Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by mrpg on Tuesday December 06 2016, @09:35PM   Printer-friendly
from the and-wait-for-2017 dept.

Your phone probably contains banking, payment and personal information that can be remotely stolen via numerous known and unknown bugs in the Android software. This is attractive to criminals.

Vendors (LG, Samsung, Xiaomi, etc.), after selling you their phone, have no incentive to keep your phone's software up to date with Google's fixes. Your Android phone is probably out of date and therefore a gaping security hole through which attackers can steal your stuff from the safety of their own laptops.

In short, your phone could be hacked wide open from afar through a single innocent-looking email, MMS or web-page.

In the end the recommendations are: buy an Iphone, stick to Google phones or install a custom ROM.

Original URL: Android security in 2016 is a mess

-- submitted from IRC


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 1) by Francis on Tuesday December 06 2016, @09:59PM

    by Francis (5544) on Tuesday December 06 2016, @09:59PM (#438073)

    People must be able to disable and uninstall apps they don't want. Why should I have to have the insecurities of the FB app on my phone when I never use FB? Same goes for the many other vendor installed apps that have nothing to do with the basic functionality of the phone.

    Google has gotten smarter about the carriers and moved more of their core functionality into independent apps, but it's not anywhere near enough. The vendors shouldn't be allowed to lock the system down without providing the end user the ability to unlock it as needed. And the vendors should be responsible for whatever bad things happen from their software going bad.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @10:04PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @10:04PM (#438078)

    All of that would be a natural outcome were mobile devices freed from the arbitrary and capricious limitations set by proprietous corporate overlords.

  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Hairyfeet on Wednesday December 07 2016, @01:58AM

    by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Wednesday December 07 2016, @01:58AM (#438166) Journal

    This is why I have to really give MSFT credit on their Win 10 Mobile, I may not like Win 10 on the desktop but on the wife's phone? Its damned nice and the first mobile OS I've seen that bring you all the goodness of a general purpose PC in your pocket. Don't like any app that comes with the phone, including the base apps? Just hold your finger on it and choose uninstall, that's it. Want to replace the default apps with third party like you do on the desktop? Go right ahead, nothing stopping you, just install what you want and toss what you don't.

    Now that its getting harder and harder to find phones that have decent custom ROMs I'm seriously thinking of dropping Android as I don't care for Samsung products and if I'm not gonna be able to swap the OS anyway I might as well have control of the programs that are on my phone like I have on my desktop.

    --
    ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
    • (Score: 1) by Francis on Wednesday December 07 2016, @04:16AM

      by Francis (5544) on Wednesday December 07 2016, @04:16AM (#438206)

      I used to love Cyanogenmod on my Nexus One years back, it's a shame they changed their model. I'd consider paying for their firmware, but last I checked they didn't even support any of the devices I own, so nothing to pay for.

      I personally think that by law companies ought to be required to offer the endusers some way of temporarily, or permanently, rooting their devices in order to remove bundled software. I like the idea of being able to root my device when I need that functionality and then turn it off as soon as I'm done with it. I don't know of any of the manufacturers offering that.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 07 2016, @05:05AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 07 2016, @05:05AM (#438213)

        "There should be a law!"

    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 07 2016, @08:28AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 07 2016, @08:28AM (#438257)

      Its damned nice and the first mobile OS I've seen that bring you all the goodness of a general purpose PC in your pocket.

      Large screen, great keyboard?

      Don't like any app that comes with the phone, including the base apps? Just hold your finger on it and choose uninstall, that's it.

      Yeah, that's the easy part.

      Want to replace the default apps with third party like you do on the desktop? Go right ahead, nothing stopping you, just install what you want and toss what you don't.

      If you like "desktop apps", sure. Otherwise, you quickly realize that you have on email app to choose from (and it's locked to outlook.com), one browser (Internet Explorer)...

      That's the reason I spent two years trying to give away my Windows tablet: No mail app that works without an outlook.com account, and the best browser was IE. Not because IE mobile is better than IE desktop, but because the only alternative is Firefox 28 which was cancelled because "two few users", even though it's too buggy to use.