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The media sharing tools (allowing all of your photos to be shared with an app) are the largest silent invasion of privacy on both Apple and Android phones, whic

by arberx 4y ago

The media sharing tools (allowing all of your photos to be shared with an app) are the largest silent invasion of privacy on both Apple and Android phones, which is not much discussed. Even on IOS, until recently, every app, as long as you allowed media viewing permissions, had access to EVERY PHOTO in your library.

ricardobeat 4y ago
I'm confused by your comment. The new permission tools address the fact that apps have access to your entire library. It's an evolutionary improvement in security, since in every computing device since the 80s, all your apps had access to your entire filesystem. To be honest it can be annoying sometimes. I was happy with the all-in photo library access restriction we've had since 2014. Any app that would do something nefarious with my pictures would have to be something photography related, in which case they can still trick me into giving full library access even with the fine-grained policies. I'd much prefer a short-lived one-time access permission instead, for those times when you need to upload something.
unethical_ban 4y ago
Your message confuses me. Do you mean to say the improvement noted in android 13 is a good remedy for, historically, a bad privacy practice? To me, limiting which folders/pieces of media an app can access seems like a win.
MishaalRahman 4y ago
What Photo Picker does was (mostly) already available since Android 4.4 KitKat with the documents picker (Files app) and the ACTION_GET_CONTENT or ACTION_OPEN_DOCUMENT intents. What Photo Picker adds is a much nicer, more intuitive UI and the ability to grant read-only access to user-selected media files. URIs obtained through Photo Picker can be persisted, but unlike with documents picker, they don't grant write access as well. If you're curious about how the photo picker works under the hood, I wrote an article that goes into that: https://blog.esper.io/android-photo-picker-backport/ https://blog.esper.io/android-photo-picker-backport/
kaba0 4y ago
And on a linux desktop, EVERY FILE you have is accessible, writeable, sendable over the internet. Don’t get me wrong, these are very welcome capabilities, but phones are still eons ahead of desktop OSs.

by arberx 4y ago

ricardobeat 4y ago

I'm confused by your comment. The new permission tools address the fact that apps have access to your entire library. It's an evolutionary improvement in security, since in every computing device since the 80s, all your apps had access to your entire filesystem. To be honest it can be annoying sometimes. I was happy with the all-in photo library access restriction we've had since 2014. Any app that would do something nefarious with my pictures would have to be something photography related, in which case they can still trick me into giving full library access even with the fine-grained policies. I'd much prefer a short-lived one-time access permission instead, for those times when you need to upload something.

unethical_ban 4y ago

Your message confuses me. Do you mean to say the improvement noted in android 13 is a good remedy for, historically, a bad privacy practice? To me, limiting which folders/pieces of media an app can access seems like a win.

MishaalRahman 4y ago

What Photo Picker does was (mostly) already available since Android 4.4 KitKat with the documents picker (Files app) and the ACTION_GET_CONTENT or ACTION_OPEN_DOCUMENT intents. What Photo Picker adds is a much nicer, more intuitive UI and the ability to grant read-only access to user-selected media files. URIs obtained through Photo Picker can be persisted, but unlike with documents picker, they don't grant write access as well. If you're curious about how the photo picker works under the hood, I wrote an article that goes into that: https://blog.esper.io/android-photo-picker-backport/ https://blog.esper.io/android-photo-picker-backport/

kaba0 4y ago

And on a linux desktop, EVERY FILE you have is accessible, writeable, sendable over the internet. Don’t get me wrong, these are very welcome capabilities, but phones are still eons ahead of desktop OSs.