I installed NetGuard about a month ago and blocked all internet to apps, unless they’re on a whitelist. No notifications from this particular system app (that can’t be disabled) until recently when it started making internet connection requests to google servers. Does anyone know when this became a thing?

Edit 2: I bought my Pixel 6 phone outright, directly from Google’s Australian store. I have no creditors.

Were the courts not enough control for creditors? Since when are they allowed to lock you out of your purchased property without a court order?

I don’t even live in the US, so what the actual fuck?

Edit 1: You can check it’s installed (stock Pixel 6 android 14) Settings > Apps > All Apps > three dot menu, Show system > search “DeviceLockController”.

I highly recommend getting NetGuard, you can enable pro features via their website if you have the APK for as low as 0.10€, but donate more, because it’s amazing. You can also purchase via Google Play store.

  • @[email protected]
    35•2 months ago

    So, that looks like this is less insane than it sounded… This is for if you buy your phone on a payment plan? Not for creditors more generally to have a option to repossess/dispossess your phone?

    • @MisterFrogOP
      41•2 months ago

      This is what small claims court is for. To me there is no excuse for this.

    • @SirQuackTheDuck
      19•2 months ago

      Yeah, this is likely something that’s configured on an OS level to talk to some server when being sold.

      However, note that SIM cards can have a flag that might enable this app (given how much power sim cards have over phones)

      Note: no source, just assumptions

      Edit: second note: this app isn’t present on my EU OnePlus Nord.

    • @[email protected]
      14•2 months ago

      I’m worried about the “if you stop using their SIM” part. It’s one thing if you switch providers before paying it off, but that’s already covered with the skipped payments part. This implies that even after you finish paying it off, you can get locked out. Either way, I’m curious if the app even has any way of knowing whether the creditor really is using it “as intended,” or just trusting that a creditor wouldn’t want to lock the phone of an active, paying customer. I don’t have time to dig through the code myself though, so I’ll just hope this blows up enough for somebody else to figure it out.

      • @[email protected]English
        6•2 months ago

        if you switch providers before paying it of

        Usually a financed devicd is financed through the carrier, and therefore a carrier branded device, and therefore locked to the carrier (yes they have the unlock option but compatibility tends to be far more limited than on the manufacturer unlocked version of the model)

      • @NucleusAdumbens
        5•2 months ago

        If you look at the bottom it says once the device is paid off they can no longer access/change settings

    • Max-P
      7•2 months ago

      That is both Google’s official version and what it looks like poking at it.

      I haven’t dug in the code, so I don’t know if this is theoretically possible for a shady carrier to enable after the fact. But it very much looks like a dormant feature nobody uses.

      I guess I could see that making sense in poorer countries where carriers might have issues of people signing up for phone plans and never paying. A carrier locked flip phone was pretty useless, but nowadays cutting your phone/data off is more of an inconvenience than a dealbreaker, you’ve still got WiFi and a nice phone.