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12-20-2013, 10:35 PM
Just when you thought Google had actually improved user security in recent Android releases.... (https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/12/google-removes-vital-privacy-features-android-shortly-after-adding-them)
Yesterday, we published a blog post lauding an extremely important app privacy feature that was added in Android 4.3. That feature allows users to install apps while preventing the app from collecting sensitive data like the user's location or address book.
After we published the post, several people contacted us to say that the feature had actually been ******* in Android 4.4.2, which was released earlier this week. Today, we installed that update to our test device, and can confirm that the App Ops privacy feature that we were excited about yesterday is in fact **w gone.
And.... they did.
For those who don't recall, Google has historically **t allowed you to change the permissions for an Android app. You had a "take it or leave it" option only; the installer would tell you what was being requested, but you couldn't change it to deny certain permissions and allow others. **r could you go in and shut them off after the fact.
This has been the case pretty-much forever, and relatively-recent versions of Android did even worse things in that they hid certain very high-powered permissions (like access to protected storage) behind a drop-down that you were unlikely to look in -- unless you knew to look.
Well, Google has **w claimed that the release of the fix for this crap was accidental and the feature itself "experimental" in that it might break some applications. Yeah, I suppose it might, if it caused an unhandled exception to be passed back to the app.
But that still ought to be the user's choice, and they can then raise hell with the developer.
Anyway, the pretense of so-called "progress" is **w gone in Android 4.4.2.
For the record, both IOS and BlackBerry 10 allow you to turn off permissions on applications should you so choose. Doing so might break the app, but if so then that's still your option.
Google, on the other hand, thinks app developers should have that choice -- rather than you and their so-called "improvement" was apparently **thing more than an accident.
أكثر... (http://market-ticker.denninger.net/akcs-www?post=226768)
Yesterday, we published a blog post lauding an extremely important app privacy feature that was added in Android 4.3. That feature allows users to install apps while preventing the app from collecting sensitive data like the user's location or address book.
After we published the post, several people contacted us to say that the feature had actually been ******* in Android 4.4.2, which was released earlier this week. Today, we installed that update to our test device, and can confirm that the App Ops privacy feature that we were excited about yesterday is in fact **w gone.
And.... they did.
For those who don't recall, Google has historically **t allowed you to change the permissions for an Android app. You had a "take it or leave it" option only; the installer would tell you what was being requested, but you couldn't change it to deny certain permissions and allow others. **r could you go in and shut them off after the fact.
This has been the case pretty-much forever, and relatively-recent versions of Android did even worse things in that they hid certain very high-powered permissions (like access to protected storage) behind a drop-down that you were unlikely to look in -- unless you knew to look.
Well, Google has **w claimed that the release of the fix for this crap was accidental and the feature itself "experimental" in that it might break some applications. Yeah, I suppose it might, if it caused an unhandled exception to be passed back to the app.
But that still ought to be the user's choice, and they can then raise hell with the developer.
Anyway, the pretense of so-called "progress" is **w gone in Android 4.4.2.
For the record, both IOS and BlackBerry 10 allow you to turn off permissions on applications should you so choose. Doing so might break the app, but if so then that's still your option.
Google, on the other hand, thinks app developers should have that choice -- rather than you and their so-called "improvement" was apparently **thing more than an accident.
أكثر... (http://market-ticker.denninger.net/akcs-www?post=226768)