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App lets banks lock your financed phone if you default on payment

123 points by URfejk 6y ago

fattybob 6y ago
in their new iPhone marketing campaign, google announce....
- koboll 6y ago
  I wouldn't be so sure. Apple wants to increase their market share, and reducing risk so they can extend more credit seems like a great way to do it.
indymike 6y ago
This is an absolutely terrible idea.
- formercoder 6y ago
  Devil’s advocate - why? Banks can take your home if you don’t make mortgage payments. With this technology, there might actually be more access to devices because lenders have recourse, reducing the risk overall.
  - wizzwizz4 6y ago
    But banks can't remotely lock your front door until you pay up. If this is okay, then what's to stop the same logic being applied to other communication-assisting devices (e.g. those speaking boards)? Wheelchairs? Prosthetics? Where does it stop? Because believe me, they will keep pushing, if it makes them money; companies with shareholders are legally obliged to.
    - saddlerustle 6y ago
      Rental TV sets with coin slots that required payment to turn on were common in the 70's. This isn't a new model.
      - neckardt 6y ago
        A TV is something which is nice to have, but not essential. A phone is needed for calls, which are essential. Try fixing a billing problem or banking problem without calling the company.
        thinkingemote 6y ago
        When I was a lad our phone initially was a pay phone. I think the landlord was able to set the rate. It was free to receive calls. My grandparents had a phone which only allowed incoming calls (which my older cousins did a type of phone phreaking on to call out, or at least pretended to!)
        Wowfunhappy 6y ago
        If you just need to make simple phone calls, there are very inexpensive feature phones you can buy outright. That doesn't necessarily mean it's a trivial purchase—far too much of the country (never mind the world) lives in poverty—but it's not something anyone in the US would pay in installments.
        srtjstjsj 6y ago
        "Phones" are also dirt cheap. High-end mobile camera-computers are expensive. The government can give phones away if they want to (and they do), no need to ban other arrangements.
        ClumsyPilot 6y ago
        "no need to ban other arrangements." No cost benefit analysis neede? By this logic we would still have endentured servitude and child labour, after all they are just "other arrangements"
        ClumsyPilot 6y ago
        A smartphone is essential for life today, claiming otherwise means you live in fantasyland. A smartphone is required for thousands of essential services, up to the point where EU citizens need one to claim their right to reside in UK after brexit. I needed it to open a bank account. During covid you have to leave details in every restaraunt using a smartphone for contact tracing.
    - jand 6y ago
      With 'car as a platform' and automotive corps at least toying with the idea of subscription based features (think: chip tuning and such) it seems tempting to expand this scheme to cars.
      - saddlerustle 6y ago
        Starter interrupters on cars with subprime auto loans have been a thing for a quite a while.
        jand 6y ago
        Thx for the info, i was unaware of this.
    - throwaways885 6y ago
      > companies with shareholders are legally obliged to. Can we please stop with this meme? No, they are not "legally responsible" to keep pushing. Saying this removes the moral responsibility from the people making these terrible decisions.
      - wizzwizz4 6y ago
        The moral responsibility falls onto whoever decided to set up such a share model in the first place. Yes, I am aware that that's (almost) the only way to start certain classes of company. The system is broken; our job is to work around it, establish a de-facto “shadow system” and then (if necessary) usurp the original system.
        throwaways885 6y ago
        This is still wrong. Shareholders are _not_ legally required to "maximise shareholder value".
    - imtringued 6y ago
      >if it makes them money; companies with shareholders are legally obliged to. There is no such thing. The reality is that companies that don't profit maximize are replaced by companies that do profit maximize. The effect does not have to be formalized in law.
  - vsviridov 6y ago
    Because even in this case there's usually a court involved. The owner just doesn't show up on the 4th of the month and change the locks and take away your fridge and microwave...
    - ashtonkem 6y ago
      FYI, while legally evictions are supposed to go through the courts, land lords regularly find illegal or quasi legal means to evict tenants quickly. This covers the range from negotiating with their tenants (which is fine), to finding process servers who are corrupt and make sure the tenants miss their court date, to simply removing the front door so that the tenants have no physical security and have to leave.
      - dredmorbius 6y ago
        Which are ... illegal.
        ashtonkem 6y ago
        Yes, I did mention that.
        dredmorbius 6y ago
        The practice described in TFA lacks even nominal protection of due process. The fact that where such protections do exist they are often still ignored ... does not make the original inequity any more fair. If your argument is attempting some other point, you might consider restating it more clearly, as I'm utterly failing to find anything but an implicit justification of Google's practice here.
        ashtonkem 6y ago
        I’m just stating what happens; all other arguments you’re mentioning are purely figments of your own imagination.
  - _joel 6y ago
    Because you may need your phone to work or look for jobs that would then enable you to pay off the debt.
  - chadlavi 6y ago
    The devil doesn’t need your advocacy. This is designed to help wealth accumulators punish the poor for being too poor.
  - im3w1l 6y ago
    I'm glad you are playing the devil's advocate, everyone saying "boo" is not really constructive. The high level argument I'm making is that there are few benefits and more drawbacks to this. What's the happiest possible success story we can tell here? Someone without a phone, uses loans they can only get with this invention. They use the phone to access social networks and build friendships, access government services, apply for jobs, turn their life around. How likely is this story? Not likely. Getting a shitty phone is cheap, and this loan wont be needed. So what is a likelier way this will be used? Someone is unhappy with their current phone and wants an upgrade. Having a history of financial irresponsibility, it would be hard for them to get a loan, but now with this tech they can. They get their new phone and show it off to their friends a few months earlier than they otherwise could, and reduce their consumption in other areas to afford their payments. In a significant minority of cases they fail to pay on time and their phone is looked, leading to significant distress. In addition, it makes other things possible down the line. I believe some states suspend drivers licenses if you fail to make alimony payments. With this technology such a policy could be extended to the phone. In less democratic countries it could be used to disable phones of activists. A rhetorical question: Is a country with legal indentured servitude freer than one without?
    - srtjstjsj 6y ago
      So instead of borrowing $1000 for a remote-disableable phone, you borrow $1500 for a phone that comes with less efficient on-site repo service. Is that better?
      - im3w1l 6y ago
        I think ideally people should not borrow with the phone as collateral at all, since it is a necessity for modern life, rather only use their future income as security. Making repo more inefficient will disincentivize it. Are there any current phone-loans doing repo?
      - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
        That pricegap is absolutely fictional, the extra I'd have to pay to finance a phone varies from 15% to 0%, probably because the operator is getting bulk/discounted pricing.
  - gostsamo 6y ago
    The difference is the court. At least where I live, a court is necessary before anybody has the right to repossess any property.
  - diebeforei485 6y ago
    This is a highly regulated process. In practice people have a few months before they have to move out.
brainless 6y ago
I am curious how it works with credit for a car or an LED TV perhaps? I have a car and even after fully paying the bank loan many years back, the bank name still shows up in the car's registration. I just recently checked them. I have heard banks will take back a car if not paid in full.
- comex 6y ago
  Remote kill switches for cars exist. They’re called “starter interrupt”…
- Jaruzel 6y ago
  > I have heard banks will take back a car if not paid in full. I can only speak anecdotally, several years ago, I was in a financial pinch, and I called up my car's finance people. I told them about my problem, and that I didn't expect to be able to continue paying for my car, and that I'd heard that they would take the car back, null the credit agreement (if car value > remaining amount owed), and sell on the car. The nice lady on the phone told me that no, that's not what they do. They'll just wait until I default on X number of payments and then take me to court. Here I was trying to be helpful, and they gave zero shits.
- zrobotics 6y ago
  Pro tip: if the loan is paid off, go to your local dmv and get them removed from the title as a lienholder. I bought a 1971 motorcycle that still had the bank on the title as a lienholder, and it was a royal pain for both myself and the seller. If it wasn't an extremely rare bike, I would have backed out of the purchase. A bank will repo a car if it isn't paid, but if the loan is paid off then their name can be removed from the title. This doesn't happen automatically in all states though, so you may need to do some legwork. However, when the time comes to sell the car having the bank's name on the title is almost worse than a salvage title. Most car dealers will absolutely refuse to take the vehicle in on trade, for example.
orangepanda 6y ago
Cant wait for iOS to copy this
- ramshanker 6y ago
  Totally possible and expected. By the look of it, this is going to spread for Android in all jurisdiction soon.
- izacus 6y ago
  iOS already has that - if you default on payments your IMEI gets blacklisted and your iPhone stops connecting to network.
raffraffraff 6y ago
https://unherd.com/2020/10/how-corporations-can-delete-your-existence/ https://unherd.com/2020/10/how-corporations-can-delete-your-...
arkitaip 6y ago
Title is misleading. We are talking about an use case where a mobile phone bought from a bank/creditor on an installment plan can have it's features locked until payments are resumed.
- buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
  Oh wow. That’s even worse than what the title implies.
  - ByteJockey 6y ago
    Can you elaborate a little on what you originally thought the title meant? Because I thought it meant that banks would be able to monitor/lock your phone, which they would presumably use as a prerequisite for installing their banking app. Basically millions of people who have no other way to remotely access banking services being forced to have their most personal details monitored by large financial institutions and allow those institutions to cut them off from their phones. Then it seems that it means that if you buy something on an installment plan and stop paying, you lose the ability to use it to the full extent. We can make an argument about a phone being necessary in the modern world, but the second scenario seems much less Orwellian than the first. This implies to me, that you may have had a very different interpretation of the title, and I'm curious what it was.
    - jiofih 6y ago
      I also interpreted as banking apps having the ability to lock your phone (for security reasons). I don’t know how you think that this is fine - it is not how financing works. You borrow the money to purchase the device, and go into debt with the lender. They don’t own the phone and shouldn’t have any kind of access to it - it is purely a financial dispute the moment you stop paying.
      - ByteJockey 6y ago
        Forgive me for not knowing this, I've never financed a phone (I used those $40-80 walmart smartphones until fairly recently). Do phone loans of this sort not function as collateralized loans? In such a loan, ownership reverts to the lender when payments aren't made, or perhaps several payments (depending on the contract).
frouge 6y ago
Don't be evil guys!
grishka 6y ago
So what happens if you disable the device admin service this app relies upon to function?
- wizzwizz4 6y ago
  Probably violates the contract you had with your bank, meaning it's legally not your phone any more and you lose the money you've paid for it already. (Or something.)
  - my123 6y ago
    Breaching a covenant entails that the entire sum of the loan becomes due immediately, not that the bank can confiscate the property _and_ keep what you paid.
    - srtjstjsj 6y ago
      They can assess fees that are likely more than what you paid.
quantum_state 6y ago
With this, google is venturing into a dangerous territory ... what of a life threatening emergency occurred while the phone is locked?
- JosephRedfern 6y ago
  I'm not saying this solves every issue, but the article says: "With the device locked, users will be able to access very limited functions in their smartphones. These include emergency calls, incoming and select outgoing calls, settings, and backup and restore service."
  - walshemj 6y ago
    Yes and how will Goggle have every hospital, transplant centers number to white list.
    - JosephRedfern 6y ago
      I'm not saying it's right or "good", but the very same problem applies to people who have their phone line cut off because they've not paid the bill.
- ghufran_syed 6y ago
  Emergency calls are allowed
- Grazester 6y ago
  Something tells me they would not block the ability to call 911.
- eh78ssxv2f 6y ago
  For Enterprise Android devices (i.e., the one owned by the employer), the employers always had the option to install device management policy and disable parts of the phone based on those policies (e.h., remotely disable phone of an employee that was terminated). The other evergreen use case is for the parents to remotely disable/control/set policies for the phone for kids. In this case, the telcos are just using the same device management policy. They can do so because they own the phone (have physical access to it and their legal contacts allow them to do it). I don't think Google did something specific here to enable this feature for telcos. Note that the iPhones also has similar feature. So, switching is not going to help.
vsviridov 6y ago
That's kinda like the plot of Repo Men, only they went for people's cybernetic organ transplants...
wizzwizz4 6y ago
Cory Doctorow's books are still not instruction manuals, FAMANG.
- hyperdimension 6y ago
  Okay, that's a new initialism for me. I know all the rest, but I can't figure out the 'C' for the life of me. Coronavirus? Chevron?
  - ocdtrekkie 6y ago
    Parent might have something against Cloudflare?
    - wizzwizz4 6y ago
      Yeah, that's the one. Though I didn't actually mean to include it, because Cloudflare hasn't ever done this; I was just trying to include both Microsoft and Netflix.
meekrohprocess 6y ago
There was a movie that took these policies to their logical conclusion: Repo Men. "In the near future, you can buy artificial organs on credit. But you had better make those payments..." When so many people don't have a way of accessing the internet besides of their phones, and internet access is essential to meaningfully participate in our society and economy, these sorts of actions become less defensible. It's all about context. On the bright side for Google/Apple/etc, they have wormed their way into our collective lives to the point where "phone culture" might start to drive legislative decisions in the same way that "car culture" did in the past decades.
- tikhonj 6y ago
  > might start to drive legislative decisions in the same way that "car culture" did in the past decades. ...and that's been an unmitigated disaster on several levels. I like the idea of the internet being a utility more than personal car transportation being a utility but I can still see lots of ways for it to fall apart. Aggressive content controls? Mandated DRM for everyone? Strong restrictions on what kind of devices and software you can use? Crackdowns on encryption? All for your own good, of course...
  - grishka 6y ago
    Looking at the way it's moving, it'd probably be the exact opposite. I would very much appreciate a ban on manufacturers having any technical means to control their devices after sale. You bought it, it's yours, period.
    - edmundsauto 6y ago
      Should manufacturers have to support the modifications that people make?
      - grishka 6y ago
        Of course not. If you modified your device, and if that broke it, you've voided your warranty, doesn't it already work this way?
walterbell 6y ago
This is in Kenya where Safaricom's M-Pesa is widely used for mobile money/payments. From the article: > the app was developed by them in partnership with a Kenyan carrier, Safaricom. A spokesperson from Google told XDA that the app was developed to help Safaricom with their new “Lipa Mdogo Mdogo” (Pay Bit by Bit) financing plan which lets customers get an Android Go device with monthly financing. However, if the customer could not pay an installment after four days of its due date, Safaricom locks the device with this Google app. Does the lock also prevent M-Pesa payments? That would effectively be a telco kill switch for digital money wallets.
- 1023bytes 6y ago
  There has to be some kind of exception for payment apps or else it's pretty dumb, how else would you make the payment
  - walterbell 6y ago
    In this particular case, the payment provider (Safaricom) is also the one imposing the device lock. They could permit their own payment while blocking other payments, giving themselves defacto priority.
- diebeforei485 6y ago
  Yeah, four days is ridiculously fast. It should be like 2 weeks or something so people can prepare for it (eg. get an old phone from a friend/relative, transfer their photos and other data). I'm OK with the general concept, provided the consequences of missing a payment are stated clearly in clear language.
falcolas 6y ago
This worries me. Not because of the current usecase - this is already a common practice with cars from used-car dealers (at least in the US). It’s the “what’s next” usecase, where this is included by default, with other quasi-legal triggers. Some potential triggers: Attempts to root your phone. (For example, via a honeypot root mechanism released by the manufacturer) Using an app store not approved by the manufacturer. Visiting “blacklisted” websites. etc. We might not see these kinds of applications for months or years, but there’s no reason we wouldn’t see them, other than relying on Google’s good will.
- 13415 6y ago
  Common practice? Car dealers in the US can disable used cars remotely?
  - petepete 6y ago
    Next step, pacemakers.
  - ZekeSulastin 6y ago
    Remote disable systems (and GPS tracking etc!) are mostly seen at/associated with “Buy Here Pay Here” type used car dealerships that target buyers with poor credit. It probably wasn’t much of a stretch for tracker manufacturers who already produced devices for fleet vehicles. https://passtimegps.com/industries/bhph/ https://passtimegps.com/industries/bhph/ and so on.
- anuila 6y ago
  Google and Apple already have the power to remove apps from your phone, I don’t doubt they could do everything else, should they want to. Additionally, what this app does has definitely been possible forever through device management certificates; this is just an application of it.
- wmf 6y ago
  Play Services already calculates some kind of security score for the phone based on whether it is rooted etc. and banking apps have access to that API.
jand 6y ago
Question: Does inserting themselves as a henchman to enforce claims made by one party of a contract between third parties result in a legal risk for google (in your jurisdiction)? Does google have to verify the claim triggering the feature reduction?
dessant 6y ago
Disgusting, although not surprising considering that Google distributes several predatory lending apps owned by Opera on Google Play. Google's willingness to even entertain introducing this feature for banks points to lending apps being able to not only shame you in front of your contacts, as they currently do, but remotely lock your phone in the future. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-24/google-ban-fails-to-stamp-out-short-term-payday-lending-apps https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-24/google-ba...
billpg 6y ago
I've purchased my phone and paid cash. My cell network is a SIM-only contract. Is the number of ways for anyone to say "Lock billpg's phone." and for my phone to get locked as a result, exactly zero?
- crankyoldcrank 6y ago
  That question can't be answered because there's a binary blob on every modern smartphone that runs on the LTE modem hardware and has access to the device's memory and CPU. Sooooo... Maybe?
- occamrazor 6y ago
  Google is probably able to do that and also your phone’s manufacturer. Your SIM provier and some three-letter-agencies may also be able to do that, by exploiting weaknesses in the firmware.
- akadruid1 6y ago
  Anyone who can hold of your phone's IMEI (e.g. from the network, from the packaging, or by getting access to your phone for a few seconds) can call a network operator and get it blacklisted. This doesn't lock it but does prevent calls and cell network connection. Although malicious state actors apparently can do much worse with the IMEI: https://www.businessinsider.com/saudi-arabia-imei-track-runaways-2019-5?r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/saudi-arabia-imei-track-runa...
gst 6y ago
One fact not mentioned yet here in the comments is that a very similar approach already exists in the United States: If you don't pay off your phone your IMEI is blacklisted and (as far as I know) those blacklists are shared between the major providers in the United States. Therefore the device lock discussed here won't make a large difference in the United States. The primary use-cases are probably: * If used in the United States prevent fraud where someone uses a stolen identity to obtain a phone and then sells it in another market (that doesn't use IMEI blacklists) once it arrives. * If used in other countries that don't have IMEI blacklists to provide a similar functionality as those blacklists. One benefit of that is that it could reduce the credit requirements and make it easier for people with no or a poor credit to obtain a phone.
ffpip 6y ago
I remember reading on XDA devs that Google's excuse was that this would not be implemented in the USA. ''Oh great, so Google only supports predatory practices in countries poorer than the US. Well then, dust off the Nobel Prize.''
- izacus 6y ago
  In USA your phone gets IMEI blacklisted and you can't even do the restricted things listed in this article. Even in iPhones. It's kinda weird to criticize in this way when USA already has a worse system in place.
- ryanlol 6y ago
  Do you consider microloans to be a predatory practice?
mdoms 6y ago
Who the hell gets a loan to pay for a phone?
- inetsee 6y ago
  If you sign up for a carrier and they provide a phone with payments folded into your monthly bill, is that not a loan?
  - mdoms 6y ago
    Yes, that's a loan. Who the hell would do that?
    - ryanlol 6y ago
      A person in Kenya who can’t afford to pay cash for a phone? Why is this even a question?
jungletime 6y ago
A future where google and banks deplatform you from real life. What time line is this. I was watching the creepy hunger games Biden acceptance speech yesterday, to loud cheers, in front of a parking lot of every third car being the same. And I was thinking, this is as fake as the distribution of digits in Biden's vote count.
- ryandrake 6y ago
  Nothing in this article has anything to do with Biden.
dang 6y ago
We changed the URL from https://beebom.com/google-launches-app-that-lets-banks-remotely-lock-android-device/ https://beebom.com/google-launches-app-that-lets-banks-remot... to the article that it is copied from but (unless I missed something) does not link to. Note that this clarification was posted after the original article appeared: https://www.xda-developers.com/google-device-lock-controller-banks-payments/#update1 https://www.xda-developers.com/google-device-lock-controller...
_trampeltier 6y ago
Yesterday, "The driver license will be an App on your phone". Today, "Yeah, just let them lock your phone"
WhyNotHugo 6y ago
This is SUCH an American thing. This whole mentality of getting credit to buy pretty much everything amazes me. Heck, half the time buying from American companies they don't take actual money, only credit. And then this, of course. The entire system is designed so that people are ALWAYS in debt, and then the hammer falls hard if for any reason one can't pay.
- MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
  There is no requirement to buy things on a loan. Many people do it because sometimes it is cheaper. Businesses tend to require it for ease of processing or because it's legitimate and secure. Like say a guy wants 6k car from your dealership and will pay in cash. For all you know it could've been stolen as part of a crime. That cashed he paid can be seized, potentially even with the vehicle. If it was done through a bank, the headache and loss is now on the bank instead. In my experience as an american, to survive and have wealth, you need to be an accountant with your budget. Almost like treating your personal lifestyle as a business enterprise. Including all the wants and toys for yourself. It's a very simple thing to do even but many people forgo it it and just look at their bank account number, often forgetting the oncoming loan payment, things payed with a check, ach's, etc. A good one people forget is student loans or cash out refinancing. That money in your bank account isn't equity. It is an asset offset by a liability. If you have 6k in cash but a 5k loan, your net worth is 1k. Most Americans just see the 6k, forget the 5k, and think that aforementioned 6k is free to be spent as they see fit. Most Americans are just brained spendathon morons with money. Look at the money people donate to streamers! It still floors me people just make absurd donations...for what? Someone to play videogames on the internet? Not to mention juggling social status with finances, most Americans tend to opt for the status symbol as opposed to the cash in the bank. This is why you see college kids with escalades or camaros when they don't even have a reasonable job to afford a payment on them.
  - bsder 6y ago
    > Most Americans are just brained spendathon morons with money. Look at the money people donate to streamers! I don't agree with this statement. What you and I see are those with the means to do this. I knew quite a few techie types who used to spend fairly enormous amounts on strippers. However, the system itself is rigged against those who are barely scraping by. Here's my anecdote from the system: I had a car seized over a single $44 parking ticket (parked longer than 3 days at the commuter train station terminal--which you can exceed by being a couple hours late after the weekend). Once it was towed (instant $200 fee tacked on) and in storage for a couple days, the fees were worth more than the car! And they auctioned the car before the time to contest the ticket had even expired. I would have had to cough up several hundred dollars that I would not get back just to contest the ticket. "Innocent until proven broke." If your institutional superiors yank your slave chain and you have the temerity to not show up immediately and say "Yes, massah!"--you will get the whip. As someone in tech, this was just stupidly annoying and I'm probably going to save money--my insurance went down by almost the value of the car. However, they swept almost thirty cars with mine. And were laughing about it. At least one (I would actually estimate probably about half) of those belongs to someone who can't afford to lose that car but can't afford to get it back now that its been towed. I can absorb losing a 25 year old car. Most people driving one cannot. "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."
diebeforei485 6y ago
Apple sells iPhones financed by Apple Card, too. What happens to someone's phone if they don't pay?
- heimatau 6y ago
  It dings/tarnishes your credit. Enjoy the phone but lenders will think twice with such a 'minimal' purchase wasn't paid for.
  - diebeforei485 6y ago
    My question was what would happen to their phone. You're stating the obvious that there would be some impact on credit, but that's not relevant here?
kinkrtyavimoodh 6y ago
People who are not from these countries (Kenya etc.) might not know that the following are already true— [1] Many people buy phones on loans, because even cheap phones are quite expensive for the average Kenyan. [2] These phone companies _already_ use device policy based apps to control usage for those who have not paid. The difference is that these apps are actually predatory, they are free to siphon off data and what not, and have the usual shadiness that you expect from apps made by relatively random corps who care way less about user privacy than big cos. What this solution seems to be doing is providing a way to enforce the device lock policy at the OS level that actually lessens the vice-grip that these companies have on the user's phones and limits the power of the company to only block the phone from use, as opposed to the earlier model where they could do whatever the fuck they wanted on the device using their installed software.
- mdocherty 6y ago
  Thanks for the context, I'd be curious to learn about any more insights you have to share about the Kenyan phone market.
dredmorbius 6y ago
A friend elsewhere notes: this is literally how China controls its population - they turn off the payment apps in your phone if you have open traffic tickets or -say- they need everybody in a city off the streets. It's very effective, since many services in China expect payment through those apps, so once your phone is blocked you will comply.

123 points by URfejk 6y ago

fattybob 6y ago

in their new iPhone marketing campaign, google announce....

koboll 6y ago
I wouldn't be so sure. Apple wants to increase their market share, and reducing risk so they can extend more credit seems like a great way to do it.

indymike 6y ago

This is an absolutely terrible idea.

formercoder 6y ago
Devil’s advocate - why? Banks can take your home if you don’t make mortgage payments. With this technology, there might actually be more access to devices because lenders have recourse, reducing the risk overall.
- wizzwizz4 6y ago
  But banks can't remotely lock your front door until you pay up. If this is okay, then what's to stop the same logic being applied to other communication-assisting devices (e.g. those speaking boards)? Wheelchairs? Prosthetics? Where does it stop? Because believe me, they will keep pushing, if it makes them money; companies with shareholders are legally obliged to.
  - saddlerustle 6y ago
    Rental TV sets with coin slots that required payment to turn on were common in the 70's. This isn't a new model.
    - neckardt 6y ago
      A TV is something which is nice to have, but not essential. A phone is needed for calls, which are essential. Try fixing a billing problem or banking problem without calling the company.
      - thinkingemote 6y ago
        When I was a lad our phone initially was a pay phone. I think the landlord was able to set the rate. It was free to receive calls. My grandparents had a phone which only allowed incoming calls (which my older cousins did a type of phone phreaking on to call out, or at least pretended to!)
      - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
        If you just need to make simple phone calls, there are very inexpensive feature phones you can buy outright. That doesn't necessarily mean it's a trivial purchase—far too much of the country (never mind the world) lives in poverty—but it's not something anyone in the US would pay in installments.
      - srtjstjsj 6y ago
        "Phones" are also dirt cheap. High-end mobile camera-computers are expensive. The government can give phones away if they want to (and they do), no need to ban other arrangements.
        ClumsyPilot 6y ago
        "no need to ban other arrangements." No cost benefit analysis neede? By this logic we would still have endentured servitude and child labour, after all they are just "other arrangements"
      - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
        A smartphone is essential for life today, claiming otherwise means you live in fantasyland. A smartphone is required for thousands of essential services, up to the point where EU citizens need one to claim their right to reside in UK after brexit. I needed it to open a bank account. During covid you have to leave details in every restaraunt using a smartphone for contact tracing.
  - jand 6y ago
    With 'car as a platform' and automotive corps at least toying with the idea of subscription based features (think: chip tuning and such) it seems tempting to expand this scheme to cars.
    - saddlerustle 6y ago
      Starter interrupters on cars with subprime auto loans have been a thing for a quite a while.
      - jand 6y ago
        Thx for the info, i was unaware of this.
  - throwaways885 6y ago
    > companies with shareholders are legally obliged to. Can we please stop with this meme? No, they are not "legally responsible" to keep pushing. Saying this removes the moral responsibility from the people making these terrible decisions.
    - wizzwizz4 6y ago
      The moral responsibility falls onto whoever decided to set up such a share model in the first place. Yes, I am aware that that's (almost) the only way to start certain classes of company. The system is broken; our job is to work around it, establish a de-facto “shadow system” and then (if necessary) usurp the original system.
      - throwaways885 6y ago
        This is still wrong. Shareholders are _not_ legally required to "maximise shareholder value".
  - imtringued 6y ago
    >if it makes them money; companies with shareholders are legally obliged to. There is no such thing. The reality is that companies that don't profit maximize are replaced by companies that do profit maximize. The effect does not have to be formalized in law.
- vsviridov 6y ago
  Because even in this case there's usually a court involved. The owner just doesn't show up on the 4th of the month and change the locks and take away your fridge and microwave...
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    FYI, while legally evictions are supposed to go through the courts, land lords regularly find illegal or quasi legal means to evict tenants quickly. This covers the range from negotiating with their tenants (which is fine), to finding process servers who are corrupt and make sure the tenants miss their court date, to simply removing the front door so that the tenants have no physical security and have to leave.
    - dredmorbius 6y ago
      Which are ... illegal.
      - ashtonkem 6y ago
        Yes, I did mention that.
        dredmorbius 6y ago
        The practice described in TFA lacks even nominal protection of due process. The fact that where such protections do exist they are often still ignored ... does not make the original inequity any more fair. If your argument is attempting some other point, you might consider restating it more clearly, as I'm utterly failing to find anything but an implicit justification of Google's practice here.
        ashtonkem 6y ago
        I’m just stating what happens; all other arguments you’re mentioning are purely figments of your own imagination.
- _joel 6y ago
  Because you may need your phone to work or look for jobs that would then enable you to pay off the debt.
- chadlavi 6y ago
  The devil doesn’t need your advocacy. This is designed to help wealth accumulators punish the poor for being too poor.
- im3w1l 6y ago
  I'm glad you are playing the devil's advocate, everyone saying "boo" is not really constructive. The high level argument I'm making is that there are few benefits and more drawbacks to this. What's the happiest possible success story we can tell here? Someone without a phone, uses loans they can only get with this invention. They use the phone to access social networks and build friendships, access government services, apply for jobs, turn their life around. How likely is this story? Not likely. Getting a shitty phone is cheap, and this loan wont be needed. So what is a likelier way this will be used? Someone is unhappy with their current phone and wants an upgrade. Having a history of financial irresponsibility, it would be hard for them to get a loan, but now with this tech they can. They get their new phone and show it off to their friends a few months earlier than they otherwise could, and reduce their consumption in other areas to afford their payments. In a significant minority of cases they fail to pay on time and their phone is looked, leading to significant distress. In addition, it makes other things possible down the line. I believe some states suspend drivers licenses if you fail to make alimony payments. With this technology such a policy could be extended to the phone. In less democratic countries it could be used to disable phones of activists. A rhetorical question: Is a country with legal indentured servitude freer than one without?
  - srtjstjsj 6y ago
    So instead of borrowing $1000 for a remote-disableable phone, you borrow $1500 for a phone that comes with less efficient on-site repo service. Is that better?
    - im3w1l 6y ago
      I think ideally people should not borrow with the phone as collateral at all, since it is a necessity for modern life, rather only use their future income as security. Making repo more inefficient will disincentivize it. Are there any current phone-loans doing repo?
    - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
      That pricegap is absolutely fictional, the extra I'd have to pay to finance a phone varies from 15% to 0%, probably because the operator is getting bulk/discounted pricing.
- gostsamo 6y ago
  The difference is the court. At least where I live, a court is necessary before anybody has the right to repossess any property.
- diebeforei485 6y ago
  This is a highly regulated process. In practice people have a few months before they have to move out.

brainless 6y ago

I am curious how it works with credit for a car or an LED TV perhaps? I have a car and even after fully paying the bank loan many years back, the bank name still shows up in the car's registration. I just recently checked them. I have heard banks will take back a car if not paid in full.

comex 6y ago
Remote kill switches for cars exist. They’re called “starter interrupt”…
Jaruzel 6y ago
> I have heard banks will take back a car if not paid in full. I can only speak anecdotally, several years ago, I was in a financial pinch, and I called up my car's finance people. I told them about my problem, and that I didn't expect to be able to continue paying for my car, and that I'd heard that they would take the car back, null the credit agreement (if car value > remaining amount owed), and sell on the car. The nice lady on the phone told me that no, that's not what they do. They'll just wait until I default on X number of payments and then take me to court. Here I was trying to be helpful, and they gave zero shits.
zrobotics 6y ago
Pro tip: if the loan is paid off, go to your local dmv and get them removed from the title as a lienholder. I bought a 1971 motorcycle that still had the bank on the title as a lienholder, and it was a royal pain for both myself and the seller. If it wasn't an extremely rare bike, I would have backed out of the purchase. A bank will repo a car if it isn't paid, but if the loan is paid off then their name can be removed from the title. This doesn't happen automatically in all states though, so you may need to do some legwork. However, when the time comes to sell the car having the bank's name on the title is almost worse than a salvage title. Most car dealers will absolutely refuse to take the vehicle in on trade, for example.

orangepanda 6y ago

Cant wait for iOS to copy this

ramshanker 6y ago
Totally possible and expected. By the look of it, this is going to spread for Android in all jurisdiction soon.
izacus 6y ago
iOS already has that - if you default on payments your IMEI gets blacklisted and your iPhone stops connecting to network.

raffraffraff 6y ago

https://unherd.com/2020/10/how-corporations-can-delete-your-existence/ https://unherd.com/2020/10/how-corporations-can-delete-your-...

arkitaip 6y ago

Title is misleading. We are talking about an use case where a mobile phone bought from a bank/creditor on an installment plan can have it's features locked until payments are resumed.

buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
Oh wow. That’s even worse than what the title implies.
- ByteJockey 6y ago
  Can you elaborate a little on what you originally thought the title meant? Because I thought it meant that banks would be able to monitor/lock your phone, which they would presumably use as a prerequisite for installing their banking app. Basically millions of people who have no other way to remotely access banking services being forced to have their most personal details monitored by large financial institutions and allow those institutions to cut them off from their phones. Then it seems that it means that if you buy something on an installment plan and stop paying, you lose the ability to use it to the full extent. We can make an argument about a phone being necessary in the modern world, but the second scenario seems much less Orwellian than the first. This implies to me, that you may have had a very different interpretation of the title, and I'm curious what it was.
  - jiofih 6y ago
    I also interpreted as banking apps having the ability to lock your phone (for security reasons). I don’t know how you think that this is fine - it is not how financing works. You borrow the money to purchase the device, and go into debt with the lender. They don’t own the phone and shouldn’t have any kind of access to it - it is purely a financial dispute the moment you stop paying.
    - ByteJockey 6y ago
      Forgive me for not knowing this, I've never financed a phone (I used those $40-80 walmart smartphones until fairly recently). Do phone loans of this sort not function as collateralized loans? In such a loan, ownership reverts to the lender when payments aren't made, or perhaps several payments (depending on the contract).

frouge 6y ago

Don't be evil guys!

grishka 6y ago

So what happens if you disable the device admin service this app relies upon to function?

wizzwizz4 6y ago
Probably violates the contract you had with your bank, meaning it's legally not your phone any more and you lose the money you've paid for it already. (Or something.)
- my123 6y ago
  Breaching a covenant entails that the entire sum of the loan becomes due immediately, not that the bank can confiscate the property _and_ keep what you paid.
  - srtjstjsj 6y ago
    They can assess fees that are likely more than what you paid.

quantum_state 6y ago

With this, google is venturing into a dangerous territory ... what of a life threatening emergency occurred while the phone is locked?

JosephRedfern 6y ago
I'm not saying this solves every issue, but the article says: "With the device locked, users will be able to access very limited functions in their smartphones. These include emergency calls, incoming and select outgoing calls, settings, and backup and restore service."
- walshemj 6y ago
  Yes and how will Goggle have every hospital, transplant centers number to white list.
  - JosephRedfern 6y ago
    I'm not saying it's right or "good", but the very same problem applies to people who have their phone line cut off because they've not paid the bill.
ghufran_syed 6y ago
Emergency calls are allowed
Grazester 6y ago
Something tells me they would not block the ability to call 911.
eh78ssxv2f 6y ago
For Enterprise Android devices (i.e., the one owned by the employer), the employers always had the option to install device management policy and disable parts of the phone based on those policies (e.h., remotely disable phone of an employee that was terminated). The other evergreen use case is for the parents to remotely disable/control/set policies for the phone for kids. In this case, the telcos are just using the same device management policy. They can do so because they own the phone (have physical access to it and their legal contacts allow them to do it). I don't think Google did something specific here to enable this feature for telcos. Note that the iPhones also has similar feature. So, switching is not going to help.

vsviridov 6y ago

That's kinda like the plot of Repo Men, only they went for people's cybernetic organ transplants...

wizzwizz4 6y ago

Cory Doctorow's books are still not instruction manuals, FAMANG.

hyperdimension 6y ago
Okay, that's a new initialism for me. I know all the rest, but I can't figure out the 'C' for the life of me. Coronavirus? Chevron?
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  Parent might have something against Cloudflare?
  - wizzwizz4 6y ago
    Yeah, that's the one. Though I didn't actually mean to include it, because Cloudflare hasn't ever done this; I was just trying to include both Microsoft and Netflix.

meekrohprocess 6y ago

There was a movie that took these policies to their logical conclusion: Repo Men. "In the near future, you can buy artificial organs on credit. But you had better make those payments..." When so many people don't have a way of accessing the internet besides of their phones, and internet access is essential to meaningfully participate in our society and economy, these sorts of actions become less defensible. It's all about context. On the bright side for Google/Apple/etc, they have wormed their way into our collective lives to the point where "phone culture" might start to drive legislative decisions in the same way that "car culture" did in the past decades.

tikhonj 6y ago
> might start to drive legislative decisions in the same way that "car culture" did in the past decades. ...and that's been an unmitigated disaster on several levels. I like the idea of the internet being a utility more than personal car transportation being a utility but I can still see lots of ways for it to fall apart. Aggressive content controls? Mandated DRM for everyone? Strong restrictions on what kind of devices and software you can use? Crackdowns on encryption? All for your own good, of course...
- grishka 6y ago
  Looking at the way it's moving, it'd probably be the exact opposite. I would very much appreciate a ban on manufacturers having any technical means to control their devices after sale. You bought it, it's yours, period.
  - edmundsauto 6y ago
    Should manufacturers have to support the modifications that people make?
    - grishka 6y ago
      Of course not. If you modified your device, and if that broke it, you've voided your warranty, doesn't it already work this way?

walterbell 6y ago

This is in Kenya where Safaricom's M-Pesa is widely used for mobile money/payments. From the article: > the app was developed by them in partnership with a Kenyan carrier, Safaricom. A spokesperson from Google told XDA that the app was developed to help Safaricom with their new “Lipa Mdogo Mdogo” (Pay Bit by Bit) financing plan which lets customers get an Android Go device with monthly financing. However, if the customer could not pay an installment after four days of its due date, Safaricom locks the device with this Google app. Does the lock also prevent M-Pesa payments? That would effectively be a telco kill switch for digital money wallets.

1023bytes 6y ago
There has to be some kind of exception for payment apps or else it's pretty dumb, how else would you make the payment
- walterbell 6y ago
  In this particular case, the payment provider (Safaricom) is also the one imposing the device lock. They could permit their own payment while blocking other payments, giving themselves defacto priority.
diebeforei485 6y ago
Yeah, four days is ridiculously fast. It should be like 2 weeks or something so people can prepare for it (eg. get an old phone from a friend/relative, transfer their photos and other data). I'm OK with the general concept, provided the consequences of missing a payment are stated clearly in clear language.

falcolas 6y ago

This worries me. Not because of the current usecase - this is already a common practice with cars from used-car dealers (at least in the US). It’s the “what’s next” usecase, where this is included by default, with other quasi-legal triggers. Some potential triggers: Attempts to root your phone. (For example, via a honeypot root mechanism released by the manufacturer) Using an app store not approved by the manufacturer. Visiting “blacklisted” websites. etc. We might not see these kinds of applications for months or years, but there’s no reason we wouldn’t see them, other than relying on Google’s good will.

13415 6y ago
Common practice? Car dealers in the US can disable used cars remotely?
- petepete 6y ago
  Next step, pacemakers.
- ZekeSulastin 6y ago
  Remote disable systems (and GPS tracking etc!) are mostly seen at/associated with “Buy Here Pay Here” type used car dealerships that target buyers with poor credit. It probably wasn’t much of a stretch for tracker manufacturers who already produced devices for fleet vehicles. https://passtimegps.com/industries/bhph/ https://passtimegps.com/industries/bhph/ and so on.
anuila 6y ago
Google and Apple already have the power to remove apps from your phone, I don’t doubt they could do everything else, should they want to. Additionally, what this app does has definitely been possible forever through device management certificates; this is just an application of it.
wmf 6y ago
Play Services already calculates some kind of security score for the phone based on whether it is rooted etc. and banking apps have access to that API.

jand 6y ago

Question: Does inserting themselves as a henchman to enforce claims made by one party of a contract between third parties result in a legal risk for google (in your jurisdiction)? Does google have to verify the claim triggering the feature reduction?

dessant 6y ago

Disgusting, although not surprising considering that Google distributes several predatory lending apps owned by Opera on Google Play. Google's willingness to even entertain introducing this feature for banks points to lending apps being able to not only shame you in front of your contacts, as they currently do, but remotely lock your phone in the future. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-24/google-ban-fails-to-stamp-out-short-term-payday-lending-apps https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-24/google-ba...

billpg 6y ago

I've purchased my phone and paid cash. My cell network is a SIM-only contract. Is the number of ways for anyone to say "Lock billpg's phone." and for my phone to get locked as a result, exactly zero?

crankyoldcrank 6y ago
That question can't be answered because there's a binary blob on every modern smartphone that runs on the LTE modem hardware and has access to the device's memory and CPU. Sooooo... Maybe?
occamrazor 6y ago
Google is probably able to do that and also your phone’s manufacturer. Your SIM provier and some three-letter-agencies may also be able to do that, by exploiting weaknesses in the firmware.
akadruid1 6y ago
Anyone who can hold of your phone's IMEI (e.g. from the network, from the packaging, or by getting access to your phone for a few seconds) can call a network operator and get it blacklisted. This doesn't lock it but does prevent calls and cell network connection. Although malicious state actors apparently can do much worse with the IMEI: https://www.businessinsider.com/saudi-arabia-imei-track-runaways-2019-5?r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/saudi-arabia-imei-track-runa...

gst 6y ago

One fact not mentioned yet here in the comments is that a very similar approach already exists in the United States: If you don't pay off your phone your IMEI is blacklisted and (as far as I know) those blacklists are shared between the major providers in the United States. Therefore the device lock discussed here won't make a large difference in the United States. The primary use-cases are probably: * If used in the United States prevent fraud where someone uses a stolen identity to obtain a phone and then sells it in another market (that doesn't use IMEI blacklists) once it arrives. * If used in other countries that don't have IMEI blacklists to provide a similar functionality as those blacklists. One benefit of that is that it could reduce the credit requirements and make it easier for people with no or a poor credit to obtain a phone.

ffpip 6y ago

I remember reading on XDA devs that Google's excuse was that this would not be implemented in the USA. ''Oh great, so Google only supports predatory practices in countries poorer than the US. Well then, dust off the Nobel Prize.''

izacus 6y ago
In USA your phone gets IMEI blacklisted and you can't even do the restricted things listed in this article. Even in iPhones. It's kinda weird to criticize in this way when USA already has a worse system in place.
ryanlol 6y ago
Do you consider microloans to be a predatory practice?

mdoms 6y ago

Who the hell gets a loan to pay for a phone?

inetsee 6y ago
If you sign up for a carrier and they provide a phone with payments folded into your monthly bill, is that not a loan?
- mdoms 6y ago
  Yes, that's a loan. Who the hell would do that?
  - ryanlol 6y ago
    A person in Kenya who can’t afford to pay cash for a phone? Why is this even a question?

jungletime 6y ago

A future where google and banks deplatform you from real life. What time line is this. I was watching the creepy hunger games Biden acceptance speech yesterday, to loud cheers, in front of a parking lot of every third car being the same. And I was thinking, this is as fake as the distribution of digits in Biden's vote count.

ryandrake 6y ago
Nothing in this article has anything to do with Biden.

dang 6y ago

We changed the URL from https://beebom.com/google-launches-app-that-lets-banks-remotely-lock-android-device/ https://beebom.com/google-launches-app-that-lets-banks-remot... to the article that it is copied from but (unless I missed something) does not link to. Note that this clarification was posted after the original article appeared: https://www.xda-developers.com/google-device-lock-controller-banks-payments/#update1 https://www.xda-developers.com/google-device-lock-controller...

_trampeltier 6y ago

Yesterday, "The driver license will be an App on your phone". Today, "Yeah, just let them lock your phone"

WhyNotHugo 6y ago

This is SUCH an American thing. This whole mentality of getting credit to buy pretty much everything amazes me. Heck, half the time buying from American companies they don't take actual money, only credit. And then this, of course. The entire system is designed so that people are ALWAYS in debt, and then the hammer falls hard if for any reason one can't pay.

MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
There is no requirement to buy things on a loan. Many people do it because sometimes it is cheaper. Businesses tend to require it for ease of processing or because it's legitimate and secure. Like say a guy wants 6k car from your dealership and will pay in cash. For all you know it could've been stolen as part of a crime. That cashed he paid can be seized, potentially even with the vehicle. If it was done through a bank, the headache and loss is now on the bank instead. In my experience as an american, to survive and have wealth, you need to be an accountant with your budget. Almost like treating your personal lifestyle as a business enterprise. Including all the wants and toys for yourself. It's a very simple thing to do even but many people forgo it it and just look at their bank account number, often forgetting the oncoming loan payment, things payed with a check, ach's, etc. A good one people forget is student loans or cash out refinancing. That money in your bank account isn't equity. It is an asset offset by a liability. If you have 6k in cash but a 5k loan, your net worth is 1k. Most Americans just see the 6k, forget the 5k, and think that aforementioned 6k is free to be spent as they see fit. Most Americans are just brained spendathon morons with money. Look at the money people donate to streamers! It still floors me people just make absurd donations...for what? Someone to play videogames on the internet? Not to mention juggling social status with finances, most Americans tend to opt for the status symbol as opposed to the cash in the bank. This is why you see college kids with escalades or camaros when they don't even have a reasonable job to afford a payment on them.
- bsder 6y ago
  > Most Americans are just brained spendathon morons with money. Look at the money people donate to streamers! I don't agree with this statement. What you and I see are those with the means to do this. I knew quite a few techie types who used to spend fairly enormous amounts on strippers. However, the system itself is rigged against those who are barely scraping by. Here's my anecdote from the system: I had a car seized over a single $44 parking ticket (parked longer than 3 days at the commuter train station terminal--which you can exceed by being a couple hours late after the weekend). Once it was towed (instant $200 fee tacked on) and in storage for a couple days, the fees were worth more than the car! And they auctioned the car before the time to contest the ticket had even expired. I would have had to cough up several hundred dollars that I would not get back just to contest the ticket. "Innocent until proven broke." If your institutional superiors yank your slave chain and you have the temerity to not show up immediately and say "Yes, massah!"--you will get the whip. As someone in tech, this was just stupidly annoying and I'm probably going to save money--my insurance went down by almost the value of the car. However, they swept almost thirty cars with mine. And were laughing about it. At least one (I would actually estimate probably about half) of those belongs to someone who can't afford to lose that car but can't afford to get it back now that its been towed. I can absorb losing a 25 year old car. Most people driving one cannot. "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."

diebeforei485 6y ago

Apple sells iPhones financed by Apple Card, too. What happens to someone's phone if they don't pay?

heimatau 6y ago
It dings/tarnishes your credit. Enjoy the phone but lenders will think twice with such a 'minimal' purchase wasn't paid for.
- diebeforei485 6y ago
  My question was what would happen to their phone. You're stating the obvious that there would be some impact on credit, but that's not relevant here?

kinkrtyavimoodh 6y ago

People who are not from these countries (Kenya etc.) might not know that the following are already true— [1] Many people buy phones on loans, because even cheap phones are quite expensive for the average Kenyan. [2] These phone companies _already_ use device policy based apps to control usage for those who have not paid. The difference is that these apps are actually predatory, they are free to siphon off data and what not, and have the usual shadiness that you expect from apps made by relatively random corps who care way less about user privacy than big cos. What this solution seems to be doing is providing a way to enforce the device lock policy at the OS level that actually lessens the vice-grip that these companies have on the user's phones and limits the power of the company to only block the phone from use, as opposed to the earlier model where they could do whatever the fuck they wanted on the device using their installed software.

mdocherty 6y ago
Thanks for the context, I'd be curious to learn about any more insights you have to share about the Kenyan phone market.

dredmorbius 6y ago

A friend elsewhere notes: this is literally how China controls its population - they turn off the payment apps in your phone if you have open traffic tickets or -say- they need everybody in a city off the streets. It's very effective, since many services in China expect payment through those apps, so once your phone is blocked you will comply.