I really wish there was a third competitor in the phone space. These are hand held computers but for some reason we've all fallen into having to accept restrictions that would have been unthinkable for a laptop or desktop not to long ago. Now similar restrictions are infiltrating the general computer space.
All in the name of reliability and security supposedly. For example not being able to use banking apps on a rooted phone… yet I can use them on my perfectly secure regular computer where I have full root/admin access.
> can use them on my perfectly secure regular computer where I have full root/admin access.
yooooooo shhhhhh
Don't give them any ideas :(
Also it's not like insane security ideas around banking access compliance are unprecedented, see e.g. South Korea's insane Internet Explorer deal (transitively caused by US's ITAR on encryption)
Brazil once had a similar problem. Banks used to force users to install these obnoxious "security plugins" into their browsers. One day I got fed up with the inexplicable slowdown they were causing and decided to see what they were doing. Turned out they were intercepting every network connection.
There is no limit whatsoever to what a bank feels is justified in doing when it comes to preventing fraud, money laundering or whatever else that impacts their bottom line. They literally believe they are entitled to any and all access.
Many banks in the EU require a smartphone for that at this point (or a dedicated authentication device).
But instead of using actually secure technologies like Android’s protected confirmation (which couldn’t care less about running on a rooted phone, as it runs in a trusted HW enclave), they usually just settle for (often very spoofable) “root detection”. It’s quite sad.
My bank will let me make deposits from my phone, but not from my computer. A few months ago, the phone app tightened its Play Integrity usage, and will now no longer run on the phone it had previously happily run on.
I'm hopeful that we're at that point right now, I think we're mostly waiting for the complexity on the software side to sort itself out.
The vast majority of the market isn't in flagship phones, and even in those the last few generations of flagship features have been mostly based around software anyway.
I'm guessing we're one or two more big nudges away (i.e. - EU regulation/gigantic privacy kerfuffle/Google breakup) from a standard open-source phone software stack being a viable standalone business model almost by necessity. App stores currently take something around 30%? Maybe in the future you'll pay $25 up front for the phone software, and this open source software stack will take a 15% cut from the developer side instead.
There is something like the pinephone where a portion of sale price was donated to the OS it ships with. But it is free to use any OS such as postmarketOS but you can donate as well.
The hardware is too slow to use as my main phone (it's like 10 years behind normal phone HW), but I assume that as the performance needs of average users plateaus "10 year old hardware" will be more than enough eventually. Look at how modern phones have not changed much in the past 5 years.
People have warned about this since the inception of Android and how the supposed security of a centrally managed software store will lead to restrictions.
This is why "computers" like Chromebooks are useless as well, I wouldn't even let pupils have them if the goal is to teach digital and technical competence.
I don't believe these restrictions will be successful on a PC to such a degree. Remote attestation does exist though and I recommend to leave it for remote machines managed by yours truly.
Usually phones are technically quite capable, but the OS landscape seriously inhibits innovation.
Reminds me of the (now removed) article on encrypting saved games in the Godot game engine:
> Because the world today is not the world of yesterday. A capitalist
oligarchy runs the world and forces us to consume in order to keep the
gears of this rotten society on track. As such, the biggest market for
video game consumption today is the mobile one. It is a market of poor
souls forced to compulsively consume digital content in order to forget
the misery of their everyday life, commute, or just any other brief
free moment they have that they are not using to produce goods or
services for the ruling class. These individuals need to keep focusing
on their video games (because not doing so will fill them with
tremendous existential angst), so they go as far as spending money on
them to extend their experience, and their preferred way of doing so is
through in-app purchases and virtual currency.
> But what if someone were to find a way to edit the saved games and
assign the items and currency without effort? That would be terrible,
because it would help players consume the content much faster, and therefore
run out of it sooner than expected. If that happens, they will have
nothing that prevents them from thinking, and the tremendous agony of realizing
their own irrelevance would again take over their life.
> No, we definitely do not want that to happen, so let's see how to
encrypt savegames and protect the world order.
> I really wish there was a third competitor in the phone space.
People say this, but I don't know if it's actually true. It would've just done a triopoly instead of a duopoly - especially when you consider the fact that the third player would've most likely been Windows Phone, which was also very closed off back when it existed, and Microsoft has only gotten more anti-consumer since.
Because these were the first mass adopted computers, in the numbers, dwarfing what the "pc" was. Everyone has a smartphone now, lots of now essential services expect you to have one, and no resistance was made during the process because those adopting it took it for good not knowing the better alternative.
This seems historic. One of the core differentiators between iOS and Android that worked in Android's favor is now destroyed.
I hope it doesn't become a slippery slope where for "security" Google would start blocking undesirable or ethically/politically inconvenient apps, too.
For example, there are some medical apps that improve people's health outcomes (like custom blood glucose CGM apps and insulin pump closed loop apps for type 1 diabetics). Google does not seem to want them on the Play Store. They are undesirable apps from a business perspective – a liability with no upside.
The tech we speak about today provides the infrastructure to block these undesirable apps, as I understand. This lays the foundation of not allowing software to be installed on many consumer Android phones without Google's approval. I do hope it never comes to Google overstepping like that, but it could be optimism or naivety.
As a tool for app developers... where app developers make the decision... in this limited situation, it might be still somewhat okay. It's okay in the sense that the apps are their intellectual property and they might be entitled by law and common understanding to choose how it is distributed. But if Google ever decides to ban apps this way against the developers' wishes, it would be a massive overstep.
> This seems historic. One of the core differentiators between iOS and Android that worked in Android's favor is now destroyed.
How so? You are still able to sideload apps. The difference is that an app can detect if it has been sideloaded, and the app developer can decide how to respond to that. The decision to use that is on the developer and the user has the choice to move to other apps or succumb to using the Play Store in those cases.
If anything, the article suggests that the actual erosion came about a year ago with other integrity check features, such as helping the developer figure out whether the app is being used on a rooted phone. Or with the increased difficulty in using customized versions of Android over the years.
> The difference is that an app can detect if it has been sideloaded, and the app developer can decide how to respond to that.
I don't want the app developer to have that power. The developer does not get to subvert my control. If I want to make the app believe it's running on a stock phone, that's what it should believe, and that's what it will believe.
It's my machine. What the developer wants or doesn't want is completely irrelevant to me. Only what I want matters. They should count themselves lucky if I trust them enough to allow their software to run without poking at its innards to see what it's really doing.
> The decision to use that is on the developer
Every developer making apps for a proprietary app store will make the decision to use remote attestation. It's a power struggle. They want to own our computers.
that is why i use Free Software and Open Source applications. quibbling about this detail (not your comment but the discussion as a whole) is not going to change the fact that only FOSS lets us own our computers ourselves.
I am committed to developing all of my projects as AGPLv3 free software. However, the fact that I even get to do this at all is something of a miracle. Governments don't generally allow non-engineers to erect big buildings. So why is it that we get to make software at home?
Individuals developing software is a deeply subversive action. It heavily contributed to the democratization of cryptography. The publication of PGP source code as a book defeated the US government's attempt to keep the cryptography to itself. Someone writes a little software called bittorrent and it threatens to wipe out entire industries, wipe out entire classes of business model. Somebody invents a bitcoin thing and now US presidential candidates speak of strategic bitcoin reserves. Somebody invents stable diffusion... We're all living to see the aftermath of that. It's hard to describe just how powerful and subversive computers are. Computers can literally reshape society.
It's all enabled by free computers. General purpose processors which run the code you input into them, no questions asked. And what we are witnessing here is the destruction of those free computers. For the sake of corporate interests. The computer is not free anymore. It only runs the code the corporation allows it to run. Because if it could run the set of all programs, it means it could run code that negatively impacts the corporation's profits. Their solution is to allow execution of the programs the corporations like and nothing else. Could be worse I guess. It might have been the government making that decision. Perhaps one day it will be.
Software freedom is not the same thing as computing freedom. There cannot be free and open source software without free computers. Focusing on free software as a solution to this is missing the forest for the trees. There is no point whatsoever to free software which we can't run, free software which can't interface with the services we need, free software which gets us ostracized. Our free computers are being increasingly labeled as "untrusted" and excluded from networks and services.
We need home computer fabrication technology so that we can make the computers themselves in our homes. Our own free hardware designs, one hundred percent free from their control, fabricated by ourselves.
But more than anything, we need to enshrine computing freedom into actual law. It should be illegal for them to lock our computers down. It should be illegal for them to refuse to interoperate with non-locked down computers. Anything short of this means free software has no future.
Governments don't generally allow non-engineers to erect big buildings. So why is it that we get to make software at home?
this argument gets repeated over and over, and i really hate it. making software is not building a house or a bridge. and i can build my own house. i just need to follow some rules. i can also construct my own car from scratch. again, just need to follow some rules and pass a few tests to see if the car is considered streetworthy. otherwise i can still use it on my private property as much as i want. same goes for software. if a company uses my software in a dangerous setting, (like someone using my unlicensed car on a public road) it is their problem not mine.
Individuals developing software is a deeply subversive action
sorry, what?? i have never heard something so preposterous. is DIY anything at home subversive too?
The computer is not free anymore
yet at the same time we are reaching the capacity to build our own computers from scratch. and if the trend continues, we will have to.
There cannot be free and open source software without free computers
so far general purpose devices are still free enough to be usable. but i agree with your point. see above. eventually we may just as well have to build our own computers.
Our free computers are being increasingly labeled as "untrusted" and excluded from networks and services
we can build our own networks too. and we are. see freifunk and other projects. services is another issue, but so far most of those still allow offline solutions, or i will be able to use them with an isolated device independent from my home built general purpose computer.
We need home computer fabrication technology so that we can make the computers themselves in our homes.
it's already happening. and it will grow as the cost for that goes down.
But more than anything, we need to enshrine computing freedom into actual law
now that is a completely different argument, but also one i agree with.
Anything short of this means free software has no future
i would not go that far yet, but depending on how you look at it and how things develop you may be right, or not. i hope not.
> sorry, what?? i have never heard something so preposterous.
It's not preposterous at all. It's the truth.
Computers are world-changing technology. Citizens having access to unrestricted computers is something corporations and governments cannot and will not tolerate. Google hates it so much they added hardware remote attestation to Android devices.
Computer freedom means we can subvert their silly "integrity checks" and do whatever we want. It means we can run uBlock Origin to kill their advertising and run things like yt-dlp to download their content and keep it forever. They won't tolerate that.
> so far general purpose devices are still free enough to be usable.
Not according to the FSF. You simply cannot find a computer today that does not require you to load some signed proprietary blob onto some chip somewhere. For that you need a CPU that must be like 20 years old by now.
We do not drive our computers anymore. The entire operating system turned into the "user OS" that gets sandboxed away from the real action. It's just user code talking to the proprietary code via some kind of hardware API.
Just look at the sad state of our operating systems. Safely tucked away into some corner, completely oblivious to all the other computers around it. All that hardware running signed proprietary code you cannot control or modify. How did things get like this?
I've pretty much given up on that. By this point I just want IOMMUs so I can isolate all those other computers and try to limit the access they have to what's supposed to be my system. I think it's pretty screwed up that my power as the owner of the machine has been reduced to this.
> we can build our own networks too
You cannot. Not successfully. If you try, you'll find that anti-money laundering laws, know your customer laws, anti-terrorism laws, all sorts of laws will compel you to become what you sought to avoid in the first place. The government got around limitations on surveillance by privatizing it. They will make you surveil in its stead, and if you fail to do so they will blame you for anything wrong that happens in your network. Either you surveil and rat out your users, or you go to jail instead of them.
> it's already happening. and it will grow as the cost for that goes down.
I use free and open source software when I can. I use and contribute to open street maps. I use proton mail's open source software and have purchased a plan with SMTP included.
I still gotta use WhatsApp though. In my country, to not have WhatsApp is to be ostracized. And there is no such thing as an open source WhatsApp client. They ban your number if you try. It's in the terms of service.
I can't build a free software app to interface with my bank's systems either. I actually tried asking my banks about this once... How naive I was.
it's the same problem with all walled gardens. to communicate with others i have to enter the garden they are in. i have the same problem with wechat in china. i was unable to keep in touch with people until i gave in and joined wechat.
my landlord, teachers, parents of my kids classmates, colleagues at work, even government institutions or some family. whatever they use, i have to use. no choice. be it whatsapp, wechat or something else. they make the rules, and they could not care less if i join them or not. but if i don't it's my loss, not theirs.
-app to interface with my bank's systems
my bank requires an app (either mobile or windows) to approve any transfer, and login to the webinterface.
That is premise to give companies and governments control over everything. If collectivism is more valued to you than right for privacy, nothing stop them to steal all of you data piece by piece.
If someone really care about being in touch with you, they listen.
I never used app for verification of bank transaction. Smartphone is not condition to run their business.
If someone really care about being in touch with you, they listen.
that goes both ways. if i care to be in touch with them, i need to listen. the groups of people i mentioned don't care to be in touch with me. but i depend on being in contact with them. therefore i have to be the one to listen. the alternative is isolation. there is no other way. i have been there. i would not be able to travel around the world as i do now, if i stuck with that attitude.
i am required to be there. otherwise i can't talk to teachers, arrange meetings for my kids and their friends, talk to my landlord, etc. sure, for some of these there are alternative ways, but usually they tell me if i want to be able to get a quick response (or a response at all) then i have to use their communication tool of choice.
for example my current landlord lives in a different country, that means i use his chat app or expensive international SMS or phonecalls, which would result in much more difficult communication.
teachers share photos from their activities only on whatsapp/wechat. they will reach me in other ways for important stuff, and in fact the directors of one school told me that they hate it too, but many parents are only reachable that way, so the parents force the school which would end up forcing me, at least if i want to get the photos and casual information, and not just communicate for emergencies. by insisting on a different way i would be the only one that everyone else has to make an exception for. and for many that means they would rather not bother.
also in many cases people do care about me but do not have the technical capacity to understand different communication tools. they barely can use wechat or whatsapp. and on top of that in china all good alternatives are blocked anyways. many matrix servers, for example. the only workable alternative would be deltachat because it works with email. but only if i get them to install the deltachat client, because most people read their regular emails only once a day or even less frequently.
in any group the choice is usually forced by the majority. and it would take a lot of energy to explain and convince everyone to change their preference. i do have more important things to worry about.
Did you sign consent about sharing a pictures of your kid in school in random chats with random people? That sounds a little bit odd to me. We have a laws for this in EU.
Required communication with your landlord via chat app is a part of lease contract?
also in many cases people do care about me but do not have the technical capacity to understand different communication tools
I was able to convince my closest family to use matrix. Sure, it require some teaching and maintaining but it is up to you. If you care, you can manage it.
i am not in the EU.
and even there, i probably would have. it's a group for all the parents so i don't see the problem there, and even if there wasn't such a group, the teachers could send pictures privately to each parent. but not per SMS.
Required communication
there is required communication, and there is convenient communication. convenient communication helps keep the mood more friendly. also, you didn't read, international SMS and calls are expensive. and i am travelling a lot. i am not reachable under my home number all of the time, so i would have to tell my landlord my new number every time it changes because i am in a different country. (forget roaming. the cost for that is atrocious)
matrix
i use matrix. the experience is horrible. at least if you are trying to use encrypted chat. half the time it breaks. the key management is way to complex for a normal person. i have a technical friend who switched to matrix because of me. he threw it away in disgust when our chat broke for the third time. he got me to switch to signal (which now fortunately allows me to hide my phonenumber, so it became an acceptable option.)
compared to IRC, xmpp/jabber and deltachat, matrix has the worst usability among FOSS tools. i don't have the patience for the amount of teaching i would have to do, especially as it would all have to be remote. i live on a different continent from the rest of my family.
> Can you be more specific? I never used WhatsApp.
Yes. I am from Brazil. Everyone in Brazil uses WhatsApp. Over 90% of brazilians have WhatsApp installed. It's news here when the WhatsApp messages of government employees and politicians are leaked. There is no such thing as a phone number anymore, people ask you for your WhatsApp. They even shorten it to "zap", as in "what's your zap?". Phone numbers are just a thing you need to have a WhatsApp. If you do not have a WhatsApp, you're just not going to communicate with people. There's just too much friction for it to happen efficiently.
I have Signal and Matrix installed. Zero people use it to message me. Everyone who ever sent me a message through Signal went back to messaging me over WhatsApp shortly afterwards because that's where all of their other contacts are and there's just less friction that way.
It is what it is.
> Why do you need app for that?
Because the banks want to do things like prevent fraud and money laundering, and apps let them do things like "verify device integrity" as well as suck up as much identifying information about you as possible, letting them know that it's really you and therefore that the transactions you are trying to do are legitimate and shouldn't get blocked.
Here in Brazil I have to go to a bank agency and have them "authorize" specific devices. I'm not kidding. It actually used to be worse. We used to have "bank security plugins" for browsers which were basically rootkits and you could not log into a bank's website without these things installed. Many years ago I poked at one of those things and caught it intercepting every network connection. There's a package for one of these "modules" in the Arch Linux AUR right now. Who the hell knows what that thing does.
Personally I think they should just suck it up and eat the losses. Fraud and money laundering do not justify the sacrifice of our computing freedom. I literally do not care if they're losing billions of dollars, just write it off as a business expense or something. But compared to banks I am poor and powerless so all I can do is try to convince others that I'm right, thereby spreading my ideas.
I have different experience with chat apps. When someone asks for my WhatsApp I offer Signal or Matrix. If they really want to keep in touch with me, they listen and asks. I recently convince few friends to try those apps and we use them to communicate till today. One of them completely deleted all Meta accounts after many conversations about abusing privacy by their apps.
If you resign from your right of privacy and excuse it with collectivism, nothing stop companies and governments to steal everything from you piece by piece.
For verification of bank transaction, I never used any app. Banks business is not built on smartphones and apps. Its not condition for using their services. If so, I would quickly find competition.
I do, if I want to get the services that app gives me access to. Eg my bank's app gives me access to my bank. There are no open source bank apps that I am aware of, so switching banks doesn't help.
It is your machine and it is their software. Why do you think what you want is more important than what they want? You can decide not to run their software if you do not like what it does, if you decide to run it, it will do what they want it to do.
This "you decide to run their software" narrative is the same bullshit as the "just vote with you wallet" crap that even economists don't push anymore. I can choose between one of half a dozen banks, all of which have "integrity" anti-features. Some government and school apps also have them and you basically have to use them.
What apps are doing these days is like if all the major grocery store chains decided you can only drive there using a BMW and said "just buy a BMW or shop somewhere else" to everyone that complained, ignoring the fact that 1) there's nowhere else to shop, 2) BMWs are expensive and 3) many people have needs that a BMW isn't suitable for.
It's just an "our way or the highway, take it or leave it" attitude from people with zero leverage over us. In fact we have a third choice: run their software anyway, and stop it from doing things we don't want it to do, whether they want it or not. We have numerous options available to us at all times. Because we own the computer.
Adversarial interoperation. It should be our right, as the owners of the computers, to do this.
I am all for that, if they do hostile things and you can break them, go for it. I just think that you can not just demand that a company builds their software the way you want it. For this we have markets, find or build a better alternative. The exception is of course in case of market failures, there it is legitimate to intervene. If Google forced apps to do this integrity check, that would be very different from some random apps deciding to make use of it.
> you can not just demand that a company builds their software the way you want it
I absolutely can. I think building certain types of software should be straight up illegal. And not the copyright infringement kind either.
These days our computers come pwned straight off the factory. The only difference between this and malware is that the company consented to it. In other words, from our perspectives as users and owners of computers, there is no difference whatsoever between their software and illegal malware. The entire purpose of those softwares is to usurp control of your computer and make it do somebody else's bidding.
Creating malware is already illegal. I think it should also be illegal to sell a computer to a person with such malicious DRM "integrity checking" software included. It should also be illegal for corporations to require it. And so on.
This isn't about markets anymore, it's about politics. If a politician shows up and proposes to enforce what I am saying above by force of law, they will have earned my vote.
>The exception is of course in case of market failures, there it is legitimate to intervene
Can't think of a bigger market failure than big techs building digital fiefdoms where they own the users and their data, where users don't have private property, where the corporations sell their users to other corporations and to software developers, dictate the developer's working conditions and control their futures, collect taxes on their earnings, enforce border controls on "their" devices so that software that didn't pass their customs clearance can't get installed.
> If Google forced apps to do this integrity check, that would be very different from some random apps deciding to make use of it.
The only reason why they are even able to "check integrity" to begin with is Google gave them the ability to do so via their attestation nonsense. They deployed hardware cryptography against us to deny us control over what was supposed to be our devices. The ones who have the keys own the machines, and it sure as hell ain't us.
The truth is these apps should not even have the ability to do any integrity checks at all. They should run on whatever device we put them on. And they should be happy that they get to run at all.
I know this is taboo knowledge on the Internet, but other countries exist too!
And on a more serious note, banks have a lot of explicit and implicit lock-in power. Switching is a an annoying process, you might have loans or multi-year deposits with your bank that mean you can't just close your account...
Because I own the machine that runs the code. It's that simple. Their code will do what I allow it to do. It's not really a "take it or leave it" deal. I have numerous options available to me. If those options aren't there, it means I don't own the machine.
If they don't want others to "tamper" with their code, they should run it on their computers. Keep them safe and secure on their servers. Code that runs on our machines is and should be completely under our control. Anything that enables them to usurp this control from us is an attack on computing freedom and should be illegal.
Google already enforces a lot of restrictions on how people write their software. Otherwise you could apply the same logic to say, requesting unneeded permissions. If the user doesn't want that they he could just not use the software, right?
I'm pretty sure that Google itself will do it. So for example I've previously sideloaded Android Auto, because Google generously deemed it "unavailable" in my country, just like Apple Auto. And it worked fine for years, until Google integrated it in the OS and now the restriction is kinda moot, because OS is available in my region.
If in the future I would by some hardware from Google (under Google brand) for example (I would not of course, but let's pretend), like some smart appliance or similar, and for sure it won't be available again. I would not be able to bypass this bs now.
If they were serious with their security theatre, they would add an app permission if an app is allowed to check system status or not. Of course any shitty app could then disallow usage as well with the lack of permission. Helps with deciding what you can uninstall safely.
Also, information about the root status can be exfiltrated by the app, which is a security concern.
>This seems historic. One of the core differentiators between iOS and Android that worked in Android's favor is now destroyed.
No, it isn't. AFAICT, this "feature" only prevents you from sideloading apps that don't want to be side-loaded. It's not going to prevent you from installing your favorite open-source apps from Fdroid or APKs.
>For example, there are some medical apps that improve people's health outcomes... Google does not seem to want them on the Play Store.
Then it would be very, very stupid for these apps to add this anti-side-loading feature, wouldn't it?
Google isn't the one preventing side-loading, it's the individual apps (and their makers) themselves.
Sorry, I was still editing my comment and clarifying my opinion as you responded. I agree with you but I think it could still be historic if this infrastructure is later abused.
I'd delete the original comment as my late edit skewed the discussion but HN doesn't let me do that. Apologies.
No problem! Yeah, I think HN's restrictive comment-deletion policy isn't great.
Anyway, I'm not sure how much potential for abuse there is here. I don't see anything too horribly wrong with app makers being able to restrict their app to Play Store installation (though I think it's annoying, and sucks for e.g. GrapheneOS users). I'm not really sure why app makers would want to do this anyway, but I guess they have their (dumb IMO) reasons.
But to be abused, that probably means Google, or the handset maker, using the feature to prevent any apps from being sideloaded or installed from app stores they don't like (like Fdroid). That would be terrible for sure, but I don't really see how this particular technology would allow that. I mean, if Google wanted to prevent sideloading, it seems like it would be relatively trivial for them; why would they need something like this? Installing from APK is built into the system (you can do it with "adb"), and could just as easily be removed or restricted. Same for the handset makers: they don't have to distribute Android as-is, and usually don't. It seems they could easily disable apk-loading and adb in general.
I use GrapheneOS on my Pixel 8 right now but it's been obvious for a while that this is the way Android is moving. Eventually all proprietary Android apps will require both attestation and play store installation, making something like Graphene far less useful than it otherwise could be.
There's still a decent amount of good open source software on F-Droid of course, but so much of the Android ecosystem is proprietary software that being unable to run any of it really hamstrings you.
I was considering buying a Jelly Star as a second device to run the garbage proprietary apps I will still need.
> One of the core differentiators between iOS and Android that worked in Android's favor is now destroyed.
This is a bit hyperbolic—the core differentiator provided by sideloading is that you don't have to distribute through Google. That's still very much intact. What's changed is that apps can opt themselves out of being sideloaded.
F-Droid and the FOSS ecosystem in general are entirely unaffected.
Unless you are running a custom ROM which doesn't have Google services. This feature has the potential to force you onto a 1984-style ROM just for a single but essential app. It also forces you to not only make a Google account but log into it on the device you carry in your pocket at all times.
So often when traveling I find some app that is required to complete some menial task like recharging a public transport card, that is for some reason ONLY available in the app store of that country.
If this blocks me loading those apps via APKPure or similar, it's going to suck.
Ugh I used to keep a British iPhone on a British network in the USA just so I could access my bank accounts, because the app couldn't be downloaded in the USA.
From what I remember, for some reason there were specific features only available through the app. Believe me, any app use of mine is a very last resort.
I see more and more companies shutting down their web portals in favour of mobile apps.
At the company I work at the moment the customer base is 2-3% on web, rest is mobile. It's such an incredible waste of time and money to keep the portal functionality on par for such a low number, and I hope they shut it down soon.
Is there anything like a thin virtualization/sandboxing tool for Android? As the user, I (not the Android OS), should have ultimate say in what information apps have access to. I should be able to feed any app fake GPS, contact, gallery, permissions, rooted state, and sideloaded state information as I choose.
FWIW, the ad industry--of which Google is the circus master--disagrees, and so your emulator wouldn't pass Google Play Integrity (previously SafetyNet Attestation) and its remote attestation DRM scheme.
Do you have a recommendation for a starting point to learn about this? I went to the magisk github and it seems to assume that you already know what it is and why you should want it.
Example of a legit reason to need sideloading: bypassing wrongful assumptions.
a US company I worked for at a non-US office (imagine it was e.g. Google Japan) gave most employees a corporate credit card. Citibank made it impossible to download their app through the Play Store from the country in question, even though it was required to use it. Only option was to sideload it.
This kind of thing has happened on other occasions as well.
Between the convoluted EU rules and whatever the multiple US antitrust cases outcomes are, it could be a lot simpler: Chrome, Android, Youtube, and Gmail all must be divested. The ad & search business don't really appear separable, but everything else certainly is.
How? Projects like Chrome are adj delivery and surveillance platforms wholly funded by the ad business for the benefit of the ad busines. What would a spinoff look like?
Chrome exists to counter the previous platform browser monopoly from Microsoft, which was holding back the web from being a viable application platform. It was never been about surveillance and doesn't do a very good job of surveillance if that were the goal.
Chrome was created to counter the previous platform browser monopoly from Microsoft. Once that was achieved, it pivoted. First to making sure Google has a controlling stake in setting web standards, and then to surveillance. Surveillance features: FLoC, Manifest v3, Web Attestation. The surveillance features have often flopped or been beaten back, but they keep being introduced.
Search and ad is one to be split too. I see no reason why search cannot operate just like every other website. Just add billion tracking cookies and do the usual.
> ...allow for installation on incompatible devices (and resulting bad reviews)...
I've had the opposite experience with my Retroid Pocket 3+ (think Nintendo Switch Lite, but running Android). A lot of apps/games that the Play Store marks as incompatible actually work fine when installed via the Aurora store. I try to always leave a review stating that the app actually works.
Yes that's how the game goes. The regulator has to keep plugging holes that the non compliant corporate entity finds until there are no more holes worth exploiting by the corporate entity.
It is an exhausting and practically unending task to defend consumers against malfeasant operators but it is one that governments can and must do.
That's a completely different fight from what the DMA targets though. Referring to this as an Android/Google Play thing is a red herring here, this is just bog standard DRM, which just so happens to be made by Google (and maybe gets some special hardware support; so, if anything, DMA here would be an argument for allowing other app suppliers to be able to make equivalent DRM!).
The verification that the user downloaded the app from the Play Store has hardly anything to do with DRM.
They claim its raison d'etre is allowing "better download metrics" and control on the kinds of devices allowed to run the app; those reasons hardly justify forcing going through the Play Store (and having, and associating, a Google account).
Indeed there's no benefit to users from an app being arbitrarily tied to the Play Store, but that's entirely equivalently so to how there's no benefit to users from any sort of DRM.
Perhaps "digital rights management" isn't exactly the thing to use here, but it's still the same general concept of "author of a specific piece of media/content/app adds an arbitrary technological restriction that doesn't directly benefit users in any way (while ideally not affecting intended proper users) but still potentially helps the author".
It's harder to see for free apps, but for paid ones it's utterly trivial - of course you're gonna have to buy it through the Play Store with a Google account if the author has decided to only sell it on the Play Store; and afterwards wanting to use it without Google Play interference is equivalent to wanting to access media without DRM after having bought it (i.e. reasonable desire, perhaps not even illegal to attempt to achieve through arbitrary means, but owners of the respective thing can still try their damnedest to prevent you from it).
Well, here the app authors as well gain very little, they usually enable it just because they want the maximum "security", and are led to believe that this will help we with that
To be fair, a manufacturer also has a right to choose how they distribute their product. If one is philosophically ok with piracy, then you can choose to ignore that, but I don't think you should expect the developer to actively facilitate that.
Their rights stop at that border, how they choose to distribute. They have no rights after that beyond the copy right.
Software is out of step with hardware at the moment but we do have principles that means "warranty void if removed" stickers are toothless decorations, and Keurig has no right to actually enforce their wishes about what coffee you brew in your machine. We don't currently have software analogs for those, but the principles hold the same.
I am suggesting a scenario where a regulator decides that they no longer have that right because the regulator feels that the needs of the consumer outweigh the needs of the manufacturer.
This would be similar to how regulations around interoperability and accessibility where the regulator decides that imposing such obligations on developers leads to a better society.
There's a portion of Apple fanbase that believes that Android is just a cheaper and shittier version of an iPhone, and nothing more. Google has been trying their hardest with every version to prove them right, by taking away more and more of the user choice and flexibility that Android had in its favour.
At this rate, I might just end up buying my first ever Apple device for my next phone.
Absolutely. They implemented this hardware remote attestation nonsense which lets them cryptographically prove that "your" phone is still under their control. Android ceased to be a free ecosystem the second this feature showed up. It's basically equivalent to a video games console now. Cryptography empowers whoever has the keys, and it's not us.
Apps "checking" whether they're running on "approved" hardware and software are the future. And it's only going to get worse from here. They should not even be able to know we're running custom software, much less be able to refuse to run because of it. And yet these corporations are doing just that.
How will this affect those running MicroG? Is it as simple as implementing that API and returning "trustworthy", or is there some kind of signing going on that will make it harder?
Depends where the check is... most likely outside of the app itself. A regular phone with google play services already has a "backdoor" of sorts where google can push any code they want to you... which they have already used for dubious purposes like forcefully uninstalling certain apps from devices under the guise of security.
Revanced gives the app a new app ID (app.revanced.android.youtube) and resigns it, so Google cannot for example just check that apps using the youtube app id have a valid MD5.
They could check for Revanced and friends too though, probably even dual-purpose that to disallow installing it entirely since it wouldn't be allowed on the play store in the first place.
>They could check for Revanced and friends too though
Not really, at least not at the app ID level, because revanced can change app ids indefinitely. Google generally only solves a problem when it can be automated, and manually adding revanced app ids to a blacklist cannot easily be automated. In fact, since revanced is patched on device, they could assign each user a unique app id which would make using app ids as a solution unworkable for Google.
Like I just said, you do not download a revanced youtube apk. You download a revanced patcher that patches the APK on your device. Right now, the patcher gives each app the same id, but theoretically it could give a random string as the app id that is generated by the user at runtime while patching, so that would not work. Even if that were not the case, Google would not set up a script to download latest revanced to check the id. It's only a few steps away from being manual because it would not work for other projects or even for revanced itself if they changed the website's code or domain name. What I mean by solving a problem with automation is like how Google detects copyrighted music in youtube videos and sends the ad revenue to the copyright owners.[0] Having someone constantly fix a script that "automates" finding app ids does not meet that bar.
The Play Store functions as a type of backdoor which allows them to run any code on your device that they want, which includes scanning for Revanced (regardless of the actual app ID, they could just look for the NAME of the app for example) and removing it.
Why couldn't revanced generate a random app name? Also, I am not arguing that Google cannot find some way to block revanced specifically. I am arguing that they will not do so based on the way they generally handle these issues. If they really wanted to block revanced, the easiest way would be to validate that the user is signed in and that the connected account has a subscription to youtube premium. I have no idea why they don't do that already. In any case they definitely would not starting checking the app's "android:label" value against a list of disallowed app names.
I think they probably could but I am unsure of the implementation details.
Patching out the check might work for now, since they will be supporting older versions of the app for a while.
If they eventually decide that the server needs to verify the check, it might need to be spoofed rather than removed which can be more difficult (again, depending on implementation details).
The end goal here is to force everyone to make a google account. Right now, we can get around it with Aurora Store etc, but with this, which WILL become the default, mark my words, google is attempting to close the lock.
They are using their monopolistic position to force everyone to do business with them. If that's not illegal, it should be.
Now that you point it out - it's very similar to what Microsoft has been doing with Windows for the past few years - pushing users harder and harder to create accounts in order to use Windows (by leveraging their monopoly). Hardware vs software, sure, but similar principle.
Regulation is a sharp knife that is hard to wield properly, but we're well past the point of needing it here.
I think that it is again a discrete anti competitive move by Google. Recent european regulations protected the right for publisher to distribute through any marketplace their apps for Apple and Android devices.
But it looks like that they have found the loophole of this with the fact that the regulation does not entitle the user to install apps through any mean that they would like.
My guess is that android was not really afraid of third party app store until then, but now that apple devices will have to be open to other store, there is the possibility that another store editor become major but being unique to Apple and Android devices. Let's imagine the "Microsoft app store for mobile devices" for example.
Even if we had one, it would not matter in the grand scheme of things. It's economical for them to ignore us and shut us out completely. Who cares about a bunch of Linux guys, right? Just cut them off from the banking system and communications and everything until they conform.
The only way is to make this sort of DRM straight up illegal. Then every computer is a free computer, and they cannot afford to refuse to work on those computers. They have to suck it up.
Governments will never do that though. Citizens having access to free computers is incredibly subversive. Computers have the power to wipe out entire industries, entire economies, entire countries. Computers can defeat police, judges, militaries. They do not want citizens to have unrestricted computers. The thought of citizens having access to technology such as cryptography is offensive and subversive to them. So they will never do this. They will do the opposite. They will look at the little digital fiefdoms the big techs have created for themselves and they will be inspired. They want that sort of control for themselves. And thus we keep inching towards the fabled cyberpunk hellscape that no doubt awaits us, if it's not already here.
>The only way is to make this sort of DRM straight up illegal
I agree with your statement on what needs to be done, but I disagree with the above ^
Companies will always skirt around laws because the dev cycle of regulations is thousands of times slower than the dev cycle of private companies. Just take Apple's intentional malicious app store compliance in the EU as an example. They would rather spend millions in legal fees to not comply than to simply comply. This is a pessimistic view, but it literally happens all the time.
No the reason answer is choice. Making something so good and designing it around freedom and making it sexy is the way to go. Regulation is for people that think they can control human behavior with force, which rarely if ever works.
I used to agree with you but I changed my mind. That view point is overwhelmingly optimistic. It grossly overestimates the ability of the technologically illiterate to care about stuff they don't understand. At the same time, it depends on normal people not only understanding and caring about this but also getting on board with whatever we propose based on principles, often at their inconvenience.
We're already going down that path right now, and we are failing miserably. The only possible result of that path is what's already happening right now. Corporations use their trillions to create nice pretty convenient gratis little digital fiefdoms where they hold all the keys, and people are only too happy to become their digital serfs. People actually see absolutely nothing wrong with sacrificing their freedom and control for security and convenience. In fact they look down on us for eschewing the conveniences of 21st century technology.
Once the monopoly is established, it is simple for them to squeeze out any non-conformers and then tighten the screws on their serfs. This post right here is just one example of the methods they will use to squeeze us out. Every post that contains the word "enshittification" is an example of them tightening the screws on their serfs. We're gonna see an infinite number of these until something is done about it.
The only way I can think of to solve this is to enshrine computing freedom into law. Somebody's gotta decide that this computer freedom stuff is right and just and moral and correct, and literally write those principles into society's code of law. And it's gotta be done without a bunch of industry lobbyists neutering the law to uselessness.
The owner of the machine is whoever bought it for his own use. That human must have absolute control over every last bit of it, lest he instead be controlled by it. A machine controlling a human being without his consent is a violation of his basic human dignity and it should be treated as such. It is his right to be in complete control and any attempt to usurp that control is violence. I've come to believe that anything short of this will fail to stop these corporations.
I'm curious how the check is implemented in Google Play Services. If it's based on the package manager's initiatingPackageName field, it should be trivial to bypass on rooted devices (or unrooted custom ROMs).
This is how software freedom dies. If bs like this and that "web environment integrity" crap Google tried to push into Chrome last year isn't an obvious sign that Google is a monopoly and needs to be broken up then I don't know what is. It's a disgrace what Google has done to Android as a formerly open and developer friendly platform.
That's actually quite clever in a devious way: by giving app developers the control over blocking sideloading, Google essentially sidesteps the requirement to be fully open.
They can now just point to the developers: it's them, not us!
It's a really important point, because it clarifies what this change really means: developers are now being given the final say about how their application is installed (i.e. through what intermediary, if any) on the end user's device. In short: it's DRM in different clothes. Luckily, it appears the developers have to opt-in (at least for now).
I wonder to what extent the supposed user benefits of central control of apps are true.
Maybe arbitrary programs on a phone is akin to a random .exe on Windows 95, but instead of Windows 95 it's a computing platform that a majority of human beings have in their pocket and that can provide direct or indirect access to almost all personal and financial information. I mean, you have to grant the privileges, but of course you will.
Maybe having a locked down library of programs is good, I'm just too much of a cynic to see it as anything but a power grab. On the other hand, maybe the support and legal headaches of customers "screwing themselves up" also plays a part, especially when there's a whole dark industry to trick people into screwing themselves up.
If locking the user's data was the goal, Google would many a non-negative amount of effort locking the user's data from malicious apps.
Instead, they work on mixing the data so much users can't tell what is being accessed, blocking data-redacting apps, and making sure term changes are invisible.
With traditional property, the vendor never had this right. I could buy a hammer and use it hammer in nails or use it to break windows and the hammer manufacturer couldn't stop me. It was one thing when intellectual property was entertainment and media but now that it's come to encompass tools needed to interact with the world users need to have something more akin to traditional consumer rights for apps they "own".
You're applying copyright to something functional like a computer program versus a piece of art.
And what these companies are doing is making the (hardware or external) functionality dependent on that copy-written computer program. So now it's impossible to modify your device without modifying software and thus breaking copyright.
Take a look at the US constitution copyright clause:
[the United States Congress shall have power] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
How does this use case of copyright promote the progress of science and useful arts? Copyright was clearly intended to make it temporarily difficult to publish information, not to make it impossible to modify machines.
Property is a bundle of rights, not a single unified monolith.
But regardless of whether they should have that say, they empirically do seem to have it.
Which is why the solution is free software, and why the FSF has always understood the threat of hardware and encryption being used against the user rather than for them.
Not at all. I reject any and all notions of "intellectual property". Especially when their implementation requires the sacrifice of free computing as we know it, the destruction of everything the word "hacker" ever stood for. I'd very much prefer that creators have zero say over anything, if that is the cost of computers remaining free.
Copyright is often bound up with the moral rights of authors, one of which is final control of whether and how their work is exhibited, because the author's reputation is bound up with the exhibition of the work. This is more explicit in jurisdictions like European countries, where authors rights are more encoded into IP law.
In the USA, you have things like the first sale doctrine, which applies to things like books and audio recordings, but DOES NOT apply to software, especially not software that makes use of services provided by the author (as most mobile apps do). Do not expect, in general, to have a right to use a piece of software, especially a mobile app, in ways not explicitly authorized by the app's vendor. Yes, this also means video games as things you can play forever are going away. Get used to it.
and yet, when you do it on a PC, it's just called "installing".
the point is that the word railroads you into the assumption that having an official app store is the default behaviour and installing software from elsewhere is somewhat underhanded and sneaky, which is convenient for Apple, Google and Microsoft's profit margins
It's not just an assumption, it actually is the default on iOS, Android, iPadOS, and macOS, and the user has to jump through hoops to get around it. I'm not saying this is a good thing, but having a name for it makes it easier to describe, search for, lobby for, and ultimately use. It's like rooting or jailbreaking or even something as innocent as a plug-in or forking: different techniques of modifying software functionality away from the default, but each with its own costs and benefits.
If you tell someone to install Adguard, for example, then on iOS they're installing an app that gives them a Safari extension through the official mechanisms. It can block ads in Safari. But on Android they don't install it from the official store, they sideload an APK by disabling some built in system protections against unsanctioned apps. It's more hoops on Android because of the sideloading, but they get way more power (it acts as a VPN and also a HTTPS MITM cert and filters all your traffic). It can filter ads in all apps, even through HTTPS. The downside is that now all your data goes to this small ad blocking company and circumvents the billions of dollars Google's spent trying to keep your device safe. It's a meaningful difference and users should know both the risks and benefits of being able to sideload apps, just like they should understand the risks and benefits of fully rooting your phone.
I see what you're trying to say, but the fact that it is already the default for many operating systems is all the more reason that you should stop tacitly accepting it, not the other way around
the term sideload gives implicit primacy to monopolistic app stores. install does not.
we should be fighting for third party installation to be the default, not to have the scraps of some workaround that developers are less likely to work with.
for 20 years computers managed just fine with third party downloads as the default. developers favoured broad compatibility and users had more power
there are times and places for locked-down devices: children. old people. corporate devices. display models. etc.
however, this should be opt-in. with an optional app store if the OS manufacturer cares to provide one.
using the term "install" favours a world where developers make apps that you can install on your own terms. using the term "sideload" favours a world where developers make apps for an official app store.
I'm not saying stop using the word sideload, I'm just saying stop fighting for sideloading, and fight for (mobile) install rights.
I don't entirely agree or disagree with what you're saying... depends on the target audience, I think? There doesn't have to be a one-size-fits-all balance between power & protection.
For myself, as a dev, I like Android for this very reason. I don't root it anymore, but I do sideload apps. But for friends and family, I have the exact opposite advice: Not only do I tell them not to sideload anything, they also shouldn't download any no-name apps from the official app store either (especially on Android) because the chance of malware and scams is so incredibly high.
This was always a risky thing to do, even back in the Tucows/CNET Downloads days, and why Windows malware was always a problem. Normal users don't really have the technical ability to audit all the random crap that's available on the internet. Hell, most devs don't either (how many npm or apt-get packages have I audited recently...? zero).
I'm the kind of person who turns off UAC for every fresh Windows install, and if they ever lock down macOS like iOS, I'm gone. But people like us also are not typical users. I think it's actually nice that the market offers this sort of choice. Power users and devs can always choose Framework machines and build their own Linuxes. Boring ol' web devs can use standard Macs. Kids and grandmas get iPads (and honestly most adults would be fine with them) in its default locked-down state. People who really want some customizability on their phones can still use Android and either sideload or put some de-Googled distro on there.
Really, the average person doesn't need this much power and customizability either for their PC, phone, TV, car, washing machine... they're just commodity appliances to watch Game of Thrones and browse TikTok on. I think it's actually a good thing they're locked down. They don't have to worry as much about all the malware and broken configurations that were so common in the Windows 95 days.
But it's also nice, of course, that there are still niche options in the market that you can get if you really want that full bare-metal experience. Most people just don't need or care about that, and it actively hurts them by making them less safe.
So now, to sideload an app that the developer for some reason doesn’t want to be sideloaded, the app will have to be patched.
This makes the apk untrusted, as it loses its signing in the process.
This is one of the cancerous outgrowths of "know your customer". It becomes "know everything about your customer" which becomes "control everything your customer does." This obsession with omnipotence, with a handful of billionaire techbros getting high off the ecstasy of absolutely controlling the other eight billion people on the planet, is why we're all fucked.
And this is why it is so shocking that even folks who should know better, who are technically savvy in the slightest, would ever consent to use such a brain-damaged computer system that runs nonfree software.
The irony is probably lost on you, considering FOSS evangelists scream bloody heresy at anyone daring to install non-FOSS filth upon their holy sand machines.
The author of an app wants their app only distribute through Play Store so they only offer it there. In addition they add a check that verifies that the app was indeed acquired through Play Store or else refuses to run. Am I missing something? What is the issue? Do we want to tell people how they have to distribute their apps? Nobody forced them to do this verification.
The issue is that it's often not a conscious choice by the author. A lot of dubious features get bundled under 'play integrity', and since people tend to like words like security or integrity, they will just select that box (or it may even become the default). This creates a lock in for play services, google certification, etc., and locks out users of alternate operating systems and alternate stores.
I am not an [Android] app developer, so I know nothing about the details, but the subheading does not make it sound like this is something you can activate by accident, quite to the contrary, it sounds like a privilege if you are able to make use of this.
"Select Play Partners" can block unofficial installation of their apps.
I would however agree, if this gets bundled together with other features and you get forced to enable this if you want to make use of the other stuff in the bundle, that seems more problematic. Even then you could argue that it is up to Google to decide what kind of features they want to offer and bundle together, but given the market dominance I would be more open to the point of view that they should not be allowed to do whatever they want.
Play integrity is a basket of features with different levels. App developers can choose how much they want to enforce. So typically, you'll see banks and media companies crank that to the max. Occasionally, you'll also see random apps (like a fast food app) crank that up for no reason. The play integrity stuff is also a lot of a theatre. It doesn't necessarily ensure security, because Android in the wild is wildly insecure with EOL devices that never get an update after they are sold, but it's a way to make the suits happy. They take comfort in the fact that google says it's secure.
Notably, google is the only entity who can bless it with this badge.
But even if people unintentionally activate this, should this be a reason to prohibit Google from offering this? Can you not tell the app developers and they can decide to deactivate it if they want and care to so? I think I would really have to see how you enable or disable this and what other implications this has in order to judge if it seems appropriate.
EDIT: I did a quick search and to me it looks like you have to make an API call and then look at the response and decide what to do. Is there some ready-made component that you can use without getting to see the details? Otherwise it seems that you have to check appLicensingVerdict and decide to refuse to run if this comes back as
UNLICENSED and I do not see how you could do this by accident. Then again, that does not sound like selected partners, that sounds like everyone can do this, so maybe I was looking at the wrong thing.
It's not so much about intentional v/s unintentional. Rather, it's about these proprietary features becoming the de facto standard on an open operating system. The decision will not be in the hands of the developer; rather it'll come top down where the management will say that we check for integrity. After all, who doesn't like some tegridy?
I'm with you. I fundamentally don't see the problem. I actually think it's great.
My understanding was that Android apps were quite unsecure and could be pirated and distributed by another "developer" in an app store in a different country without the original developer ever knowing.
F-Droid style delivery is far more secure than anything from Apple or Google. This is only possible on Android since Apple only allows you to install mysterious binary files from their myaterious store on their mysterious OS. FDroid attests the source code directly by building the app it distributes instead of relying on trusting the developer to upload a black box binary. https://f-droid.org/docs/Security_Model/
On the surface it sounds like an ok idea but IMO it's giving (even more) too much power to the play store to control what apps you can and can't install on your own device.
The original developer makes the decision, and they have to actively choose it when it makes sense for their app. Only pirated apps are affected.
Some software should be free. Software that is nonfree has its place as well and should be allowed to have restrictions so the developers can protect their hard work, get paid, feed their families, etc. I really am looking at this from the indie developer's perspective.
