5 ms·

A whole lot of parents are going to be wondering why half their apps don’t work properly anymore, tomorrow.

by LeoPanthera 7y ago

pg_is_a_butt 7y ago
Remove your own number from contacts list
mrspeaker 7y ago
Then as a bonus, after you explain why they don't work - you can help them delete half the apps off their phone!
- akerl_ 7y ago
  I’m not sure if this was meant in jest, but ~“congrats, I broke your apps but don’t worry, you didn’t want those apps anyways because they’re bad for you” is unlikely to be an effective pitch. The much more likely outcome is that you’ll be marked as the odd duck in the family, and they’ll make a mental note to not let you handle their devices in the future. If the goal is to make people care more about privacy (or really anything), an approach that breaks existing workflows and shrugs off that breakage as being a good thing isn’t really a winning approach.
  - tripzilch 7y ago
    If you go in and expect to fight a losing battle ... or even just any battle. It's your family. My family already cares about privacy, they just find it incredibly hard to navigate the maze of settings and figure out what you can disable and what is hiding somewhere doing nasty useless shit. When I disable a setting for them, I ask if they use the feature, explain what it does. Or in many cases, we look it up together, because DAMN they made that shit hard to understand. I also ask what apps they use, and if I know any, suggest alternatives. Usually they're happy to get rid of a couple of useless apps that were giving notifications and other screen spam. In general they're happy that I help them. It's ridiculous that I have to, because my family is not dumb and they want to figure it out, it's just that if you don't deal with this shit every day, it's just a swamp and you tend to throw your hands in the air and give up.
  - close04 7y ago
    > and they’ll make a mental note to not let you handle their devices in the future That can be a blessing in disguise. :)
tapirl 7y ago
Would counterfeiting a default fake personal account be a better choice?
- hetspookjee 7y ago
  Well this fake account will grow with fake data untill it's a pretty real account, right?
- Nextgrid 7y ago
  A lot of the data collected can't easily be counterfeited. We're talking mobile numbers (including those of friends you contact), IP addresses, usage patterns like when you use the devices and on which networks, etc. Unless you have access to an infinite pool of IPs and mobile numbers and rotate at frequent but random interval (and get your friends to do so as well especially with their numbers) it's basically impossible. Better just not use scummy apps and services. If they can't be bothered to respect your privacy then find something else which can. You might need to pay for it but at least your privacy is safer.
defanor 7y ago
I wonder whether smartphone software "helpfully" suggests to adjust privacy settings when it's unable to access information, as some websites do with ad blockers and JS, or desktop and server software does with root access. If so, they'd probably fix that quickly. Funnily, I wasn't able to read the linked post easily with my web browser privacy features (well, noscript) enabled. I think generally it's a bad idea to impose whatever one perceives as "good" on others. And if a user doesn't care and understand what's going on, merely restricting some of the spyware they currently have on an Internet-connected device with private information on it wouldn't even protect privacy much: I think (based on a couple of times I've observed the process on Android smartphones) they had to allow all that access on installation in the first place.
hetspookjee 7y ago
The Google apps will still probably work but will harass you till you can't take it anymore and just allow it access. Just now I updated to Android 10 and Google play prompted me 3 seperate times with pretty serious warning that it needed acces to my SMS to work properly. I turned it down everytime and it still works, though I expect to receive more prompts. I knew there is a notification settings somewhere to turn these off. I find it really troublesome that Google is allowed to blatantly lie to their consumers about the required permission by implying the app is utterly broken while it actually still works. Next year I'm going for an iPhone but as I can see it's not the promise Land yet.
- izacus 7y ago
  Disabling SMS permission for Play Services will silently break transparent SMS autofill API for any app on your phone, so the message is more than warranted. It actually breaks a core component of you phone. It's not a "blatant lie" if it actually breaks APIs.
  - pvorb 7y ago
    What does this SMS autofill API do? I've never heard of it and wonder if it's needed.
    - t0mas88 7y ago
      One use is when you have to verify your phone number for something like WhatsApp, they send you a text and Google Play will detect receiving it and skip the step where you enter the code in the app. So it's a very minor inconvenience that you now have to type a few digits from an SMS instead of that happening automatically.
      - cmroanirgo 7y ago
        But if you think about it, WhatsApp needing your sms is a dark anti pattern anyway: the only time it needs sms is to uniquely identify you /provide you with an account. A username/pwd combo does that too. WhatsApp doesn't (or didn't, last time I used it a few years back) need sms access, let alone your phone number.

A whole lot of parents are going to be wondering why half their apps don’t work properly anymore, tomorrow.

pg_is_a_butt 7y ago

Remove your own number from contacts list

mrspeaker 7y ago

Then as a bonus, after you explain why they don't work - you can help them delete half the apps off their phone!

akerl_ 7y ago
I’m not sure if this was meant in jest, but ~“congrats, I broke your apps but don’t worry, you didn’t want those apps anyways because they’re bad for you” is unlikely to be an effective pitch. The much more likely outcome is that you’ll be marked as the odd duck in the family, and they’ll make a mental note to not let you handle their devices in the future. If the goal is to make people care more about privacy (or really anything), an approach that breaks existing workflows and shrugs off that breakage as being a good thing isn’t really a winning approach.
- tripzilch 7y ago
  If you go in and expect to fight a losing battle ... or even just any battle. It's your family. My family already cares about privacy, they just find it incredibly hard to navigate the maze of settings and figure out what you can disable and what is hiding somewhere doing nasty useless shit. When I disable a setting for them, I ask if they use the feature, explain what it does. Or in many cases, we look it up together, because DAMN they made that shit hard to understand. I also ask what apps they use, and if I know any, suggest alternatives. Usually they're happy to get rid of a couple of useless apps that were giving notifications and other screen spam. In general they're happy that I help them. It's ridiculous that I have to, because my family is not dumb and they want to figure it out, it's just that if you don't deal with this shit every day, it's just a swamp and you tend to throw your hands in the air and give up.
- close04 7y ago
  > and they’ll make a mental note to not let you handle their devices in the future That can be a blessing in disguise. :)

tapirl 7y ago

Would counterfeiting a default fake personal account be a better choice?

hetspookjee 7y ago
Well this fake account will grow with fake data untill it's a pretty real account, right?
Nextgrid 7y ago
A lot of the data collected can't easily be counterfeited. We're talking mobile numbers (including those of friends you contact), IP addresses, usage patterns like when you use the devices and on which networks, etc. Unless you have access to an infinite pool of IPs and mobile numbers and rotate at frequent but random interval (and get your friends to do so as well especially with their numbers) it's basically impossible. Better just not use scummy apps and services. If they can't be bothered to respect your privacy then find something else which can. You might need to pay for it but at least your privacy is safer.

defanor 7y ago

I wonder whether smartphone software "helpfully" suggests to adjust privacy settings when it's unable to access information, as some websites do with ad blockers and JS, or desktop and server software does with root access. If so, they'd probably fix that quickly. Funnily, I wasn't able to read the linked post easily with my web browser privacy features (well, noscript) enabled. I think generally it's a bad idea to impose whatever one perceives as "good" on others. And if a user doesn't care and understand what's going on, merely restricting some of the spyware they currently have on an Internet-connected device with private information on it wouldn't even protect privacy much: I think (based on a couple of times I've observed the process on Android smartphones) they had to allow all that access on installation in the first place.

hetspookjee 7y ago

The Google apps will still probably work but will harass you till you can't take it anymore and just allow it access. Just now I updated to Android 10 and Google play prompted me 3 seperate times with pretty serious warning that it needed acces to my SMS to work properly. I turned it down everytime and it still works, though I expect to receive more prompts. I knew there is a notification settings somewhere to turn these off. I find it really troublesome that Google is allowed to blatantly lie to their consumers about the required permission by implying the app is utterly broken while it actually still works. Next year I'm going for an iPhone but as I can see it's not the promise Land yet.

izacus 7y ago
Disabling SMS permission for Play Services will silently break transparent SMS autofill API for any app on your phone, so the message is more than warranted. It actually breaks a core component of you phone. It's not a "blatant lie" if it actually breaks APIs.
- pvorb 7y ago
  What does this SMS autofill API do? I've never heard of it and wonder if it's needed.
  - t0mas88 7y ago
    One use is when you have to verify your phone number for something like WhatsApp, they send you a text and Google Play will detect receiving it and skip the step where you enter the code in the app. So it's a very minor inconvenience that you now have to type a few digits from an SMS instead of that happening automatically.
    - cmroanirgo 7y ago
      But if you think about it, WhatsApp needing your sms is a dark anti pattern anyway: the only time it needs sms is to uniquely identify you /provide you with an account. A username/pwd combo does that too. WhatsApp doesn't (or didn't, last time I used it a few years back) need sms access, let alone your phone number.