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Google Cuts Android Privacy Feature, Says Release Was Unintentional
An anonymous reader writes "Peter Eckersley at the EFF reports that the 'App Ops' privacy feature added to Android in 4.3 has been removed as of 4.4.2. The feature allowed users to easily manage the permission settings for installed apps. Thus, users could enjoy the features of whatever app they liked, while preventing the app from, for example, reporting location data. Eckersley writes, 'When asked for comment, Google told us that the feature had only ever been released by accident — that it was experimental, and that it could break some of the apps policed by it. We are suspicious of this explanation, and do not think that it in any way justifies removing the feature rather than improving it.1 The disappearance of App Ops is alarming news for Android users. The fact that they cannot turn off app permissions is a Stygian hole in the Android security model, and a billion people's data is being sucked through. Embarrassingly, it is also one that Apple managed to fix in iOS years ago.'"
One of Android's selling points has always been it's open nature, and the fact that it's not as locked down as iOS. This seems like it's taking a step in the direction of locking down the OS for the user, and unlocking it for everyone else...
> it could break some of the apps policed by it.
Is that not the entire point?
+----------------- | What is the question!
It always irked me when you install an Android app it often produces a big long list of the things the app can access, some of which you don't want it to, but you can't pick'n'choose the access permissions, it''s all or nothing.
That's just plain wrong.
And for Google to release an app which can allow you to set the access permissions of apps, and then withdraw it is even wronger (yes I know that's not a real word), even if changing some of the access permissions breaks the app there's the issue that many apps don't actually need to access everything on your Android device to run.
I've been waiting for this for... forever. But not just [Enable]/[Disable], I also want [Produce random fake data] and [Produce data generated by external app hereby selected]. So that I can write or load an app that feeds intelligent but fake info to the others.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Who is surprised?
That data is Google's entire business.
Why Android can't just give me root by default, I don't understand. It's MY device, why can't I be the one who decides if I can have root?
There are security implications for both unlocking and rooting. It's best that they default off.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The difference is that this is really critical functionality that should have been built in and tested from day one, but gets pushed way down the priority stack because of googles conflict of interest in the matter. So it's like that situation a little, but not really.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
I think we will see this feature enabled on later Android versions when they get to finish it and find ways to make old applications not crash when permissions are removed.
It is already known how to enable it without crashing the applications; return fake data. The cause of the app failure is not returning any data. There is a tool for returning fake data, which I think was briefly included in CyanogenMod. It causes apps that rely on the data for their revenue stream to continue operating without getting their payment (clean, marketable data). It was decided that tricking apps into operating was, in one way of thinking, using the software without the informed consent of the programmer -- something akin to misappropration -- and so it was removed.
You may not agree with that perspective, but it is the issue that Google is wrestling with: Should they facilitate the ability to prevent apps from knowing that they are not getting the clean data that they currently take as payment for producing the app?
In my opinion, our current standards for acquiring such data are extremely shady, relying heavily on a consumer base that is deeply misinformed of the extent of the surveillance and the risks the data stores pose. Where the balance of good lies between surveillance and countermeasures is hard to tell; it could be that subverting the datastream is pro-social in the long run -- but that is not the side on which Google's bread is buttered. They have a strong motive to see things from the app developers / watchers / revenue stream point of view. A great deal of money flows to Google from informed, uninformed, and misinformed consent to surveillance.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
You may be right, but that doesn't diminish the fact that this should have been a feature from the very beginning and that its removal is not a step in the right direction from the user perspective.
Oh, and yes, I don't use this OS (or any other smartphone for that matter) for precisely this reason, I can't properly contain and manage the installed software on a very privacy sensitive device.
I feel so sig.
Speaking as a fellow Cyanogenmod user...
CASE #1
Some apps will crash if they can't read your phone contacts (or whatever absurd permission they asked for) and report them to their remote server...and I'm totally fine with that. They said right out they needed X permission and I said no you can't. CASE #2
A lot of applications (I've no idea what percentage though) ask for permissions that they don't need, presumably on the basis that they might need them in the future and don't want automatic updates to stop (which they will if they suddenly want new permissions) CASE #3
see CASE #1, except the developers used this super secret coding technique called try{}catch, and the application still works fine.