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That’s a great ideal, but Android is used both by sophisticated users who want a phone they can tinker with and the tech-illiterate grandparents of the world, w

by rafram 1y ago

That’s a great ideal, but Android is used both by sophisticated users who want a phone they can tinker with and the tech-illiterate grandparents of the world, who will never have a legitimate reason to install an app outside the Play Store, and who would never attempt to do that unless they were being guided by a scammer.

microtonal 1y ago
So, put a toggle somewhere. When the toggle is toggled, put up a big fat warning sheet and say if somebody on the phone or mail asks you to do that, 99.9% it's a scammer. If people still go for it, then it is their responsibility. A lot of things in life require responsibility because otherwise the results can be disastrous. But we don't forbid them, because it would be a huge violation of freedoms.
- rafram 1y ago
  But it’s not someone on the phone - it’s their best friend / star-crossed lover who they met on WhatsApp because of a chance wrong-number text! Since then they’ve become incredibly close, and they can trust each other with anything. When their lover gives them some amazing investment advice and it requires clicking through a scary-looking prompt (like they do all the time on a phone), who do they trust - their one true love or a generic warning message on their phone? You have to take into account that the threat model here is vulnerable people, often older, being taken in by scammers who talk to them for weeks and gain their complete confidence. To the victims, it feels like a real romantic relationship, not someone who could even possibly be a scammer.
  - microtonal 1y ago
    The solution is not taking people's freedom away. The solution is education. Lesson 1: lovers are not for investment advise. Also, scams also happen outside smartphones. What's next? Are we going to revoke people's control over their financials because they might be scammed? Let's have the bank approve before we can do a transaction. And since we are using their payment platform, maybe they should also take 30%. Please stop feeding their narrative. Scammers are Google/Apple's "but think of the children".
    - rafram 1y ago
      > lovers are not for investment advise. Aren’t they? I ask my partner for investment opinions all the time. > Let's have the bank approve before we can do a transaction. Yes… That’s already how it works. Banks use heuristics to detect and prevent suspicious transactions. That’s why most of these scams ultimately involve crypto.
      - microtonal 1y ago
        Aren’t they? I ask my partner for investment opinions all the time. Obviously, the probability of it being a scammer reduces with the amount of time. In the end it's a function of time vs. effort. Scamming billionaires by marrying them and waiting until they die happens frequently enough. A 5 year scam for a few thousand bucks, unlikely. As usual, use common sense, which you would have to do anyway if you do investments.
        rafram 1y ago
        There are lots of older people who have never really invested their money, have a lot in their savings account, and might be excited by the idea of a get-rich-quick crypto investment they hear about from someone they trust. Even if they’ve only known them for a little while.
      - Hizonner 1y ago
        > Banks use heuristics to detect and prevent suspicious transactions. ... and it's really fucking annoying when their heuristics misfire-- which is not at all rare-- especially since they do all they can to externalize all costs of that to the customer.
    - throw0101c 1y ago
      > The solution is education. We've been trying to educate people about passwords and phishing for years/decades now, and it has not worked. Further, every day a new ten thousand (US) people need to be educated: * https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/
- throw0101c 1y ago
  > So, put a toggle somewhere. When the toggle is toggled, put up a big fat warning sheet and say if somebody on the phone or mail asks you to do that, 99.9% it's a scammer. The proverbial grandparents will follow the instructions of the scammers and will click through all of that. We've had decades of empirical evidence: people will keep clicking and tapping on dialogue boxes to achieve their goal. People have physically driven to cryptocurrency ATMs on the instructions of scammers: * https://bc-cb.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/ViewPage.action?siteNodeId=2136&languageId=1&contentId=88427 https://bc-cb.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/ViewPage.action?siteNodeId=2136... * https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2025/04/21/bitcoin-atm-scams-consumer-protection/83201725007/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2025/04/21/bitcoin-atm-... Warning sheets will do nothing.
  - dns_snek 1y ago
    Okay great, seeing how every reasonable warning and technical restriction is completely pointless and how people will do everything they're told if they're naive enough and the person on the other end is convincing enough, we can skip this whole dance. Because at the end of the day the scammer is going to convince your grandma to go to the bank, withdraw the entirety of her savings and send them to the scammer in an envelope. Any technical restrictions therefore only harm our personal freedoms and don't actually protect those who are vulnerable because those people's problems aren't technical in nature.
  - broker354690 1y ago
    Who cares? Granny is still allowed to buy knives and accidentally chop off her fingers while she cooks. If she ends up doing that it's either her fault or she's too old to be using knives. We don't ban or blunt knives just because you can cut yourself with them.
    - throw0101c 1y ago
      > Who cares? Those of us with elderly parents and piblings (aunts/uncles).
gumby271 1y ago
Then why not lock down their devices. Why aren't people using the parental controls on their parents phones to lock it down and own in on their behalf? I don't understand this idea that because there are some people vulnerable to scams that we all have to give up control to Apple and Google. The option to move the trust and ownership to another party is useful, but it doesn't have to be just those two parties as options.
- rafram 1y ago
  Not everyone has children. Not everyone has children who they remain in contact with. Not everyone has children who are tech-adept enough to do that. Not everyone has children who are less vulnerable than themselves.
  - gumby271 1y ago
    Well maybe let's start small and cover the people that do first, just to see how that goes. Instead we're starting with all people on the planet, and it will be declared a success because the metrics will say it was, there's no rolling this back. And it doesn't have to be children of parents, that's just the common example that's brought out every time this comes up.
    - snowe2010 1y ago
      We literally did start with that… that’s the current situation, everyone has parental toggles and yet millions of people get scammed for billions of dollars a year. You’re acting like we (and these massive corporations) haven’t been trying for decades at this point. And you’re saying we shouldn’t be trying more stuff, we should just stop and give up and let innocent people get scammed because you want to be able to run whatever on your phone.
      - gumby271 1y ago
        Maybe I'm wrong, but I have never seen Apple or Google suggest that someone use the parental control tools on a vulnerable adult person's phone to prevent them from hurting themselves. They have never run such a campaign for awareness or changed those tools to make them more palatable to controlling adult's phones (these tools are always sold as things to enable on a child's device). So no, I don't think we've started with that. We've started by adding some toggles and scary warning, and I agree that hasn't worked. I never suggested we stop trying, I suggested we allow the trusted owner/admin of the device to be more easily assigned to someone that person trusts, not just forcing Google into that role without consent.
pydry 1y ago
Or guided by their tech savvy children.
jackothy 1y ago
Society is held back so much when the most capable have to live by rules made for the least capable. Give the knowledgeable the freedom to use their skills. Separately, develop ways to help/protect specifically those that need it.

by rafram 1y ago

microtonal 1y ago

So, put a toggle somewhere. When the toggle is toggled, put up a big fat warning sheet and say if somebody on the phone or mail asks you to do that, 99.9% it's a scammer. If people still go for it, then it is their responsibility. A lot of things in life require responsibility because otherwise the results can be disastrous. But we don't forbid them, because it would be a huge violation of freedoms.

rafram 1y ago
But it’s not someone on the phone - it’s their best friend / star-crossed lover who they met on WhatsApp because of a chance wrong-number text! Since then they’ve become incredibly close, and they can trust each other with anything. When their lover gives them some amazing investment advice and it requires clicking through a scary-looking prompt (like they do all the time on a phone), who do they trust - their one true love or a generic warning message on their phone? You have to take into account that the threat model here is vulnerable people, often older, being taken in by scammers who talk to them for weeks and gain their complete confidence. To the victims, it feels like a real romantic relationship, not someone who could even possibly be a scammer.
- microtonal 1y ago
  The solution is not taking people's freedom away. The solution is education. Lesson 1: lovers are not for investment advise. Also, scams also happen outside smartphones. What's next? Are we going to revoke people's control over their financials because they might be scammed? Let's have the bank approve before we can do a transaction. And since we are using their payment platform, maybe they should also take 30%. Please stop feeding their narrative. Scammers are Google/Apple's "but think of the children".
  - rafram 1y ago
    > lovers are not for investment advise. Aren’t they? I ask my partner for investment opinions all the time. > Let's have the bank approve before we can do a transaction. Yes… That’s already how it works. Banks use heuristics to detect and prevent suspicious transactions. That’s why most of these scams ultimately involve crypto.
    - microtonal 1y ago
      Aren’t they? I ask my partner for investment opinions all the time. Obviously, the probability of it being a scammer reduces with the amount of time. In the end it's a function of time vs. effort. Scamming billionaires by marrying them and waiting until they die happens frequently enough. A 5 year scam for a few thousand bucks, unlikely. As usual, use common sense, which you would have to do anyway if you do investments.
      - rafram 1y ago
        There are lots of older people who have never really invested their money, have a lot in their savings account, and might be excited by the idea of a get-rich-quick crypto investment they hear about from someone they trust. Even if they’ve only known them for a little while.
    - Hizonner 1y ago
      > Banks use heuristics to detect and prevent suspicious transactions. ... and it's really fucking annoying when their heuristics misfire-- which is not at all rare-- especially since they do all they can to externalize all costs of that to the customer.
  - throw0101c 1y ago
    > The solution is education. We've been trying to educate people about passwords and phishing for years/decades now, and it has not worked. Further, every day a new ten thousand (US) people need to be educated: * https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/
throw0101c 1y ago
> So, put a toggle somewhere. When the toggle is toggled, put up a big fat warning sheet and say if somebody on the phone or mail asks you to do that, 99.9% it's a scammer. The proverbial grandparents will follow the instructions of the scammers and will click through all of that. We've had decades of empirical evidence: people will keep clicking and tapping on dialogue boxes to achieve their goal. People have physically driven to cryptocurrency ATMs on the instructions of scammers: * https://bc-cb.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/ViewPage.action?siteNodeId=2136&languageId=1&contentId=88427 https://bc-cb.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/ViewPage.action?siteNodeId=2136... * https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2025/04/21/bitcoin-atm-scams-consumer-protection/83201725007/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2025/04/21/bitcoin-atm-... Warning sheets will do nothing.
- dns_snek 1y ago
  Okay great, seeing how every reasonable warning and technical restriction is completely pointless and how people will do everything they're told if they're naive enough and the person on the other end is convincing enough, we can skip this whole dance. Because at the end of the day the scammer is going to convince your grandma to go to the bank, withdraw the entirety of her savings and send them to the scammer in an envelope. Any technical restrictions therefore only harm our personal freedoms and don't actually protect those who are vulnerable because those people's problems aren't technical in nature.
- broker354690 1y ago
  Who cares? Granny is still allowed to buy knives and accidentally chop off her fingers while she cooks. If she ends up doing that it's either her fault or she's too old to be using knives. We don't ban or blunt knives just because you can cut yourself with them.
  - throw0101c 1y ago
    > Who cares? Those of us with elderly parents and piblings (aunts/uncles).

gumby271 1y ago

Then why not lock down their devices. Why aren't people using the parental controls on their parents phones to lock it down and own in on their behalf? I don't understand this idea that because there are some people vulnerable to scams that we all have to give up control to Apple and Google. The option to move the trust and ownership to another party is useful, but it doesn't have to be just those two parties as options.

rafram 1y ago
Not everyone has children. Not everyone has children who they remain in contact with. Not everyone has children who are tech-adept enough to do that. Not everyone has children who are less vulnerable than themselves.
- gumby271 1y ago
  Well maybe let's start small and cover the people that do first, just to see how that goes. Instead we're starting with all people on the planet, and it will be declared a success because the metrics will say it was, there's no rolling this back. And it doesn't have to be children of parents, that's just the common example that's brought out every time this comes up.
  - snowe2010 1y ago
    We literally did start with that… that’s the current situation, everyone has parental toggles and yet millions of people get scammed for billions of dollars a year. You’re acting like we (and these massive corporations) haven’t been trying for decades at this point. And you’re saying we shouldn’t be trying more stuff, we should just stop and give up and let innocent people get scammed because you want to be able to run whatever on your phone.
    - gumby271 1y ago
      Maybe I'm wrong, but I have never seen Apple or Google suggest that someone use the parental control tools on a vulnerable adult person's phone to prevent them from hurting themselves. They have never run such a campaign for awareness or changed those tools to make them more palatable to controlling adult's phones (these tools are always sold as things to enable on a child's device). So no, I don't think we've started with that. We've started by adding some toggles and scary warning, and I agree that hasn't worked. I never suggested we stop trying, I suggested we allow the trusted owner/admin of the device to be more easily assigned to someone that person trusts, not just forcing Google into that role without consent.

pydry 1y ago

Or guided by their tech savvy children.

jackothy 1y ago

Society is held back so much when the most capable have to live by rules made for the least capable. Give the knowledgeable the freedom to use their skills. Separately, develop ways to help/protect specifically those that need it.