nothing to be done that would satiate Apple besides disabling…
What did the app need the contacts for? I'd say I side with apple on that (I can see how it could be abused to shut down competition though). There really would need to be a good reason to have the contacts. (I don't want to debate the threshold, just interested in a "benign" example of needing contacts)
Re: Google to ban financial lending apps from accessing user photos, contacts
#10I 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.