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Since-Pulled Cyanogen Update For Oneplus Changes Default Home Page To Bing
ourlovecanlastforeve writes: Nestled into GSMArena's report on the Cyanogen OS 12.1 update for Oneplus [ Note: an update that the story reports has since been pulled.] is this tasty bite: "...you'll find out that your Chrome homepage has been changed to Bing." Then it's casually dismissed with "Thankfully though, you can easily get rid of Microsoft's search engine by using Chrome settings." as if this were the most normal thing to have to do after an OTA update. Is this the new normal? Has Microsoft set a new precedent that it's okay to expect users to have to go searching through every setting and proactively monitor network traffic to make sure their data isn't being stolen, modified or otherwise manipulated?
Hosts files. With 64-bit compatible appropriate hosts file management tools we could prevent the phone from ever connecting to Bing. I think we should hear APK hosts file guy's thoughts about this issue.
How is it trolling? What with the spyware that was quietly implemented in Windows 7 and 8.1, it's a perfectly legitimate question.
My coworker had a problem recently with a bit of malware that kept changing Chrome's search engine to Bing whenever Chrome was installed. It was a bitch to remove it (it was nestled in some obscure registry, and I had to decompile the bastard to find out where). The kicker is that he got it off of a program that Microsoft recommended to him to open a certain file extension.
google pays mozilla to be firefox frontpage for years = good microsoft pays oneplus for bing to be frontpage = new precedent that's how silly you sound...
It's one thing to do it on a fresh install, it's another ENTIRELY to change my chosen settings in an update, even more so a setting that has NOTHING to do with how the OS functions or handles data. I can change my homepage in FF and it doesn't get reverted upon updating the software.
CyanogenMOD users are often of the hacker\tweaker variety. Android enthusiasts are often Google fans, but probably not Microsoft fans. Most of the hacker types I know HATE Microsoft as a residual feeling from their monopoly days. We didn't suddenly just start liking microsoft once they started losing.
What brain damaged individual thought that Cyanogen users would be happy with Bing? Fuck Bing. No one is clammoring for Bing, least of all, hackers.
This has nothing to do with whether Google has today's version of Microsoft's desktop monopoly (it doesn't, by the way). it has to do with silently changing a user preference. You might argue that a user doesn't want Google as the default search engine from the start - but if they're buying an Android device, at least they know the default search engine is Google - and they can change it. To quietly change the default without being asked is a whole other thing.
Mozilla pulled this with its switch to Bing. It wasn't supposed to change the search engine for existing installations - but in some cases, it still did. I've even had it changed back to Bing after having switched it back to Google. Don't know if that happened in response to an update or what, but it's nasty.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
Yes, very confusing I know.
Cyanogen OS is some kind of bastard commercial branch for OnePlus (and possibly for a few more phones).
The updates are a complete disaster, not only that you can't just get to OnePlus and easily see what to install and what's the latest version.
On the other hand the "normal" CyanogenMod you can get for your S5 or many other hundreds of phones is (usually) absolutely fine.
Google set the precedent for preinstalled spyware. Microsoft, as always, just consolidated on the precedent set by another party. Apple is following along as well, of course.
WTF are you talking about? MS was pre-installing adware and spyware on computers before Google was even a company.
Enigma