7 ms·

Android 10 (on googlephones) has a feature called ‘digital wellbeing’ that can measure how much I gawk at the screen, and show that to me. Interesting, I think,

by aasasd 6y ago

Android 10 (on googlephones) has a feature called ‘digital wellbeing’ that can measure how much I gawk at the screen, and show that to me. Interesting, I think, let's see if that data stays locally. The only piece of info on data usage that I've found is a link to Google's overarching privacy policy. Oy vey. Some data-processing features in the settings are marked with ‘data stays on the phone’—but this one isn't. So I have to assume that ‘wellbeing’ snitches to Google, and can't use it. “Collection of data is disclosed to and controllable by users”? Well, if the users presume that collection is going on unless said otherwise, then maybe. Annoying thing is, I'd quite want to use the voice assistant. Do I like to fiddle with integrations and workflows? Oh boy. Damn well I do. Do I know that my voiceprint won't turn up on Google's servers the minute I use the assistant? Nope. (Btw, another baffling trait of the Android ecosystem is how many well-known and widely-used hackish tools are closed-source: those from XDA and such. “Flash this binary to root your phone”, “install this blob for low-level customizations”. Eeeeh? I think I'll just disable all Google's misfeatures instead, for now.)

ignoramous 6y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oy_vey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oy_vey
propogandist 6y ago
The digital wellbeing app is pretty much spyware. If you disable Google Play Service, the Wellbeing app (which cannot be disabled) will constantly complain that it won't work properly... The app has, among other permissions, the requirement to have full network access. Similarly, if you use the default Gboard (keyboard) on Android, it's constantly trying to call home to Google servers, as with most other stock apps. Android is just increasingly becoming spyware and best route is installing AOSP without GApps. Unfortunately, Google seems to be keen on limiting this behavior and increasing their lock-in with recent changes to Android, making it harder for the open source community to have control over the OS.
- mav3rick 6y ago
  Google Play Services are the crux of the implementation of core services. If you're not okay with that don't buy the phone or install something else on it.
  - sli 6y ago
    It may feel good to say it, because you get to offload the responsibility onto consumers rather than the entity committing questionable (but legal) acts, but in reality "just don't do X" is never going to affect any sort of change. It's simply shifting blame onto people with no power to do anything. More to the point, you're essentially recommending that everyone pony up $1000+ for an iPhone. None of those lesser known options (or modern dumb phones) are known to the average smartphone user, average people don't know anything about these hardened Android forks, etc. Boycotts are really not very reliable, because most of it is exactly this: just telling people to do a boycott and then stopping there. I know it's not reasonable to expect everyone floating ideas to have a plan for implementation, but when it comes to these kind of boycott suggestions, nobody has a plan. That's why shifting the responsibility onto the consume isn't going to work. You're not going to mobilize near enough people. You know what does work, though? Strong privacy regulations with harsh penalties.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - mav3rick 6y ago
      You're not giving a company the right to ship their own implementation. GMS Core really is the implementation. You want the phone to work without that. How delusional. Can an Apple phone work without core services ?
      - thatcat 6y ago
        Some of them can. Look up postmarketOS
    - robin_reala 6y ago
cptskippy 6y ago
Their apps require weird/unnecessary permissions. Google Maps now requires access to monitor Physical Activity if you use Location Sharing.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- extropy 6y ago
  That seems a reasonable thing to ask for location sharing. Probably really used for the timeline though. https://developer.android.com/about/versions/10/privacy/changes#physical-activity-recognition https://developer.android.com/about/versions/10/privacy/chan...
catalogia 6y ago
> (Btw, another baffling trait of the Android ecosystem is how many well-known and widely-used hackish tools are closed-source: those from XDA and such. “Flash this binary to root your phone”, “install this blob for low-level customizations”. Eeeeh? I think I'll just disable all Google's misfeatures instead, for now.) It really seems like most of the android developer culture came from the oldschool windows freeware scene, which also has a baffling aversion to publishing source code.
- commoner 6y ago
  That is true, but there has been some progress on the adoption of the FOSS model in the Android developer community. The most commonly used Android recovery software, TWRP, is open source. https://github.com/TeamWin/Team-Win-Recovery-Project https://github.com/TeamWin/Team-Win-Recovery-Project The most popular Android rooting solution, Magisk, is also open source. All Magisk modules (plugins developed by the community) in the official repository are required to be open source. https://github.com/topjohnwu/Magisk https://github.com/topjohnwu/Magisk https://github.com/Magisk-Modules-Repo/submission https://github.com/Magisk-Modules-Repo/submission
izacus 6y ago
> Annoying thing is, I'd quite want to use the voice assistant. Do I like to fiddle with integrations and workflows? Oh boy. Damn well I do. Do I know that my voiceprint won't turn up on Google's servers the minute I use the assistant? Nope. Google Assistant uses servers to run voice recognition so it's certain that your voice print will end up on their servers. Same for Apple Siri and pretty much any of them. As far as I'm aware, only the Pixel 4's improved Assistant is capable of partial offline execution and even that ends up on Google's servers. Also additional question for HNers: Do you consider Apple's "Digital wellbeing" feature on iOS spyware as well? Is there a difference?
- aasasd 6y ago
  I think explanations on the phone or in the online help say somewhere that the assistant sort of can recognize commands offline, even before Pixel 4. But I may be mistaken—can't find that now.
  - Nullabillity 6y ago
    Yeah, pretty sure "offline Google Now" was a selling point back in the.. 4.4 days?
  - izacus 6y ago
    Yeah, but there's no guarantee that it'll do recognition on device (you can't force it). So it's not really useful from privacy perspective.
- nojito 6y ago
  Siri requests aren't tied to unique persons.
mgraczyk 6y ago
You can disable app-usage access for the digital wellbeing app in the system settings. Just search for "wellbeing", click into it, click the menu, then "turn off usage access". Google doesn't need this tool to track usage statistics for ads. The ads SDK used by app developers is orders of magnitude more useful as a data source.
jariel 6y ago
‘digital wellbeing’ This has such an Orwellian tinge to it. This is the Western version of CCP controls, the means just take another form. I don't imply the two are in the same category and therefore it's not equivalent, but within the constraints Google has ... this is what it looks like.
userbinator 6y ago
Btw, another baffling trait of the Android ecosystem is how many well-known and widely-used hackish tools are closed-source: those from XDA and such. It's closer to the Windows cracking scene and such, where the expectation is that if you don't trust something, you either don't use it or disassemble and analyse it yourself. After all, a lot of app modding is done using decompilers.
lowdose 6y ago
I recommend buying a Google Hub with a screen for Google Assistant. It's pretty awesome to just ask Google to play Spotify on my Sonos without having to touch anything. On the screen I can see all my interaction history with the assistant with 2 taps.

by aasasd 6y ago

ignoramous 6y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oy_vey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oy_vey

propogandist 6y ago

The digital wellbeing app is pretty much spyware. If you disable Google Play Service, the Wellbeing app (which cannot be disabled) will constantly complain that it won't work properly... The app has, among other permissions, the requirement to have full network access. Similarly, if you use the default Gboard (keyboard) on Android, it's constantly trying to call home to Google servers, as with most other stock apps. Android is just increasingly becoming spyware and best route is installing AOSP without GApps. Unfortunately, Google seems to be keen on limiting this behavior and increasing their lock-in with recent changes to Android, making it harder for the open source community to have control over the OS.

mav3rick 6y ago
Google Play Services are the crux of the implementation of core services. If you're not okay with that don't buy the phone or install something else on it.
- sli 6y ago
  It may feel good to say it, because you get to offload the responsibility onto consumers rather than the entity committing questionable (but legal) acts, but in reality "just don't do X" is never going to affect any sort of change. It's simply shifting blame onto people with no power to do anything. More to the point, you're essentially recommending that everyone pony up $1000+ for an iPhone. None of those lesser known options (or modern dumb phones) are known to the average smartphone user, average people don't know anything about these hardened Android forks, etc. Boycotts are really not very reliable, because most of it is exactly this: just telling people to do a boycott and then stopping there. I know it's not reasonable to expect everyone floating ideas to have a plan for implementation, but when it comes to these kind of boycott suggestions, nobody has a plan. That's why shifting the responsibility onto the consume isn't going to work. You're not going to mobilize near enough people. You know what does work, though? Strong privacy regulations with harsh penalties.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - mav3rick 6y ago
    You're not giving a company the right to ship their own implementation. GMS Core really is the implementation. You want the phone to work without that. How delusional. Can an Apple phone work without core services ?
    - thatcat 6y ago
      Some of them can. Look up postmarketOS
  - robin_reala 6y ago

cptskippy 6y ago

Their apps require weird/unnecessary permissions. Google Maps now requires access to monitor Physical Activity if you use Location Sharing.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
extropy 6y ago
That seems a reasonable thing to ask for location sharing. Probably really used for the timeline though. https://developer.android.com/about/versions/10/privacy/changes#physical-activity-recognition https://developer.android.com/about/versions/10/privacy/chan...

catalogia 6y ago

> (Btw, another baffling trait of the Android ecosystem is how many well-known and widely-used hackish tools are closed-source: those from XDA and such. “Flash this binary to root your phone”, “install this blob for low-level customizations”. Eeeeh? I think I'll just disable all Google's misfeatures instead, for now.) It really seems like most of the android developer culture came from the oldschool windows freeware scene, which also has a baffling aversion to publishing source code.

commoner 6y ago
That is true, but there has been some progress on the adoption of the FOSS model in the Android developer community. The most commonly used Android recovery software, TWRP, is open source. https://github.com/TeamWin/Team-Win-Recovery-Project https://github.com/TeamWin/Team-Win-Recovery-Project The most popular Android rooting solution, Magisk, is also open source. All Magisk modules (plugins developed by the community) in the official repository are required to be open source. https://github.com/topjohnwu/Magisk https://github.com/topjohnwu/Magisk https://github.com/Magisk-Modules-Repo/submission https://github.com/Magisk-Modules-Repo/submission

izacus 6y ago

> Annoying thing is, I'd quite want to use the voice assistant. Do I like to fiddle with integrations and workflows? Oh boy. Damn well I do. Do I know that my voiceprint won't turn up on Google's servers the minute I use the assistant? Nope. Google Assistant uses servers to run voice recognition so it's certain that your voice print will end up on their servers. Same for Apple Siri and pretty much any of them. As far as I'm aware, only the Pixel 4's improved Assistant is capable of partial offline execution and even that ends up on Google's servers. Also additional question for HNers: Do you consider Apple's "Digital wellbeing" feature on iOS spyware as well? Is there a difference?

aasasd 6y ago
I think explanations on the phone or in the online help say somewhere that the assistant sort of can recognize commands offline, even before Pixel 4. But I may be mistaken—can't find that now.
- Nullabillity 6y ago
  Yeah, pretty sure "offline Google Now" was a selling point back in the.. 4.4 days?
- izacus 6y ago
  Yeah, but there's no guarantee that it'll do recognition on device (you can't force it). So it's not really useful from privacy perspective.
nojito 6y ago
Siri requests aren't tied to unique persons.

mgraczyk 6y ago

You can disable app-usage access for the digital wellbeing app in the system settings. Just search for "wellbeing", click into it, click the menu, then "turn off usage access". Google doesn't need this tool to track usage statistics for ads. The ads SDK used by app developers is orders of magnitude more useful as a data source.

jariel 6y ago

‘digital wellbeing’ This has such an Orwellian tinge to it. This is the Western version of CCP controls, the means just take another form. I don't imply the two are in the same category and therefore it's not equivalent, but within the constraints Google has ... this is what it looks like.

userbinator 6y ago

Btw, another baffling trait of the Android ecosystem is how many well-known and widely-used hackish tools are closed-source: those from XDA and such. It's closer to the Windows cracking scene and such, where the expectation is that if you don't trust something, you either don't use it or disassemble and analyse it yourself. After all, a lot of app modding is done using decompilers.

lowdose 6y ago

I recommend buying a Google Hub with a screen for Google Assistant. It's pretty awesome to just ask Google to play Spotify on my Sonos without having to touch anything. On the screen I can see all my interaction history with the assistant with 2 taps.