Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Android Susceptible To Apps That Turn On Roaming

Posted by timothy on from the would-love-to-see-an-actual-toggle-switch dept.

fermion writes "If seems that Google's Android and T-Mobile have not learned from the bad experience and wrath Apple incurred with roaming charges on the iPhone. Applications can switch to roaming and data operation without the user's knowledge. Also, according to The Register, there is no way to switch off roaming. Given the backlash that Apple experienced over international roaming charges, one would think that T-Mobile would have built a phone to prevent such unexpected charges." From the wording of the article, the inability to turn off roaming seems to be on a per-application basis; users can evidently disable it globally.

2 of 136 comments (clear)

  1. They got what they asked for... by Duradin · · Score: 0, Troll

    Well, wasn't the big draw of Android supposed to be that the big mean ol' bad Apple man couldn't tell your apps what they could or couldn't do? Complete freedom from turtlenecked oppression?

  2. Re:Roaming charges are ridiculous. by Moraelin · · Score: 0, Troll

    Why on earth would you do that?

    A bug? Using some third party library which talks to itself over the external IP address? Sheer incompetence?

    Don't underestimate the sheer amount of bloody stupidity in the industry.

    Note that it doesn't even have to actually stuff the pipe all the time. It just needs to ping something once a minute. It's an easier task to achieve by sheer idiotic mistake than you'd think.

    --
    A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.