Yikes.

  • @Stovetop
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    271 year ago

    There should be some sort of OS-level flag that appears before downloading to inform users along the lines of “This application requests access to more permissions than typical apps in this category do. Are you sure you wish to proceed?” Maybe with a link to an informational site about how apps can use your data and why protecting your privacy is important.

    • Cosmic Cleric
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      61 year ago

      At this point we should really be petitioning Congress. Yeah, I know, I know, but still.

    • @Resistentialism
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      41 year ago

      Whilst that would be fantastic. I highly doubt google or apple are even going to entertain the idea, especially when you want to download one of their apps.

      • @[email protected]
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        61 year ago

        one of their apps

        I know Apple Bad ™, but they’re probably the most privacy-focused big company in existence. With their current model/values/whatever, they would never collect enough data to need to slap that warning on any of their apps.

        • @Resistentialism
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          31 year ago

          Huh. Honestly, fair enough. To be honest., I don’t usually look into any companies at that much of a deeper lever. So I just assumed they’d be the same.

          • @[email protected]
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            41 year ago

            I’m actually shocked that any company values privacy at this point. It’s definitely reflected in the price, since you’re not subsidizing your cost with your data for ads, but it’s still refreshing to me. I hope they stay that way. I’m a hardcore PC user, but I like having my phone stuff private/locked down so I’ve been on iPhone for a long time.

            • @Resistentialism
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              21 year ago

              Mee too at this point. I’m not a huge fan of apple devices as I like my stuff being open. It’s just a shame I’ve gotta use android. I know I can root my phone but I can’t be arsed dealing with it all

              • @[email protected]
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                21 year ago

                I had fun on my G1 and G2, installing CFW. The G2 was a fucking pain because it had some anti-CFW bullshit that would reflash to stock unless you disabled that. Early Android phones went to shit so quickly and became soooo sloooooow though, so ya kinda HAD to use CFW.

                As a lifelong PC person, I couldn’t love iOS more. It’s stupid efficient and fully featured (now, it definitely had issues and limitations when it was new.) At this point, I’m always confused when folks say they need Android for customization or whatever. There’s precious little that stock Android does that stock iOS can’t do now.

                • @Resistentialism
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                  21 year ago

                  Thata fair, I had only ever rooted my one plus 3/6, and a Sony or two, but it just wasn’t as effective for me so I decided to stick stock with my current phone.

                  I don’t really hate apple. There’s quite a few things I don’t agree with it, but that’s the same with every corporation, really. And I entirelynsee why people would want their products.

                  • @[email protected]
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                    1 year ago

                    Also fair! I LOOOOOOVED my Android phones, but i I’ll didn’t have a choice but to switch when I de-Googled my household and life. I certainly wasn’t going to switch to a Windows phone!

                    I did play with my partner’s iPhone when I had my G2, and typing on the on-screen keyboard was the first time I was swayed from “I’ll never NOT have a physical keyboard on my phone.” Android phones now have awesome on-screen keyboards, but back when the original Evo was top dog… they were absolute rubbish.

                    I still miss my slide out keyboards, though.

                    Quick edit: really strange to have like… normal, reasonable conversations like this. If I was back on Reddit, we’d be shitting on each other endlessly.

            • @Resistentialism
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              11 year ago

              Hey, we’ve all got flaws. But, acknowledging what we don’t know certainly makes everything a lot easier.

      • @Stovetop
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        31 year ago

        Apple is a company I could see making it a priority, because they tout privacy as a major selling point of iOS. There are entire ad campaigns about it. It’s not perfect, but they’ve done a lot in the name of privacy, even when it costs them money (e.g. all the bad press that came out about iOS when they added a notification for when apps were accessing your clipboard…and it turned out a shit ton of apps were just scraping your clipboard all day).

        Google, though…yeah. Android has some privacy control, but in reality they’re mainly following Apple’s lead so as not to lose customers who care about privacy. I don’t think they actually give a damn about consumer data, as long as they get their share of tracking done. There are more privacy-oriented ROMs out there, but the average consumer is never going to use anything other than the version of Android that came with their phone.

        It would be nice if there was some third-party entity that performed privacy analysis of popular applications and provided a score on some sort of privacy index that could be featured on that app’s storefront. It’s a shame that we are just left to assume how much of our data is probably being harvested and there’s nothing to be done about it.

      • prole
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        11 year ago

        We need to force them to. They will never do anything to regulate themselves voluntarily.

    • @Resistentialism
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      21 year ago

      Whilst that would be fantastic. I highly doubt google or apple are even going to entertain the idea, especially when you want to download one of their apps.

    • @MajorHavoc
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      11 year ago

      The Aurora Store for Android has this warning. I steer people I care about to Aurora Store for this reason.