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This should include all smart phones with children's games installed on them too. My niece asked me to install some games on an old smartphone I let her play w

This should include all smart phones with children's games installed on them too. My niece asked me to install some games on an old smartphone I let her play with. Out of about 15 I looked at, 15 asked for access to one or more of the camera, microphone, address book, location or just blanket ask for every permission under the sun. None of them needed these permissions for the actual game play of course. How does Google find this kind of spying on children acceptable?

WizzleKake 9y ago
Why is spying on children any different than spying on adults?
- ptaipale 9y ago
  Children are more vulnerable and less able to beware of the risks.
- jimktrains2 9y ago
  While in absolute terms it's not any more ok to spy on adults than children, the idea of spying on children being more morally repugnant is based around the idea of children as innocent and by spying on then we're depriving them of that and allowing malicious actors to prey on that innocence (hey, now someone knows where this child will be, when, and most of the important things happening in their life; much easier to trick.) In reality the same arguments apply to adults, but we find it less morally repugnant because adults aren't innocent and are expected to gaurd themselves against such actions. However, it becomes more and more difficult to guard against.
  - AlexandrB 9y ago
    > While in absolute terms it's not any more ok to spy on adults than children, the idea of spying on children being more morally repugnant is based around the idea of children as innocent and by spying on then we're depriving them of that and allowing malicious actors to prey on that innocence (hey, now someone knows where this child will be, when, and most of the important things happening in their life; much easier to trick.) This seems like a very mushy reason. I'm pretty sure the real reason is that children are not considered able to knowingly consent to many things - including contracts such as EULAs or TOS. Given this, a child is also not expected to be able make a reasoned decision about privacy tradeoffs. The reason it's "ok" to spy on adults is that they can make an educated decision about whether they're ok with being spied on. I don't necessarily agree that this is true in practice, but I think that's the theory.
    - jimktrains2 9y ago
      It is not "ok" to spy on adults. It simply doesn't elicit a feeling of disgust in most people.
      - sparkie 9y ago
        I think it does elicit the feeling of disgust, but most people don't know it's happening. (Or downplay the risks - such claiming that it's only machines and not people watching). It should also be completely illegal, but the justice system can't keep up with technology. Imagine you found out that your next door neighbor has drilled a hole through the wall and fed a camera into your house - what do you do? (Call the police, certainly). Is it really any different when the camera feed isn't a physical wire but done over the internet?
- cucuuc 9y ago
  Sexually explicit information of children. We generally believe that sexual exploitation of children is worse than of an adult. We don’t allow for consensual sexual relations, creation or mere posesion of explicit material with a child. In fact drawings of said material can get you in a lot of trouble in many, liberal, countries. That being said, I hate what the internet has become.
  - kunimu 9y ago
    However I think the attitude is taken too far. In some countries (most notably the UK, Australia, New Zealand, especially Canada, and some US states) even possession of drawings or stories depicting completely fictional characters who appear to be children, is illegal and punishable by prison. In the UK for example, a report in Parliament found that under this law established in 2009, there are about 20 convictions per year under it. This is a perfect example of "protect the children" as an excuse to take away some liberties - most notably setting a precedent in the countries I listed that it is not only possible but also completely valid for the State to decide what fiction one is allowed to possess.
- mirimir 9y ago
  Good point. All that spying crap should be illegal. Including governments' spying crap. But good luck on that :(
- ivanhoe 9y ago
  Because with kids it's much more obviously evil thing to do. For adults one can perhaps argue that they (being adults) can choose for themselves whether to give or not to give the permissions - just like with everything else in their life, it's their responsibility to know better. Kids can't really be expected to make informed decisions on actions that are potentially dangerous, they need to be protected by adults.
  - gkya 9y ago
    > For adults one can perhaps argue that they (being adults) can choose for themselves whether to give or not to give the permissions That's wishful thinking. Most people can't tell the WWW from Facebook. People are so bad at writing emails that there are Workshops for Composing E-Mails which sell out quickly. Many disable SIM PINs because they forget them or don't want to bother remembering them. The people who read permissions an app requests make such a little percentage of smartphone users that they can't even be considered a minority. I beleive we need some kind of CE for software. It's easier to make sure that your parmigiano reggiano comes from Emilia-Romagna that it is to make sure that you can rely on a certain online service provider / platform. That's simply unacceptable.
    - sitkack 9y ago
      > CE for software Yes, and hardware at the firmware level.
    - gsich 9y ago
      So? They are still adults. If they want to know if works, they can learn it. Most of them don't care.
      - gkya 9y ago
        And they'd rather not care. A life where we had to make sure every single thing we have and every tiny peg or thing in them is of a certain quality would be hell. Have you read "I, pencil"? I suggest it becomes compulsory reading to every single person. Things involve lots of other things and all we have is some governmental and international bodies helping us have some trust in what we possess.
- jdietrich 9y ago
  COPPA.
sideshowb 9y ago
Why apps ask for blanket permissions: have you ever tried using a cordova library? My own app has to ask for storage access just to get reliable sound output... The deeper answer is that economic incentives don't encourage minimal permissions, even if there's no malicious intent.
- sitkack 9y ago
  And android and google is negligent for not allowing users to limit apps ability to use these apis. An app can request it, I'd like to say NO in a way that doesn't break the app. It asks for camera, fine it gets the same stock photo. It asks for location, it gets the Galapagos. It asks for microphone, it gets "Never Gonna Give You Up". Installing an app shouldn't be a binary (hah) choice.
  - freeone3000 9y ago
    XPrivacy does.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - SyneRyder 9y ago
    But you can do that on Android now. On Android 7.0 (might even work on 6.0), go into Settings -> Apps, tap on an App and then tap on Permissions. You can then enable or disable individual permissions for that app (eg enable camera but disable microphone) Android apps now request permission at the time they need to use a feature, not on first install. They've basically adopted the same permissions model as Apple.
    - biafra 9y ago
      This is not what he described. Removing any of these permissions must be handled by the app. The app shouldn't even know I removed a permission. It should just get empty or fake data.
      - 9y ago
madez 9y ago
That is one of the examples why Richard Stallman was right and free software is the way to go.
- Karunamon 9y ago
  How would free software prevent permission abuse? Open source spyware is still spyware.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - smichel17 9y ago
    FLO software shifts the balance of power between users and developers, since (1) it's harder to sneak a "feature" in without people finding out, (2) if a developer makes a change that people don't like, it's much easier for people to continue using the old version, and (3) there is potentially more competition between developers, since they can start from a fork of the project instead of a clean slate. As that applies to the specific example in your comment, (1) people can verify whether or not a piece of open source software is listening and phoning home, (2) if it is spyware, a different programmer could make a fork and remove this antifeature, and (3) if they published the fork, now end users have the choice of using a version that does not track you. Does this mean Open Source software never tracks you? Of course not. But it is much more resistant to this sort of thing.
    - Karunamon 9y ago
      Nobody reads source code (hell they don’t even read the permissions and those are a lot easier to understand); the de-spied clone couldn’t use the same name, couldn’t necessarily communicate with the same servers, and wouldn’t get near as much exposure. The practical impact of such a change, even if it were forced top down by Google, is nil. Nobody outside a tiny minority of geeks treats free software as a selling point.
      - davb 9y ago
jasonmp85 9y ago
I don’t know, you should ask their advertising team, otherwise known as their entire source of income.

WizzleKake 9y ago

Why is spying on children any different than spying on adults?

ptaipale 9y ago
Children are more vulnerable and less able to beware of the risks.
jimktrains2 9y ago
While in absolute terms it's not any more ok to spy on adults than children, the idea of spying on children being more morally repugnant is based around the idea of children as innocent and by spying on then we're depriving them of that and allowing malicious actors to prey on that innocence (hey, now someone knows where this child will be, when, and most of the important things happening in their life; much easier to trick.) In reality the same arguments apply to adults, but we find it less morally repugnant because adults aren't innocent and are expected to gaurd themselves against such actions. However, it becomes more and more difficult to guard against.
- AlexandrB 9y ago
  > While in absolute terms it's not any more ok to spy on adults than children, the idea of spying on children being more morally repugnant is based around the idea of children as innocent and by spying on then we're depriving them of that and allowing malicious actors to prey on that innocence (hey, now someone knows where this child will be, when, and most of the important things happening in their life; much easier to trick.) This seems like a very mushy reason. I'm pretty sure the real reason is that children are not considered able to knowingly consent to many things - including contracts such as EULAs or TOS. Given this, a child is also not expected to be able make a reasoned decision about privacy tradeoffs. The reason it's "ok" to spy on adults is that they can make an educated decision about whether they're ok with being spied on. I don't necessarily agree that this is true in practice, but I think that's the theory.
  - jimktrains2 9y ago
    It is not "ok" to spy on adults. It simply doesn't elicit a feeling of disgust in most people.
    - sparkie 9y ago
      I think it does elicit the feeling of disgust, but most people don't know it's happening. (Or downplay the risks - such claiming that it's only machines and not people watching). It should also be completely illegal, but the justice system can't keep up with technology. Imagine you found out that your next door neighbor has drilled a hole through the wall and fed a camera into your house - what do you do? (Call the police, certainly). Is it really any different when the camera feed isn't a physical wire but done over the internet?
cucuuc 9y ago
Sexually explicit information of children. We generally believe that sexual exploitation of children is worse than of an adult. We don’t allow for consensual sexual relations, creation or mere posesion of explicit material with a child. In fact drawings of said material can get you in a lot of trouble in many, liberal, countries. That being said, I hate what the internet has become.
- kunimu 9y ago
  However I think the attitude is taken too far. In some countries (most notably the UK, Australia, New Zealand, especially Canada, and some US states) even possession of drawings or stories depicting completely fictional characters who appear to be children, is illegal and punishable by prison. In the UK for example, a report in Parliament found that under this law established in 2009, there are about 20 convictions per year under it. This is a perfect example of "protect the children" as an excuse to take away some liberties - most notably setting a precedent in the countries I listed that it is not only possible but also completely valid for the State to decide what fiction one is allowed to possess.
mirimir 9y ago
Good point. All that spying crap should be illegal. Including governments' spying crap. But good luck on that :(
ivanhoe 9y ago
Because with kids it's much more obviously evil thing to do. For adults one can perhaps argue that they (being adults) can choose for themselves whether to give or not to give the permissions - just like with everything else in their life, it's their responsibility to know better. Kids can't really be expected to make informed decisions on actions that are potentially dangerous, they need to be protected by adults.
- gkya 9y ago
  > For adults one can perhaps argue that they (being adults) can choose for themselves whether to give or not to give the permissions That's wishful thinking. Most people can't tell the WWW from Facebook. People are so bad at writing emails that there are Workshops for Composing E-Mails which sell out quickly. Many disable SIM PINs because they forget them or don't want to bother remembering them. The people who read permissions an app requests make such a little percentage of smartphone users that they can't even be considered a minority. I beleive we need some kind of CE for software. It's easier to make sure that your parmigiano reggiano comes from Emilia-Romagna that it is to make sure that you can rely on a certain online service provider / platform. That's simply unacceptable.
  - sitkack 9y ago
    > CE for software Yes, and hardware at the firmware level.
  - gsich 9y ago
    So? They are still adults. If they want to know if works, they can learn it. Most of them don't care.
    - gkya 9y ago
      And they'd rather not care. A life where we had to make sure every single thing we have and every tiny peg or thing in them is of a certain quality would be hell. Have you read "I, pencil"? I suggest it becomes compulsory reading to every single person. Things involve lots of other things and all we have is some governmental and international bodies helping us have some trust in what we possess.
jdietrich 9y ago
COPPA.

sideshowb 9y ago

Why apps ask for blanket permissions: have you ever tried using a cordova library? My own app has to ask for storage access just to get reliable sound output... The deeper answer is that economic incentives don't encourage minimal permissions, even if there's no malicious intent.

sitkack 9y ago
And android and google is negligent for not allowing users to limit apps ability to use these apis. An app can request it, I'd like to say NO in a way that doesn't break the app. It asks for camera, fine it gets the same stock photo. It asks for location, it gets the Galapagos. It asks for microphone, it gets "Never Gonna Give You Up". Installing an app shouldn't be a binary (hah) choice.
- freeone3000 9y ago
  XPrivacy does.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- SyneRyder 9y ago
  But you can do that on Android now. On Android 7.0 (might even work on 6.0), go into Settings -> Apps, tap on an App and then tap on Permissions. You can then enable or disable individual permissions for that app (eg enable camera but disable microphone) Android apps now request permission at the time they need to use a feature, not on first install. They've basically adopted the same permissions model as Apple.
  - biafra 9y ago
    This is not what he described. Removing any of these permissions must be handled by the app. The app shouldn't even know I removed a permission. It should just get empty or fake data.
    - 9y ago

madez 9y ago

That is one of the examples why Richard Stallman was right and free software is the way to go.

Karunamon 9y ago
How would free software prevent permission abuse? Open source spyware is still spyware.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- smichel17 9y ago
  FLO software shifts the balance of power between users and developers, since (1) it's harder to sneak a "feature" in without people finding out, (2) if a developer makes a change that people don't like, it's much easier for people to continue using the old version, and (3) there is potentially more competition between developers, since they can start from a fork of the project instead of a clean slate. As that applies to the specific example in your comment, (1) people can verify whether or not a piece of open source software is listening and phoning home, (2) if it is spyware, a different programmer could make a fork and remove this antifeature, and (3) if they published the fork, now end users have the choice of using a version that does not track you. Does this mean Open Source software never tracks you? Of course not. But it is much more resistant to this sort of thing.
  - Karunamon 9y ago
    Nobody reads source code (hell they don’t even read the permissions and those are a lot easier to understand); the de-spied clone couldn’t use the same name, couldn’t necessarily communicate with the same servers, and wouldn’t get near as much exposure. The practical impact of such a change, even if it were forced top down by Google, is nil. Nobody outside a tiny minority of geeks treats free software as a selling point.
    - davb 9y ago

jasonmp85 9y ago

I don’t know, you should ask their advertising team, otherwise known as their entire source of income.