from the the-play's-the-thing-where-I'll-capture... dept.
TrendMicro has discovered 36 apps in Google Play that execute unwanted behavior:
These apps posed as useful security tools under the names Security Defender, Security Keeper, Smart Security, Advanced Boost, and more. They also advertised a variety of capabilities: scanning, cleaning junk, saving battery, cooling the CPU, locking apps, as well as message security, WiFi security, and so on.
The apps were actually able to perform these simple tasks, but they also secretly harvested user data, tracked user location, and aggressively pushed advertisements.
The apps in question have been removed from Google Play.
Related: Google Pauses Crackdown on Apps That Use Accessibility Features
Related Stories
Submitted via IRC for Fnord666_
Google will take 30 days to gather feedback on 'responsible' uses of accessibility code before cracking down.
Almost a month ago, Google cracked down on developers that used Android's accessibility features for apps that weren't expressly created for people with disabilities. The company told developers that they had to show how their code actually helped those with a disability or face removal from the Play Store within 30 days. Now, however, Google is pausing that final solution for another month to consider "responsible and innovative uses of accessibility services."
[...] In the current email, Google asked recipients to send feedback around their appropriate use of the accessibility features in Android: "If you believe your app uses the Accessibility API for a responsible, innovative purpose that isn't related to accessibility, please respond to this email and tell us more about how your app benefits users. This kind of feedback may be helpful to us as we complete our evaluation of accessibility services."
Source: https://www.engadget.com/2017/12/08/google-pauses-crackdown-apps-accessibility-features/
Also reported at https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/12/google-pauses-android-accessibility-app-crackdown-after-public-outcry/
(Score: 4, Interesting) by requerdanos on Friday January 05 2018, @04:30PM (18 children)
Why not hand-review every app in the play store, and put a "Reviewed by Play Store" seal with a grade for spamminess, respecting privacy, malware content, etc. (Yeah, ha ha, google respecting privacy, that's a good one, but hear me out...)
Sure, it will take more years than there are atoms in the known universe to get them all (+those appearing daily), regardless of the pace, but there are still many benefits (getting them all isn't the goal):
- Apps that have been reviewed will have a "reviewed" seal.
- Apps that haven't, won't.
- Reviewing apps can find and remove ones that are malware/violate play store TOS, increasing trust in Play Store.
- People may come to value the reviewed seal as potentially more trustworthy.
- People can see a specific spamminess rating for apps that don't do much but inject a lot of ads. And avoid. Thus discouraging this.
- People can see a specific privacy-invading rating for apps that don't do much but harvest personal info. And avoid. Thus discouraging this.
- We can say to people who installed apps with no seal "told you so"
- it may be a deterrent to slimy scum to encourage them to push malware elsewhere.
- If you want the latest version of your app reviewed faster, pay $x (or $y monthly/annually) to the review oversight team. Otherwise, wait til yours comes up in pseudorandom order weighted by popularity. So it's a potential income maker for Play Store.
- If you don't care, and your user base already trusts you, no need to pay a cent. $ totally voluntary.
From experience trying to find simple apps that do $(random function), I know that the play store is a swamp filled with stuff you don't want to step in, much less install on your device, and often the user must install app after app trying to find something that does a simple task. High annoyance=poor user experience*, and some review process might improve this, especially if it did not change the fundamental wild west character of the play store.
-----
* - Oh, you wanted to turn on your flashlight? First, look at all the cheap Chinese crapola at "wish"!! (morons rate it 4-5 stars because flashlight eventually appears)
- Ah, sure, we can scan barcodes, but first, a word from our sponsor. Oh, you want to scan a second barcode? Yeah, but what about unrelated-site.com??? Oh, a third barcode to scan? Now close *this* ad! (morons rate it 4-5 stars because barcode scanner eventually appears)
- Yes, your battery stats: But first, ad for this unpopular app! (morons rate it 4-5 stars perhaps because of batter status icon?)
- Ah, it's time to get up, and to take advantage of your sleepiness, today we've put an ad in place of "snooze"!!! Surprise! (morons rate it 4-5 stars because, individually and collectively, they're morons who are perhaps not the best ones to be handing out the stars.)
- I was bitter for a while, but I'm over that now...
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 05 2018, @04:36PM (11 children)
The incentives are all wrong.
Google's incentive is to sell whatever can be sold to consumers, and to get as many advertisements to them as possible. Only insofar as it helps these goals does Google care about consumer happiness.
You get what you pay for. Start paying for something better.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday January 05 2018, @04:54PM (10 children)
What's your alternative? I've spent a lot of time looking for decent kids apps for education, and while paid apps are sometimes better with fewer ads and in-app purchases, etc. That's not universally true. I'd gladly pay more ($10, $20, possibly even more per app if it's particularly good with a lot of good features) for something that actually is stable, works well, and has no crap like ads or nagging for in-app crap or other annoyances.
But I've paid $5 or $10 for crappy things that still nag me about buying more of their crap, and I've had several excellent experiences with free apps.
So no, in this world, paying more doesn't necessarily guarantee me anything. Do you have a recommended alternative??
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 05 2018, @05:20PM (8 children)
Seriously. Why are you buying such crap for your kids?
Buy them paper, and pencils, and books. Do hands-on projects with them.
Your mind has been warped by "mobile" stuff. Break out of your self-imposed prison.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 05 2018, @05:29PM (3 children)
Forget the future! Humanity took a wrong turn with the horse and buggy. So began the long slide into slaver and oppression. Free yourself! Charcoal from the fire and stone walls for paper.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 05 2018, @05:38PM (1 child)
You people cannot imagine interacting with the world other than through a mobile "device". It's bizarre.
If your kids are indoors, staring at screens all day, then their eyes won't develop properly, and you'll have to buy them prescription spectacles for the rest of their lives.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 06 2018, @11:36AM
Outside of school, I spent most of my childhood wandering in the local woods, hills and moorlands, I'd be up at the crack of dawn and my parents wouldn't see me again until the sun was going down. Now, I've seriously pisspoor eyesight and have had so since my teenage years, long before I ever got my grubby little mitts on my own computer and an account on one of the local college's mainframes.
I suppose if it isn't genetics, in my case the killer was books..I could read from about the age of 3, by the age of 5 I was working my way through a late Victorian copy of 'The Pickwick Papers' [wikipedia.org] (You can image my surprise and dismay when I finally got to London in my early 20s, my 'geographical references' were over a hundred years out of date) and I have something like 7,000 'real' books in my collection (down from over 10,000), and I'd hate to tell you how many e-books I've got (And let's not get started on electronics datasheets and application notes..)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 05 2018, @06:15PM
Surely there are other alternatives than 1.) adware malware spyware proprietary user-subjugating crashy shit and 2.) stone knives and bear skins!
(Score: 3, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday January 05 2018, @07:06PM (3 children)
I do all that that stuff. I limit screen time pretty severely, actually. But, like it or not, familiarity with electronic devices and how they work is a standard thing kids learn these days. For that small amount of time I'd prefer to have a kid do something educational rather than playing Candy Crush or Angry Birds or whatever.
And there are plenty of apps that are good for drilling and repetitive learning tasks, not to mention some truly innovative ones (e.g., Dragonbox, where even a preschool kid can learn the basics of algebraic symbolic manipulation by playing a game about getting a box by itself).
As for my "mobile prison," I only use my phone as a phone. I generally have mobile data actually turned off. I don't participate in social media. So go be a jerk to someone else, rather than making asinine assumptions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 05 2018, @07:43PM
It's a fucking tablet or whatever. It's not some great learning experience.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 05 2018, @09:27PM (1 child)
wait people think $5 and $10 programs are any good?
i paid $5 for... timekiller mastertronic games for my c64! THere were a few good games from them, but the real good stuff cost 8x as much and came from somebody else! everyone knew the difference between something from origin or EA and something from "$5 special".
maybe the problem with society is they think they can get good for cheap or free, because every once in a while, it happens. Then they expect it all the time. Give an inch take a mile.
The problem is that free and cheap pushes the quality companies out of business, because most people won't give their programs a chance because ooh look free is available on the same page.
what you want to do is overcome human nature and actually make an investment. and if there aren't good investments, I think maybe the google environment isn't the environment you should stay locked in to.
im not going to tell you to write it yourself. thats not the answer. but choosing an ad delivery platform as an educational one will only teach you how to be a consumer. and you already have said you feel consumed, so consider your options.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Saturday January 06 2018, @06:14AM
EA games? Commodore 64?
All I remember is how furious I would get as those bastard programmers kept banging the head of my expensive 1541 disk drive against the stop. Over and over and over.
And knocking it out of alignment.
That was one of the main things that got me very interested in reverse engineering and disassembly.
I knew good and well they were screwing up my drive on purpose.
To me, they were like that one guy I knew that kept slamming my car door shut way harder than called for... and I really hated to give him a ride anywhere - I did not want that guy anywhere near my car.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 05 2018, @10:00PM
The alternative is fdroid, where the apps are Free Software. Proprietary software is completely intolerable and far, far, far more likely to abuse you in ways such as what the article describes (besides just not respecting your freedoms).
(Score: 4, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday January 05 2018, @04:47PM (4 children)
Might be interesting but even at the slow pace of the huge number of apps to review, you have another problem: updates. Every update would have to be reviewed again, adding another exponent to your review time and number to be done. My fear is that Google would introduce this and then not review updates as thoroughly, thereby allowing companies to slip crap in during updates. Or if you adopt the pay model, you'd presumably have to pay again to review updates, thereby incentivizing fewer updates (or at least less frequent) for reviewed apps, which potentially means security flaws stay longer between updates.
As with everything, unintended consequences could create other problems and perhaps undermine efficacy.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Friday January 05 2018, @05:05PM
Am I naive to think that an update to an app in the queue displaces an older version that no longer needs to be reviewed? It seems like the update problem would be with apps that are already reviewed.
Choices for the publisher in this instance:
1. hold my update until reviewed, then replace the older version with the updated one.
2. publish updated version immediately, removing review seal until you get round to it again.
3. either 1 or 2, plus here is some money, review my app within guaranteed timeframe, more money=shorter timeframe.
I would think this would encourage slower, more thoughtful updates, a process which also could slow bugfixes. Can't have everything.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Friday January 05 2018, @06:23PM
Why is this a big problem? Toss the code into a version control system, when an update comes in diff it against the original. Don't forget to toss the new version into your VCS while you're at it.
Sure, it's a bit of work. But it's an order of magnitude less work than reviewing the original.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Friday January 05 2018, @07:37PM (1 child)
A much finer grained permissions system would go a long way.
On android, you can not find out (without rooting your phone) what is keeping the processors awake all the time, draining your battery.
You have to do this horrible process of elimination, killing one at a time, waiting an hour or so for the awake bar graph to paint, rinse, repeat. Or you have to root, void your warranty (perhps) lose Google Pay support (and other things), find it by voodoo, then unroot to regain some level of security.
I found, (quite by accident), a couple apps that appeared to be using the microphone. Removing mic permission also had the effect of reducing network usage. Removing those apps after posting a negative review prevented the problem from coming back.
If your Android shows awake continuously in Power utilization you got bugs.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday January 05 2018, @08:06PM
What's wrong with settings > battery? Gives lots of stats for each app...
Why did you give those apps microphone permission in the first place?
I highly doubt that. Too many -- in fact, I'd guess it's probably *most* -- users just click 'ok' or 'allow' on any goddamn window that comes up. They don't read it, they don't try to understand it, their only goal is "make it go away". When that's the user base, security means not just protecting the user from attackers and malware, but protecting the users from themselves too. Which is probably why modern computing is such shit...and part of THAT is thanks to all the usual corporate suspects, who want to sell their hardware/software to anything with a pulse, and will happily let their support techs get abused with "All I did was click every single 'Download now!' link on the sketchiest websites I could find, now this stupid fucking PC has a virus and it's all your fault for your garbage software, FIX IT!" Companies suck up to stupidity and this is what we get....finer permissions will just mean more pop-ups, and strengthen the "just click OK" reflex...which will piss off the customers, and the companies like Google will gladly make the devices less secure to cater to that whining.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Saturday January 06 2018, @10:17AM
1/ Write totally innocuous app that respects your privacy, doesn't phone home except for updates, and does some totally useful little function.
2/ Pay for your excellent not-spammy rating, and five stars for usefel and well designed behavior.
3/ Millions of people install your app.
4/ Your app phones home for update.
5/ Update turns your app into king of spammy, tracking, ad-serving bullshittery.
6/ Profit!!!
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 05 2018, @04:53PM (29 children)
Why is the android platform so popular when they constantly have these security issues? You don't see this problem with apps on the "other" platform, but it's not correct to like them for some weird reason.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by requerdanos on Friday January 05 2018, @05:19PM (16 children)
I don't know about generally, but in my case, I am a dues-paying associate member of the Free Software Foundation, and the other platform outright forbids GPL software [fsf.org] in their app store by requiring anti-copy DRM and copyleft-incompatible license terms for all apps. They chose to dislike me, not the other way around.
I encourage world+dog to also join the FSF [fsf.org]. Members make the Free Software Foundation's work possible. Plus when you join you can choose to receive a cool membership card that's a fold-out bootable USB to use as a rescue disc (or whatever).
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 05 2018, @05:41PM (15 children)
Their website is shitty, and their development model discourages contributors.
It is literally a waste of resources to support the FSF.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 05 2018, @06:20PM (14 children)
Thank you for that detailed and comprehensive criticism of the FSF! You've completely changed my mind! I'd mod you up, but I'm an AC right now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 05 2018, @06:23PM (13 children)
Unless you sign away all legal rights to the FSF, it rapidly becomes very difficult to participate in the production of their software.
That's why there are so many alternatives; the FSF throws out technical excellence in favor of philosophical and political masturbation.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 05 2018, @07:16PM (7 children)
I don't think I'm aware of this license. I typically release my programs under either GPL or LGPL. What is this FSF license called and where may I read about it?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 05 2018, @07:45PM (6 children)
You'll have to sign a special form, and assign your copyrights to the FSF.
Seriously, you people are talking out of your asses. I've at least got experience.
(Score: 3, Informative) by lentilla on Friday January 05 2018, @10:29PM (5 children)
This is to prevent issues arising in the future like we see with the Linux kernel - forever stuck on GPLv2. With the copyright assigned to a single; trusted; project sponsor, they don't have to seek consensus to move the project forward (or enforce the licence). As you might imagine, obtaining permission from now-deceased contributors can be challenging.
Nothing here takes away your moral rights to what you contribute. You wrote the code, you contributed the code, everyone in the world can see that. The copyright assignment is simply thinking ahead, anticipating the implications of a changing legal landscape.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 05 2018, @10:45PM (1 child)
*Is* it a problem to be stuck on GPLv2?
(Score: 2) by lentilla on Saturday January 06 2018, @12:56AM
Yes and no - rather depends on your goals and values. The main difference between v2 and v3 are the anti-Tivoization clauses. Others will be able to explain this much more eloquently than I am able in a short post.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 06 2018, @12:48AM (2 children)
So... try again.
(Score: 2) by lentilla on Saturday January 06 2018, @01:05AM
Quite. Linus is the ultimate pragmatist. His goal is; well; let's call it "market penetration", and from that perspective, GPLv2 suits his goals admirably.
Fair call. Linux is; however; a good example of a project where it is impossible to update the licence. Not even Linus himself could do this. This may; or may not; be a "good thing" - only time will tell.
(Score: 3, Touché) by lentilla on Saturday January 06 2018, @01:15AM
Actually (and at the risk of starting a flamewar), I will take you up on the challenge: had Linux been an FSF project, we would not have had to put up with that ridiculous SCO debacle [wikipedia.org].
Now I'm not stating a position on whether Linux should have been an FSF project... but I am saying we would have avoided years of damage and millions of dollars of legal fees.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday January 05 2018, @07:43PM (4 children)
What you say is true IFF you want the FSF to distribute your software. That's not one of my requirements.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 05 2018, @08:10PM (3 children)
If you want to contribute anything more than a few typo corrections, they'll start hounding you to sign a document which transfers to FSF rights to patents and copyrights. Nobody else does that sort of thing, and the result is that people would rather work on other projects than associate with the FSF.
So, go ahead. Signal your virtues with a check to the FSF; the rest of us are going to spend our resources actually working on useful FOSS.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 05 2018, @10:49PM
Apache does too. Projects there have to think about how much code they can accept from the community before a copyright assignment is needed.
What's wrong with just answering "fuck off"? Either they take your contribution, reimplement it themselves, or you can post the patch on your website.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 05 2018, @11:18PM (1 child)
So they try to make you sign away the copyrights and patents for your patch to them, or is it more broad than that?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 06 2018, @12:54AM
The legal statement you're supposed to sign conveys to the FSF any future rights and patents that might in some way be connected back to your patch; on paper, you're basically giving up participation in the patent/copyright system, which is exactly what the FSF wants.
The FSF only likes copyright law insofar as it can be hacked into supporting the copyleft philosophy.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Freeman on Friday January 05 2018, @07:06PM (9 children)
Apple == "Curated" content. I.E. We'll kick you out, if we don't like you. Mind you, they've been just fine with In-App Purchases and games that are designed to get kids to spend exorbitant amounts of money on fake money. They may have cleaned their act up some, they may not have, but the games are still there. Google also has plenty of that, but at least they're more open to developers. I'm also less likely to get trapped in the Google Ecosystem than the Apple Ecosystem. I would say, Android is plentiful, for the same reason Windows is plentiful. Ability to run on generic hardware.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Friday January 05 2018, @07:51PM (2 children)
You don't HAVE TO provide a credit card for any of the various App Stores, and you would be silly to do so for your kids. Give them app-store gift cards, but never a credit card. That puts a stop to all this in-app purchases nonsense.
Apples Curation hasn't been all that perfect either.
https://www.wired.com/2015/09/apple-removes-300-infected-apps-app-store/ [wired.com]
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/09/apple-scrambles-after-40-malicious-xcodeghost-apps-haunt-app-store/ [arstechnica.com]
And on top of that, they are currently running a sale on battery replacements rather than just tweaking their OS to stop surreptitiously slowing the processor as your battery ages.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Saturday January 06 2018, @06:06AM (1 child)
I was under the conception I *had* to surrender my credit card info to get onto Google Play.
For that reason, I get all my android phone stuff, anonymously, from Aptoide.
However, one website in particular, YELP, keeps linking back to Google Play every time I click a link on their site if I am using the phone. I can't even do a "read more" without YELP checking back with Google Play, so I simply can't interact with YELP unless I am at the PC.
YELP keeps sending me more stuff about wanting me to write more stuff on their site... then they have some script tell me I am hung up at Google Play. Makes me wonder just what business school their executives attended to place impediments in the way of their customers... about the same sense to have store doors that are difficult to open to persuade old ladies to shop elsewhere.
Believe me, if S/N treated me this way, you guys would very rarely hear from me.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 06 2018, @09:38PM
I go to a local store and buy a £20 card for the Play store for those occasions where I feel the need to pass some money back to the developers of the small number of bits of software on the Play store that I actually find of use, ditto wrt the Apple store.
In both cases, no credit cards involved at any point.
(but thanks for the pointer to aptoide...I don't keep up with these sites.)
(Score: 2) by KiloByte on Friday January 05 2018, @08:10PM (3 children)
Here, let me show you a program ecosystem [debian.org] with curated content. Every program has a vetted and verified license, no advertisements or spyware, and so on. Some good phones [indiegogo.com] ship with it, and you can use the very same software on your server, laptop, desktop or SoC if you wish. Attractive price ($0). More open to developers.
Ceterum censeo systemd esse delendam.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday January 05 2018, @08:47PM
That's one phone, that's also, still in the prototype phase. I've used Debian and their package management system quite a bit. I was also looking forward to a Non-Vaporware Ubuntu Phone, but alas that never panned out. While I've seen some rather successful kickstarter / indiegogo campaigns. Not many have become a real business or even offered their product to anyone, but those that backed the campaign.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Funny) by Bot on Saturday January 06 2018, @02:28AM (1 child)
> with curated content
why am I thinking about systemd all of a sudden?
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday January 08 2018, @03:32PM
In all fairness systemd has "quality control". It's just one giant heaping pile of dinosaur droppings. It's like on Jurassic Park, when the girl sticks her hands into the humongous pile of dinosaur droppings. Someone's gotta look at it, but one doesn't have to like it. It's not like, there couldn't be a different system. It's just no one cares enough to make something better. Those that do care enough to make it better, put on the gloves and hold their nose.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 05 2018, @09:06PM (1 child)
You're also more likely to get dangerous software from the google side, I'm sorry to say. I like google and some of what they stand for and do, but their app store is full of crap.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 05 2018, @10:29PM
Freedom can be dangerous. Don't accept locked-down pieces of garbage just because it's 'safer'. In any case, the best thing to do is to always use Free Software, since it's extremely unlikely for Free Software to abuse you in the ways you're talking about.
Also, why would you like Google? They built a massive surveillance engine and actively use it to violate people's privacy en masse. They are an intolerable company, just like Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, etc. I'd like to see them all go out of business and never be replaced with similar companies.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Nerdfest on Friday January 05 2018, @07:37PM (1 child)
Well, the security issues are for the most part vastly, vastly hyped. They have almost exclusively been centered around Asian alternative app stores that tend to specialize in 'warez', etc. This one isn't, which is unusual, but I'm pretty sure that it has happened before, on both Android a *and* iOS platforms. Yeah, it'll tend to happen less frequently under iOS because it's more strictly reviewed, and because the OS itself is more limited. Simply put, with Android, you control what you install, and with iOS Apple decides what you're allowed to install. Mistakes will happen both ways.
I've always advocated the same idea as presented above, and curated store on Android. Charge developers for the review, and perhaps take a bigger cut. It's nice to have options.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday January 05 2018, @09:04PM
Do it the other way around.
Charge those that don't choose the extensive review.
The automated reviews are getting better, and when a vulnerability is found in one of the packages the developer incorporated (uses in his build) the automated reviews can quickly track down all of the apps using those packages.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday January 05 2018, @08:42PM
Then set the IP addresses of all the mobile analytics servers to 127.0.0.1.
I once attended a presentation by some mobile analytics people. Despite that the developer SDKs as well as actually using analytics were both free, one of the speakers showed a photo of her company's data center.
Data centers are expensive. Who pays for all that information?
Consider the challenges faced by closeted gay Republican politicians.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by halcyon1234 on Friday January 05 2018, @09:29PM (1 child)
Original Submission [thedailywtf.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 05 2018, @10:09PM
Wow. hotmail has slid so far even "legitimate Russian businessmen" refuse to actually use it ...
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Saturday January 06 2018, @12:13AM (1 child)
The irony of all of this is that these "walled gardens" were ALLEGEDLY supposed to protect users from this kind of abuse. But clearly, the various vendors are all for abusive advertising and tracking.
In the old days people had to read application reviews in magazines, then physically go to the store and pay good money for a software box. Had someone put abusive stuff in their application, it was likely to get caught early on, and potentially could have even resulted in lawsuits. If it weren't for the crap distributed by some shareware/PD groups, BBSes, and such, I would almost say we are worse off today.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Saturday January 06 2018, @06:24AM
We are way worse off today.
By means of the internet connection.
Applications - even if they have nothing to do with the internet - can demand access to the internet ( and claim its for "checking for updates" ), and get it... or it will refuse to work.
You WILL comply and give it what it demands.
Or forfeit your whole investment in the thing.
They've got you by the nuts.
There is not enough of us that won't play by those rules to make a difference, so the people creating this kind of crap get away with it.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]