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Ok, well, say "No" all you want but this totally happens, only the perpetrators are not nearly so clue-ful as to realize they've shipped a trojan. There are "h

Ok, well, say "No" all you want but this totally happens, only the perpetrators are not nearly so clue-ful as to realize they've shipped a trojan. There are "helpful" SDKs out there whose ulterior purpose is to collect user data without the app author's knowledge. This is one reason I'm very wary about what apps I'll install... it's not enough to trust the app author if they include 3rd party code.

bigiain 7y ago
Pretty sure at least some of those are “helpful” in the sense of “this is one of the ways we make money, by installing someone else’s sdk in our game and getting paid for it, while not looking too carefully at what it’s doing to our users”. And I’d be astounded if various Facebook/Google/Twitter SDKs (including things like Fabric/Crashlytics and Google Analytics) haven’t done this in the past even if they’re not doing it now. Surveillance capitalists gonna surveil...
- ryandrake 7y ago
  This comes up all the time on HN and I’m always shocked[1] at how controversial an idea it is that the developer is responsible for knowing what they are shipping in their dependencies. “Oh, woe, how can you audit all of your dependencies and their dependencies and know what’s in them?? Oh it’s impossible! There is no way to solve this!” Too few devs are really careful about their dependencies and do good due diligence when evaluating them for suitability. Everyone else is just “Hey our problem is solved by this one. YOLO! Link it and ship it LOL!” I’ve seen projects that link and ship binary dependencies without even being able to inspect the source. This is, to me, totally insane. But standard practice in a lot of places! 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21439953 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21439953
  - bigiain 7y ago
    While I totally agree with what you say here, I think it goes deeper. Some devs/shops are complicit in this, knowingly adding dependencies for shady reasons.

bigiain 7y ago

Pretty sure at least some of those are “helpful” in the sense of “this is one of the ways we make money, by installing someone else’s sdk in our game and getting paid for it, while not looking too carefully at what it’s doing to our users”. And I’d be astounded if various Facebook/Google/Twitter SDKs (including things like Fabric/Crashlytics and Google Analytics) haven’t done this in the past even if they’re not doing it now. Surveillance capitalists gonna surveil...

ryandrake 7y ago
This comes up all the time on HN and I’m always shocked[1] at how controversial an idea it is that the developer is responsible for knowing what they are shipping in their dependencies. “Oh, woe, how can you audit all of your dependencies and their dependencies and know what’s in them?? Oh it’s impossible! There is no way to solve this!” Too few devs are really careful about their dependencies and do good due diligence when evaluating them for suitability. Everyone else is just “Hey our problem is solved by this one. YOLO! Link it and ship it LOL!” I’ve seen projects that link and ship binary dependencies without even being able to inspect the source. This is, to me, totally insane. But standard practice in a lot of places! 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21439953 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21439953
- bigiain 7y ago
  While I totally agree with what you say here, I think it goes deeper. Some devs/shops are complicit in this, knowingly adding dependencies for shady reasons.