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Google Remotely Changed the Settings on a Bunch of Phones Running Android 9 Pie (theverge.com)

Posted by msmash on from the wait-what dept.

Last week, a mix of people who own Google Pixel phones and other devices running Android 9 Pie noticed that the software's Battery Saver feature had been switched on -- seemingly all by itself. And oddly, this was happening when the phones were near a full charge, not when the battery was low. From a report: Initially it was assumed that this was some kind of minor bug in the latest version of Android, which was only released a few weeks ago. Some users thought they might've just enabled Battery Saver without realizing. But it was actually Google at fault. The company posted a message on Reddit last night acknowledging "an internal experiment to test battery saving features that was mistakenly rolled out to more users than intended." So Google had remotely -- and accidentally -- changed a phone setting for a bunch of real-world customers. Several staffers at The Verge experienced the issue. "We have now rolled battery saver settings back to default. Please configure to your liking," the Pixel team wrote on Reddit before apologizing for the error.

4 of 91 comments (clear)

  1. Next Week's Headlines by mentil · · Score: 5, Insightful

    In other news, Android users are mysteriously finding their Location Services and Google history settings turned to the 'on' position, even if they had previously manually turned them off. /s

    --
    Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
  2. Who needs a backdoor? by meist3r · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If I have the keys to the entire apartment complex! No seriously, there was a light on in your bedroom. I HAD to come in and turn that off.

  3. Any word on how it was done? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Is there any information on how the settings change was made?

    Obviously, OS updates could change settings(sometimes by legitimate necessity since an OS update can add new settings that need a default of some kind, remove features that used to have settings but no longer need them; or modify a feature enough that there isn't a clear answer for what 'preserving' the old setting would mean); so if it was done by pushing out an OS update with the wrong settings that would be sloppy but not fundamentally sinister.

    If, however, Google has sent MDM-like remote control(probably in Google Play Services somewhere), and they used that to toggle the setting things get rather less innocent.

    1. Re:Any word on how it was done? by koick · · Score: 5, Informative

      I have a rooted Pixel 2 running Android 9 Pie on Project Fi network. Since my phone is rooted, I don't take OTA updates and instead update them manually from the factory images they provide every month (under developer options, I even have 'automatic system updates' turned off). My device had its battery saver activated last week. Like others, I guess thought it was a bug, and simply turned off battery saver. Yeah, I'd guess that command they sent came through Google Play Services. Their ability to do this doesn't give me much comfort, but then again I'm not that surprised.