this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2024
1118 points (96.6% liked)
Technology
59165 readers
2530 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Meanwhile:
Not defending Facebook, but if you record a video with sound, then the FB app has to have permission to record your audio.
That said, delete Facebook. Fuck Zuck.
I can't tell if you're trying to explain how it currently works (which I know very well, thanks) or asserting that the current behavior is necessary in order to record with sound.
It really doesn't have to be as it is. The OS can provide a record-video API, complete with a user-controlled kill switch and an activity indicator, and the app can call it. The app doesn't need direct access to the microphone to allow the user to create a file with sound.
Edit to clarify: I'm not saying that the "permission" doesn't work as advertised. I'm saying that recording an audio file doesn't have to require a permission system as coarse and disempowering to users as it is today. I guess the people clicking the downvote button misunderstood.
Pretty sure that qualifies for that permission.
But the whole point of doing so is to use it in the app, and you for sure can't do that without the permission.
I think this is more a teleological argument he is making and I agree. We've become numb to these permission warnings. Oh this app needs access to my camera because I need to take a photo of something once at registration. Why can't it link to my default trusted photo app and that app can send a one time transfer to it? I hardly question these permissions anymore since many apps need permissions for rare one off functions. The only thing I deny every single time is my contact list.
I will thank you
about a million words from now
I don't give anything mic or camera access on iOS. It's really not an inconvenience, and anything that demands it is something I don't want on my phone anyways.
You don't use the camera or phone?
I'm very obviously not talking about system apps.
You don't have to give third party apps permissions they don't need.
Come on man, you know they didn't mean it literally 💀
Some of us are autistic. I didn't understand it either.
I don't know what you mean. Existing behavior does not provide the control or visibility that I described.
One important difference is that the "permissions" in the screen shot are effectively all-or-nothing: if you don't agree to all of them, then you don't get to install the app. They're not permissions so much as demands.
(Some OS do have settings that will let you turn them off individually after installation, but this is not universally available, is often buried in an advanced configuration panel, leaves a window of time where they are still allowed, and in some cases have been known to cause apps to crash. Things are improving on this front with new OS versions, but doing so in microscopic steps that move at a glacial pace.)
If your app touches the camera and mic, it will show up on that screen that it does so. "Using the API" (which is just how the OS works) doesn't prevent it from appearing on that screen, especially when you're doing so for the purpose of putting video and audio in posts.
Showing up on that screen is no substitute for what is actually needed:
All of those things are implemented in modern Android. Well, almost.
No, they are not all implemented on any version of Android that I've seen. I don't know about iOS.
Right. We don't need just a few pieces of what I listed. We need them all.
That's not a bad interface, but it doesn't address what I wrote: Individual control.
Why should email address, sexual orientation, and home address be lumped all together into a single permission? Lumping installed apps and search history together isn't much better. Why should a music player, which obviously needs access to music files, be also granted access to biometric data like voice recordings?
Of course it's possible. The OS can record the file and then hand it off to the app. No microphone access required.
That alone is better than nothing, but not enough. How is a user to know if something was captured when the screen was off?
These things are indeed improving as new versions come out, but at a glacial pace. Heck, it was ages before Android stopped letting apps spy on each other's log messages. It's now at version 15 and still doesn't have basic controls like restricting network access.
When I said "well almost" I meant the impossible case in the second point. Otherwise, everything is implemented as a I listed. What kind of Android do you use that you haven't seen these features? This granular permission system has been the standard since Android 11.
In iOS it's implemented in a very similar manner, but I don't use it as often to describe it in as much detail as with Android.
That is also implemented, but is a separate API, storage access. You're free to upload any file you like if the app requests it. You can create the file with any voice recorder of your choosing. Although I can't imagine a scenario where Facebook would request a voice clip. When it's requesting the mic it's usually for live audio, like calls.
It's true, if you gave the app permission to use mic whenever the app is running, it can in theory quietly use mic in the background. If you start a call and lock the screen, the call will continue in the background. Not sure if there are any safety measures implemented for that. But if the case was of a routine sneaky mic spying, it will become obvious fast, due to battery drain and network usage.
There are some network controls, like restricting background data usage (depending on Android version/implementation). But yes, there's still no granular network permission system, you have to manually go into setting to turn on restrictions. Thought to fair, there isn't a consumer OS out there that lets you easily restrict network access to a certain app, even on desktop (correct me if I'm wrong). And I can see why, it would be counterproductive for vast majority of users to manually give network access to each app they install, when the whole point if the device is to have apps that have network access.
I appreciate that you're articulating your thoughts pretty well without resorting to the adversarial nonsense I've received elsewhere in this thread, so thanks for that.
It's still clear that I haven't been understood, but I'm exhausted from trying. (Again, mostly not from you, so please don't take it personally.) Time for me to put lemmy away for the day, I think. Take care.
Hey, I saw that you added more content to the comment that I responded to, that wasn't there when I was composing my response. And seeing that content, I think I understand where the confusion is coming from.
If that screenshot is yours and you think those are the permissions, I don't think that's the case. That looks like a screenshot from an app store where it just lists what data the app might be using and not the permission system. It's just a list of categories of data that may or may not be collected if you use the app, which must be disclosed by the developer. You can't agree or disagree to those things from the OS side, because that's all that happens on the developer's side. In case of FB, you might be able to opt out of those things in their settings, but I wouldn't bet on it, cause that's their bread and butter.
For these things it doesn't matter if you, for example, gave them direct access to the mic or uploaded the audio file, they will process the audio file and gather as much useful information as they can.
In fact, if you don't give it any hardware permissions, they will still be able to gather some information, for instance from the Personal Info category (email address, sexual orientation, and home address, etc.) because you enter that info on registration or they infer it from your usage. The OS can't do anything about that. As long as you use the app and interact with it you give them information, what you clicked, which posts you liked, what you commented and so on.
When it comes to OS, you can individually (separately) give permission for mic, camera, location data, file storage, contacts info, etc. Most of the things listed in the "Data collected" panel doesn't even come from your phone hardware.
Let me know if I have now understood you correctly.
I downvoted because of the snark in first paragraph.
No snark intended. Do you run into that so often that you've come to expect it?
Intention vs. Impact, look it up.
I downvoted because of the snark in first paragraph.
Ooh, I spy more snark!
Yeah watch me not deny it tho; I intended for it to be snarky and anticipated this impact.
That rudely condescending comment lends nothing useful to the discussion, and has just earned my only downvote of the day. Enjoy. Bye.
That is not the same thing as listening in the background.
Nobody said it was the same thing as listening in the background. It's still relevant and important.
I trust that most adults understand the implications of an exploitable permission and a strong incentive to abuse it, as well as the track record of corporate denials.
Using the permission to record audio triggers an on-screen indicator that the mic is recording. Someone would probably notice it on 24/7 recording. Someone would have also by now found the constant stream of network traffic to send the audio to be analyzed, because they also aren't doing that on-device.
Meta said it does not, but what about 3rd parties…
What a horrifying list of data collection. Fuck all that hahaha
Why wouldn’t you want to share your fitness data with the company that will sell it to the company setting your health “insurance” premiums?