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Facebook's Android App Is Asking for Superuser Privileges, Users Say (bleepingcomputer.com)
Catalin Cimpanu, reporting for BleepingComputer: The Facebook Android app is asking for superuser permissions, and a bunch of users are freaking out about granting the Facebook app full access to their device, an understandable reaction following the fallout from the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal. "Grants full access to your device," read the prompts while asking users for superuser permissions. These popups originate from the official Facebook Android app (com.facebook.katana) and are started appearing last night [UTC timezone], continuing throughout the day. Panicked users took to social media, Reddit, and Android-themed forums to share screengrabs of these suspicious popups and ask for advice on what's going on.
No need to be freak outing. Just grant access for Facebook. Nothing could go wrong.
The Facebook
Is Your Friend
Trust The Facebook
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
I don't know if it's algorithmic, or if most of my close friends just hardly use facebook anymore, but it seems like I just rarely see anything anymore in my feed anymore that I care about. It also seems weird that what does appear is generally from people I'm very faint acquaintances with -- if I am curious about one of my actual friends I pretty much have to go straight to their profile.
Besides that though, I think it just encourages behaviors I don't really enjoy seeing in my friends. I definitely know people who in real-life are totally cool, but their social media presence makes me question why I ever liked them in the first place. Mostly I see a lot of:
1) very overt attention seeking for pretty lame things (like, pretty girls posting selfies of themselves doing nothing interesting, or dudes with gym photos, that kind of thing) 2) Extremely broad and poorly thought out political rants 3) sharing really vapid motivational quotes 4) people being maybe a little too vulnerable to a very broad audience, to the point where it's awkward. 5) This one is the worst of all. People taking passive aggressive swipes at individuals by posting very vague status updates. I hate stuff like that.
I don't think of myself as a super judgmental person, but whenever I get on facebook I spend half my time just thinking "really?" and then feeling kind of gross.
#deletefacebook
Literally. Just remove that shit from your phone already! Then go out and do something more constructive with your life, rather than lazily scrolling through other people's "The best ..." life moments.
It's really no big deal. What other data could they possibly collect that they don't have already? They have your location at every second of the day. They have all of your contacts. They have all of your emails and text messages. What else could they get that they don't have, already?
I don't respond to AC's.
Facebook users have already granted Facebook access to their life, and even parts of the lives of people around who are trying to stay out of its clutches, to boot. There is very little Facebook does not collect about you.
Why the crocodile tears when Facebook users are the ones who have voted in surveillance clusterfuck?
I'm most surprised that someone with enough technical merit to root their phone, would install the FB app to begin with.
The app already asks for every single permission available.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
I got rid of any app that basically just mimics going to a website.
While I still use facebook (though at a limited capacity). I was tired of the app draining my battery, but also was very wary of all the stuff it was trying to get access to.
But in general I don't understand installing an app for a service that's offered via a website.
Hey Facebook.
Make one app. That has messenger in it. With a bunch of options of what I want it to do (run all the time for messenger, read my photos, etc.).
Try and not make it an app that literally sucks up all my storage just browsing (my gf filled her phone up twice to the brim, when we looked it was all data stored in the Facebook app - removed the app, reinstalled, all was fine again)
Then, maybe, just maybe, I'll consider installing it. But JUST that. Nothing else. No other apps to do the same thing. And, no, you really don't require (or will ever get) one percent of the permissions your current apps demand.
To be honest, the fact that you DELIBERATELY break the Facebook mobile website to remove messenger (when "View as Desktop Site" shows it perfectly well but in a not-nice format) pisses me off more than anything. You are literally trying to force me to use the apps and I have no interest in that.
You know what happens when you try to force people to use products/services they have no interest in? They go elsewhere.
Another 5 years and Facebook will be like MySpace is now.
Apparently, Facebook are now saying that the message is clearly a bug. It was meant to say:
"Do you want to continue to be anally raped by a multi-billion spying operation run by a dwarf with no moral compass?{Y/n]"
For those with a room temperature IQ (in celsius) you want to hit "Yes". Everybody else wants to hit "No".
The Machine stops.
1. Facebook is busted for some privacy violation users glossed over in the terms of service but are now outraged about.
2. Facebook admits its doing the thing it said it would, but that everything is working to help users.
3. some nameless third party chimes in and accidentally shows the meat counter to the cattle.
4. Facebook walks back its original statement, revises its terms to explicitly refuse service to the third party that outed it, and everyones fine.
The only winning move is not to play. Just delete the god damn app already and leave facebook. Absolutely none of it is for your direct benefit. A multinational megacorporation has found a way to turn your friends into a carrot you'll follow into a slaughterhouse that carves up your personal information and sells it to the real customers.
Good people go to bed earlier.
The fact that the shitty FB app is preinstalled on many android devices (and cannot be removet without root) is far worse.
sudo rm -r -f --no-preserve-root /
Say no and uninstall it.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The good su apps on Android will not, by default, allow a program to present a su dialog unless the app manifest in the Google Play Store has ACCESS_SUPERUSER declared.
What bothers me is that this is something that has to be explicitly coded. Why would an app -ever- request this by accident, is beyond me.
I'm planning to make a nice-big write up about what it means to browse Facebook on a traditional browser while using a mobile phone, using screen-shots for reference. The amount of begging, strong-arming, and general "feature isolation" they pull when you use a mobile browser (that worked five years ago) is astounding. "Request Desktop Site" sometimes gets you around some of that, sometimes it causes other weird things to happen.
Facebook is evil. I want to jettison it outright and just move to Minds and Steemit. Unfortunately Facebook is where the people are, especially family. I make my family posts there and my general posts elsewhere. I really want to move the family away.....
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
The problem is, in the case of Facebook (and Twitter), there is no "elsewhere" to go to. Seriously, go to what?
Go outside ?
What's going on is that the user that found this has rooted his phone and noticed that the FB app requested for privilege escalation. An Android user who hasn't rooted his phone will not see such a request (from any app) since they don't have root to begin with. This is either a bug in the code that triggered privileged escalation, OR it is intentional. You pick. :)
I'll be shocked if this wasn't developer code that should have been ifdeffed out for the final build. Most phones can't get Superuser, and every phone that can puts up a big dialog asking for permission first - there's just literally no way to sneak Superuser permission on Android and it's a very ineffective route for spying. This probably has something to do with the really kludgy file system access permissions that Android has been enforcing for a few releases now, hasn't been fixed yet, and is useful for making development a real pain in the neck.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
That's seems about right, I don't know ow the game though.
Contacts = invite friends
Location = ads (the only one that seems questionable
USB = get character avatar
Wi-fi = warn when doing a large update not on WiFi
Network = ads
Run at start up. = Notifications = ads (another questionable one for a random game.
Basically permissions are worthless, since everything wants access to your photos for some stupid reason, and everything needs network and location to advertise.
I do like that the apps ask when they use in now, so I I can see, oh yes, they want access to my photos because I'm sending a photo the first time.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Once again, WHAT do you suggest realistically replaces Facebook for most people, today? Crickets? Yeah that's what I thought buddy
It's like asking what you suggest to replace junk food and cigarettes. As long as you insist on exactly the same experience, nothing can replace it, obviously.
I would like an option to select exactly what kind of permissions I grant an app. If I then try to use it in a way that requires additional permissions, it would pop up a request saying that it needs permission to use such-and-such to proceed, allowing me a choice of a one-time or permanent extension of the permissions.
Let me know when a major U.S. electronics showroom chain offers phones warranted to run LineageOS.