Google remotely changing settings in Android Pie in "internal experiment"

[DildorTheDecent]

I'm not concerned, probably won't even get Android Pie anyway

[cretsiah]

<< Thinks he will go back to his non "data allowance bandwidth stealing" phones like 

Huawei and ZTE ... pre- android 

ie old school flip phones. 

[Beef Boss]

"oh no, the company that developed our operating system has the power to adjust things." 

 

Sure Apple might not do this, but they also a shittier company in other ways. 

[Gunbust3r]

Honest mistake, that button is just to the left of "enable mic and camera access for the NSA and FBI"

[TacoSenpai]

I must prevent the Organization from peering into the mad machinations of my mind! 

 

I'll get to a point where I'll be the hipster kid rocking a razer.  I'll do it!

 

You know what screw it.  Gimme one of these to be authentic:

 

Spoiler

 

[Trik'Stari]

It's almost as if EULA's are overwhelmingly large on purpose so people won't read them, and won't know what's in them until it's too late.

[ryao]

On 9/15/2018 at 2:05 AM, Shorty88jr said:

I love Android but why the heck do they need to push changes to phones like that? O well I guess if they start abusing this I'll just run a custom ROM. 

They can do this because Google Play Services is a rootkit. It does not matter what firmware you install if you install the Play Store.

[ryao]

On 9/15/2018 at 11:21 AM, Arika S said:

Doesn't matter how many phones they did it to, or what their own reasoning was, if they were not called out they would be perfectly happy with people buying new phones to replace their "slow" ones. Not telling people has the same effect as if it was intentional obsolescence to get more money from new phone purchases.

 

But you don't see it that way, because you're The Doctor...

People would have replaced them too if they crashed because of the aging battery. Reducing peak demand when the battery cannot handle it anymore was a reliability feature.

[ryao]

On 9/15/2018 at 9:57 AM, DocSwag said:

I had this happen to me. It's pretty disturbing that Google can do that... hence why I've gone ahead and disabled modify system settings for google play services (which I believe was the culprit).

 

Google Play Services is a rootkit. Google can override whatever you tell it to do by pushing an update if it does not already have an override option in it already.

[DocSwag]

3 hours ago, ryao said:

Google Play Services is a rootkit. Google can override whatever you tell it to do by pushing an update if it does not already have an override option in it already.

That's really disturbing holy shit

[Peskanova]

Thanks god I thought that my phone was dieing but was just google sniffing  

[LAwLz]

59 minutes ago, DocSwag said:

That's really disturbing holy shit

Well, it's also an assumption grabbed out of thin air right now.

 

Do we know how this happened? Seems like all the affected devices are very close to stock Android. Makes me believe that it is something related to the Android ROM code rather than the Google Play services.

 

 

Really, really disturbing that they even have this capability. Just goes to show how fucked up the current device landscape is, where users have very little control over their own devices. Hopefully a massive lawsuit happens soon that makes companies like Google stop this bullshit. They won't stop unless it causes major damage to them.

[Peskanova]

I can relate that hapened to me , Huawei P9 , on spain, was like 3 days ago (more or less) and I notice a white cross on my batery indicator (never used battery saver app) and thought my battery was going to die but I noticed that battery save was on, thought that I missclicked it with my butt or while sleeping till I read this  

EDIT : EMUI 5.0.3 EVA-L09C109B399

[DocSwag]

9 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Well, it's also an assumption grabbed out of thin air right now.

 

Do we know how this happened? Seems like all the affected devices are very close to stock Android. Makes me believe that it is something related to the Android ROM code rather than the Google Play services.

 

 

Really, really disturbing that they even have this capability. Just goes to show how fucked up the current device landscape is, where users have very little control over their own devices. Hopefully a massive lawsuit happens soon that makes companies like Google stop this bullshit. They won't stop unless it causes major damage to them.

Either way, this shouldn't be happening, regardless of whether it's Google or Android.

[ryao]

9 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Well, it's also an assumption grabbed out of thin air right now.

 

Do we know how this happened? Seems like all the affected devices are very close to stock Android. Makes me believe that it is something related to the Android ROM code rather than the Google Play services.

 

 

Really, really disturbing that they even have this capability. Just goes to show how fucked up the current device landscape is, where users have very little control over their own devices. Hopefully a massive lawsuit happens soon that makes companies like Google stop this bullshit. They won't stop unless it causes major damage to them.

It is not an assumption. It has been well known for years that Google can push updates to your phone through Google Play Services and that Google Play Services has access to everything. That is a root kit. If it is on your phone, they can do anything to it.

[LAwLz]

7 hours ago, DocSwag said:

Either way, this shouldn't be happening, regardless of whether it's Google or Android.

Totally agree.

 

 

6 hours ago, ryao said:

It is not an assumption. It has been well known for years that Google can push updates to your phone through Google Play Services and that Google Play Services has access to everything. That is a root kit. If it is on your phone, they can do anything to it.

Yes all that is correct, but what I am saying is that we should not be too quick to assume that is the cause. like I said, it didn't affect all phones which used Google Play services (which is basically all of them). It only affected phones which runs ROMs with next to no modifications, and it happened to several brands.