[LurkersWillLurk]

This is astonishing.

> We determined that the issue was being caused by unintended interaction between the Microsoft Teams app and the underlying Android operating system.

As someone whose organizational policy signs my Teams client out after a couple hours of inactivity, I would love to know how on earth this is possible. I truly am at a loss, and I am furious at the thought that I have been unable to dial 911 for who knows how long.

At least I know the ten digit number for my local emergency services, but the average person probably doesn't. This is unacceptable.

[bit_logic]

They need to release more technical details on this to restore confidence. How can a sandboxed user installed app with limited permissions cause dialing 911 to fail? How do they know other apps won't cause the same issue?

And they mentioned an Android update, but what about the millions of Android phones that aren't getting regular updates? Does that mean there's potentially millions of phones that can't dial 911?

I like Pixel and Android, but am seriously thinking of switching to iphone because I really need a phone I can trust will dial 911 when I need it.

[awill]

What's really terrible here is that Google are saying they won't fix this until their regularly scheduled January release. SERIOUSLY..... They won't rush a fix out for this? Not even for this??? Unbelievable.

[jeffdubin]

Note that Google is no longer providing updates (/maybe/ one more in 22Q1) for the OP's Pixel 3, a 3yo device which is otherwise still a great phone. It's simply not good enough. Google needs to support their own phone past three years and be the example to others that ship Android devices. How long are we going to ignore it and let those who can't afford a new phone every couple of years be left exposed?

[ikt]

Looks like it's only impacting phones from 2019 onwards and in very specific circumstances (still not great at all but a very specific bug):

If you are unsure what Android version you are on, confirm you are running Android 10 or above by following the steps here. If you are not running Android 10 or above, you are not impacted by this issue.

You are also not impacted if you have teams installed and are signed in:

If you have the Microsoft Teams app downloaded, check to see if you are signed in. If you have been signed in, you are not impacted by this issue, and we suggest you remain signed in until you’ve received the Microsoft Teams app update.

If you have the Microsoft Teams app downloaded, but are not signed in, uninstall and reinstall the app. While this will address the problem in the interim, a Microsoft Teams app update is still required to fully resolve the issue.

We advise users to keep an eye out for an update to the Microsoft Teams app, and ensure it is applied as soon as available. We will update this post once the new version of Microsoft Teams is available to 100% of users.

https://www.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/r4xz1f/pixel_p...

[mstade]

That we know of. If Teams can cause this, surely other apps can also. Moreover, who's to say there isn't a much larger number of people who've been affected by this bug that haven't reach out to Google to file a complaint and bug report. (Or couldn't, possibly because they died while trying to call emergency services.)

[swiley]

This isn't the first time I've heard this complaint.

[maest]

Maybe I'm missing something, but it doesn't sound like it's _that_ specific. From the instructions, the conditions for the bug are:

1. Running Android 10 or higher

2. Has MS Teams installed

3. User is logged out of MS Teams

4. User hasn't reinstalled MS Teams _in a while_ (or perhaps they installed MS Teams in a particular time window in the past)

1-3 seem like fairly weak filters. Unless 4 is a particularly strong filter, this sounds like it would affect a bunch of people.

[rekoil]

The thing is, it's clearly not as simple as "Has MS Teams installed", I mean the bug itself is not due to one specific piece of software, but rather that software advertising itself to the OS in a certain way.

Making a call to emergency services shouldn't be able to fail on hardware with a mobile phone modem. If Android allows apps to provide the capability to do that, then the OS must take responsibility for the app actually being able to do so, if the dialer tries to call an emergency services number, and whatever app is prioritised to take care of that fails, then the next one in line needs to be called upon, until we hit Android core functionality which they have verified beforehand can actually perform the task (given that there is a mobile phone modem on the platform in question, but perhaps this could be done over the internet as well, in which case that isn't even a requirement).

Blaming this on shitty code by a third party is not acceptable.

[myself248]

Imagine if Ma Bell said they're no longer supporting your touch-tone phone because it's more than 3 years old, so 911 calls aren't guaranteed.

How did this ever become acceptable?

[swiley]

> Google needs to support their own phone past three years

It's not really Google's choice. Qualcomm gives up on their SOCs pretty quickly and unlike on Linux Android's license doesn't force them to publish driver sources.

[account42]

You don't think Google could demand driver sources for the harware they use or use hardware with driver sources available? It is their choice.

[Dah00n]

Sure they could but they wouldn't get them. Not for release and without that they are useless.

[xvf22]

And how many more years did they give people on the Google SOC?

[raverbashing]

Isn't the workaround to uninstall Teams?

[awill]

I suspect millions of Android/Teams users will never hear of this bug. They won't realize there's action they could take.

[laumars]

And what if there is another app that causes the same bug? Teams doesn’t have any special permissions so one has to assume there are more apps out there that could be a problem.

[gotbeans]

> teams doesn't have any special permissions

Is that really true though?

Scrolling through the permission list on teams, there's a whole bunch I don't usually expect on most apps, ie. "Route calls through the system" (id imagine this is the one needed to implement voip service on top of android).

And it gets even worse for apps that can create corporate profiles so they can be administratively controlled remotely by the corp. That's next level of permission bs one has to give up to.

[AceyMan]

trying to avoid the trap you speak of: I've submitted a case to my corporate technology department with the permalink to Google's Reddit reply partly so the enterprise can't say they knew nothing about this defect (and I cc: my manager).

[Dah00n]

Then Google should ban the app from play store and auto-delete it from phones until MS fixes it.

[jaywalk]

Because of a bug in Android? Great suggestion.

[tut-urut-utut]

If that's the only solution/workaround, I guess Teams should be banned from Play Store and existing Teams app automatically disabled or uninstalled next time a user pings Play Store.

In any case, it's Google that is responsible to fix the mess caused by broken sandboxing of their OS.

[PretzelPirate]

I’d now be worried that 911 won’t work with other dialers either. Calls to 911 should probably always be handled by some first-party dialer since it’s not reasonable for everyone to test if their specific installation will be able to call 911.

[Arnt]

No, to uninstall and reinstall.

[judge2020]

It sounds like the issue is that Google didn't specifically exclude the emergency number for {user's country/province} from being sent to third-party calling apps. These apps can register to handle calls for legitimate reasons.

[sorenjan]

But Android has a list of emergency numbers you can dial without unlocking the phone, why wouldn't they use that?

[jeffbee]

Shipping the org chart. One team writes the Lock Screen dialer, some other people wrote the message bus thing that allows apps to intercept calls.

[hef19898]

Why on earth would you want apps to be able to intercept calls on a phone?

[throwaway744678]

On Android, you can replace the default phone app. That's by design.

[izacus]

> Why on earth would you want apps to be able to intercept calls on a phone?

Because there are housands of users even on HN that WANT apps like Signal to be able to manage secure encrypted calls like a first-party app with the same rights. Basic software freedom and all that.

[dotancohen]

  > Why on earth would you want apps to be able to intercept calls on a phone?

My daughter enlightened me to this recently.

Android devices are not phones. They are computers that come preinstalled with some apps, one of which is a phone app. Importantly: They are not marketed as PHONES. They are marked as "Smartphones". Just search for the word "phone" on the websites of any major Android device manufacturers.

The distinction is important.

Be careful when punishing children from "using the phone". Today, this means that they cannot use the app called "phone". This incident is a stark reminder that "phone" is an app today, not a physical device.

[numpad0]

There is a fallback call flow for emergency calls in cases where the phone cannot register properly but it would be nice to be able to overlook missing bureaucratic elements and just save lives, and that’s what “Emergency Calls Only” signifies, but it probably only activates when normal flow fails.

[xg15]

> How can a sandboxed user installed app with limited permissions cause dialing 911 to fail?

No idea about this particular problem, but my takeaway was that Android apps are more similar to web extensions with service workers than to traditional executables.

An app can register itself for all kinds of OS hooks during install. When a hook is triggered, the OS will send an event to the appropriate process of that app. If no process is running, the OS will launch one.

This means there is not a lot of meaningful distinction between "running" and "not running" on Android: As long as the app is installed, the OS may run code from that app at any time.

(This is why you can have half a dozen messenger apps running "in the background" without draining your battery: There is no actual background process for each messenger, just entries in a database somewhere. When a new message comes in, the OS receives a push notification, displays a message to the user styled according to the app's configuration - and might eventually launch a process for the app if the user interacts with the message.)

So it's quite possible that the Teams app registers itself for some kind of "outgoing phone call" hook, and there was a bug in Teams' handling of that.

[avsteele]

So, this implies that a serious bug in any program with the 'call' hook could prevent your phone from making a call, even 911? Seems like a big deal!

In software I write, the logic for 'emergency' priority events doesn't go through the same call chain for this reason.

[xg15]

Not an Android expert, but this is how it seems to me.

It's Google's responsibility to implement the hooks in a secure way, so that an app that is registered e.g. for the "call" hook cannot prevent the call from taking place.

Seems that somewhere in there, someone messed up.

[kuschku]

The issue is that you might have a device where emergency calls have to be routed through a VoIP app, per legal requirements, e.g. if no cellular emergency calling is available (e.g. on voip-enabled wifi-only devices, or on voip-enabled devices in locations without cellular signal))

[sorenjan]

> And they mentioned an Android update, but what about the millions of Android phones that aren't getting regular updates?

That's my concern as well. My phone stopped getting updates from the manufacturer after getting Android 10, which is affected by this bug according to the linked comment. How are they going to get this update out to phones that the manufacturers has abandoned after the usual two years of updates?

[awill]

I have always had Pixels which get monthly updates, but this is a crucial point. Even if Google says "hey guys, we fixed it in AOSP, aren't you proud of us?" No Google, we're not. This AOSP fix won't come to millions and millions of users.

[cesarb]

From what I understood, there will be two updates, one to Android and one to Teams. Either of these updates will be enough to fix this issue. So even if Android is no longer being updated for your phone, updating Teams will be enough to fix it.

[Spivak]

I mean if it will never be updated again how could you fix any issue ever? Like yeah this one is particularly severe but any resolution will be an update of some kind to the software.

[floxy]

On the plus side, can a two year old phone even run the bloatware that is Teams?

[Semaphor]

Easily. My mid-range phone (OnePlus 5) is 4.5 years old, phones are powerful and have been for a long time.

[throwaway946513]

My iPhone 6s runs Teams just fine. Granted notifications continue to display on my phone, even when I'm on the desktop or using Teams directly - but nonetheless it still works when I need it to (on iOS, can't say the same for the Android fellows rn)

[NikolaNovak]

Fwiw my galaxy note 8 runs it perfectly. I think my iPhone xr is also more than 2 years and no issues.

I'm not saying I love the tool, but phone performance itself is not the reason for me. YMMV.

[nneonneo]

Google wants you to blame Microsoft Teams for this, and judging from some other comments that’s nearly working. But, the blame is entirely on Android. It doesn’t matter how badly Teams screwed up - it should not have the ability to mess up a core system function like this.

Let’s not forget - someone very nearly could have died thanks to this glitch. Thankfully, a landline was available.

[bserfaty]

Maybe someone has died and we will never know. Not many people go on debugging why 911 wasn't working.

[hypertele-Xii]

Especially if they died trying.

[nobrains]

> "I am furious at the thought that I have been unable to dial 911 for who knows how long."

Initially I thought the above comment was unreasonable. But when I put myself in the same shoes, I have the EXACT same feeling.

It is like the person who was coming at the intersection at blaring speed, but missed me. The fact that he COULD have hit me, and if that happened, I would likely have died, is a very frustrating thought. But when conveying it to a 3rd party, I feel the 3rd party might think "hey, its ok. nothing happened. you are safe. he did not hit you, so why are you upset?"

[ranma42]

This might be related: https://blog.enablingtechcorp.com/planning-emergency-calling... "Routing emergency calls to the appropriate 911 Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) is a legal requirement in the United States [...] Teams can determine an Emergency Caller’s current location and automatically pass the call and the current location information to the appropriate PSAP"

[georgemcbay]

Agreed. As a Pixel/Android user who has never used Microsoft Teams this is still incredibly concerning.

A third-party app causing this issue on accident means a third-party app could cause this issue maliciously and any app not part of the base operating system should not be capable of causing an issue interfering with emergency calling.

I assume/hope their January 4th fix addresses whatever the issue is at a more fundamental level, but this seems like the sort of thing that should be addressed a lot sooner than a month out.

[bb88]

Also more reasons to not use Microsoft Teams.

I think an explanation here of what data is being sent to Microsoft Teams and now MS Teams can prevent phone calls is important here.

If my organization uses MS Teams, do my phone calls on my personal device go to my company?

[jmspring]

Oh FFS, it’s an issue with app/dialer integration based on Android design and permissions. But, I know it’s popular to bash MS.

I’m not a teams fan, but this is taking things a tad far.

Edit: dialer has been autocorrected to diaper

[vladvasiliu]

I think the issue is that Teams even tries to do this in the first place. If I want to call someone via Teams, I'll fire up Teams. Or maybe add a button in the address book when I search for someone (I've got this on iOS, don't know if it's a thing on Android).

But on the dialler? When I'm there, I expect to be using the phone app to actually call the number I'm dialling.

So yes, this does seem to me like legitimate MS bashing. Even if the platform allows for this, they shouldn't be using it. Especially if the app is signed-out or otherwise out of order. Of course "it's for the customer experience" somehow, but come on.

[birdman3131]

Teams is VOIP. Legally they HAVE to allow for and setup 911 calling.*

Yes they royally screwed up. But its not like they could have just ignored Ray Baum Act/ Kari's Law.

*I think for non static location devices like cellphones or softphones the law does not kick in for a bit. For deskphones or say a voip phone you take home from work it has been in effect for a while now.

[vladvasiliu]

> Teams is VOIP. Legally they HAVE to allow for and setup 911 calling.*

No-one's saying they shouldn't allow for it. The issue here is they're hijacking an external app, effectively going out of its way to prevent the user from calling 911.

So I guess they're in the wrong twice.

For the record, no, I don't think this was done on purpose. But it just shows why it's an issue they screw around with things they shouldn't.

[bb88]

But they don't need to inject themselves in the dialer. I think that's the clear takeaway.

[IiydAbITMvJkqKf]

This is legitimate microsoft bashing. This bug implies that the teams app at the very least observes every phone number being dialed.

As a 100% remote worker, this issue is completely unacceptable. Teams should have zero involvement in SIM dialing.

And Android is defective too, a user app should not have this level of access.

[alfiedotwtf]

> Based on our investigation we have been able to reproduce the issue under a limited set of circumstances. We believe the issue is only present on a small number of devices with the Microsoft Teams app installed when the user is not logged in, and we are currently only aware of one user report related to the occurrence of this bug. We determined that the issue was being caused by unintended interaction between the Microsoft Teams app and the underlying Android operating system. Because this issue impacts emergency calling, both Google and Microsoft are heavily prioritizing the issue, and we expect a Microsoft Teams app update to be rolled out soon

Let me zoom in...

> we expect a Microsoft Teams app update to be rolled out soon

Seems like a Microsoft issue to me.

[PeterisP]

It's a Google issue no matter what. No matter what Microsoft did in their Teams app, the fact that it was (and still is!) possible is a critical flaw in Google code which Google has the duty to fix ASAP. The problem is not fixed until it is impossible for 911 calling to break even if the old Microsoft Teams app is used, and until emergency calling is certain to work even if someone else intentionally made a malicious app trying to hijack 911 in a similar manner.

I mean, that's literally a top priority without compromise - if it turns out that for some reason they can't implement third party dialing in a way that ensures proper handling of emergency calls even in the presence of buggy or even actively malicious third party apps, then an acceptable solution would be to kill all third party dialing; there is no permissible tradeoff whatsoever between features and emergency calling.

[xvector]

> Seems like a Microsoft issue to me.

Amazed that you managed to draw this conclusion! It doesn't matter what apps I have installed and what they do, NOTHING should prevent me from getting a 911 call out if I have battery and coverage.

[throw10920]

> Seems like a Microsoft issue to me.

False. Microsoft is not responsible for ensuring that 911 is available - Google is, as they are the phone hardware and OS manufacturer. Teams can only use the APIs exposed to it by Android - if use of those APIs allows 911 calling to be disabled, that's a bug in Android, not Teams.

Similarly, if an application using the standard Linux kernel APIs is improperly elevated to root because of a bug in the kernel, that's the fault of the kernel, not the application. The kernel is responsible for ensuring that even misuse of its API or a buggy application doesn't violate certain constraints that the user expects to be upheld.

[georgemcbay]

> Seems like a Microsoft issue to me.

This is kind of like saying if an app crashes an operating system it is the app's fault.

The app's code may have caused the crash but the fact that a modern OS would allow an app to take down the entire system is a flaw in the operating system, and the significantly more important problem to have fixed than whatever is wrong with that one specific app that highlighted the issue.

Likewise Microsoft's code may be what is causing this issue to surface, but Android should have better protection against this happening in the first place.

Consider that if the Microsoft Teams app is doing this on accident other apps could do this on purpose, and that failure lies squarely with Google/Android.

[mavrc]

> Seems like a Microsoft issue to me.

except that any app could do this, and it just happens to be Teams that did.

[bb88]

Why FFS does an F'ing app need to have access to that, particularly if it's required by many organizations?

[easton]

So it can make VoIP calls from your work phone number. Now that nobody has a desk phone, such a thing is needed, especially if you don't want to pay for cell phones for your employees but do want them to get calls.

[bb88]

No, FFS, NO! No app should ever interfere with dialing, ever! If you want to use your VOIP app, use the F'ing VOIP app.

[midasuni]

If you don’t pay for a cell phone what are they running the app on?

[chii]

It's bigger than Teams. It's that an app can prevent such a basic, and important functionality.

[rand49an]

The issue here is that Android has failed to exclude emergency calls from being routed to a VoIP provider. If it wasn't MS Teams causing this issue it could well have been another registered VoIP provider on that phone.

[zmmmmm]

And then you get the law suit because someone in a Wifi zone but without cell coverage couldn't call 911.

[nyuszika7h]

It's simple. Force it to go through the regular cellular network first, and if it doesn't exist (e.g. because you're on a WiFi-only tablet) or is unreachable then try to fall back to another app.

[ipython]

Most carriers have their own voip gateway already built into the carrier settings to handle this situation. No voip app needed.

[kwhitefoot]

Why would you have MS Teams on your personal device? Does your company rent the space it uses and pay for the CPU, memory, and IO quota?

[kreeben]

Why would you have one device for work and another for private life? I use dual SIMs on my work phone. I used to use two phones but that was just very, very, very inconvenient.

Why try to cram in two lifes into the one life you have?

[input_sh]

I don't want to have anything personal on a device someone else has full control over.

I don't want any work-related notifications after I clock out. If I'm being paid to work 8h/day, company has my attention for 8h/day. Overtimes can be arranged, but doing so on my own will and not being paid for it will never happen.

I don't want to be held liable for leaking company secrets in case I lose my personal device.

[mPReDiToR]

"I don't want to have anything personal on a device someone else has full control over."

You don't want a smartphone then. From the ground up these things are closed source with smatterings of OSS in highly visible places which can be negated utterly by lower level software.

At some point we all have to realise that anything we posess electronically is only a copy of the version the three letter guys have in our files.

[mrjin]

Weren't emergency services numbers supposed to be available, not matter whether the phone is locked or not, and does not even require a SIM card? Then how come an user mode app can block calling numbers that were supposed to be available where is there is cellular coverage?

[Animats]

Yes. There are lots of specific technical requirements from the FCC on this. First, even if the phone is locked, calls to 911 have to work. If there's no SIM card, calls to 911 have to work. For 911 calls, the phone's transmitter goes to full power and the receive side will attempt to connect even if the signal is too weak. If you're subscribed to one carrier and they're down, the phone has to try other carriers in range. If no talk channel is available, the cell site has to free one up, kicking off a non-emergency call if necessary. If the billing system is down in the cellular system, the call has to go through anyway. For newer technologies, VOIP has to support 911, with location info.

"Oh, we decided to divert all calls to Teams first" is just not going to fly.

[jet_32951]

Then this seems to mean that the 'Dialer' function in a lot of Android phones separates functionality at the wrong point, is that right? Having 'Dialer' as selectable should not include the ability to select what ought to be a hardware requirement to be able to dial 911. If this is true the whole pachanga falls firmly in Google's court.

[eldaisfish]

that's one of my biggest reasons for not using android - i appreciate the risk that comes with "options", "choice" and "customisation".

I want my phone to work - especially during a time-critical emergency. An app crashing or bugging out is not an acceptable trade-off. That said, i have my gripes with iOS but at least Apple's thought process towards these issues is similar.

[Arnt]

An android app isn't modal in that way. There is no "user mode". There are permissions instead, and the closest thing to "user mode" would be an app that has the 2-3 most common permissions, and no others.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.microsoft.... lists what Teams does or can do, and it's a long list that includes "directly call phone numbers". That means to call phone numbers without the usual indirection through the phone app, ie. Teams can replace the phone app.

So, Teams can do that because it isn't "user mode". There are others too, https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.simplemobi... is one.

[INTPenis]

I can't answer that but I run Teams on Android and it's just a terrible app. Its problems have affected my entire phone before. Like for example when it wouldn't stop blinking and each blink reset whatever I was doing so I had to quickly switch out of it between blinks and then force kill it from Settings.

[badthingfactory]

Teams is the absolute worst piece of software I have ever used. Simply logging in only works about 50% of the time. This wouldn't be a big deal if I wasn't randomly forced to the login screen every few days. I experience a different bug every other day. I can't be signed into multiple orgs at once (on desktop) meaning I have to fully sign out/sign in when I want to switch and it takes forever. Notifications are unreliable. I miss Slack so much.

[utrack]

It's very easy - just call 0118 999 881 999 119 725...3!

[ls15]

I only installed the teams app on my phone, because their web app only works in selected invasive browsers on the desktop, but not in Firefox, which I found already infuriating.

Why can't we have open standards for communication in 2021, where everyone can just use the software that they trust? I would never use teams if I had a choice, besides looking for another job.

[tiagod]

I also know the number for local emergency, but needing to wait for my phone to reboot during a stroke (and my phone takes a looong time to sounds really scary.

[facorreia]

One more reason to not install company apps on a personal phone.

[Xylakant]

How is this relevant? The bug was in this instance triggered by teams, but it could have been any other calling app. And I know at least a few organizations that use teams to communicate with people engaging in a private capacity - our childcare for example uses it to communicate with parents, schools to teach remote, our kids hockey team,…

[nyuszika7h]

Work is not the only reason reason someone may use Microsoft Teams. People in school or university use it too, and they sure as hell won't provide you a "school phone".

[whazor]

While I agree it is mainly the fault of Google here with not properly sandboxing, it would not surprise me if mobile management software has the ability to block phone calls to other countries and with that accidentally banning emergency numbers. I get all kinds of big (bit less serious) issues with my phone after installing corporate mobile management software and the incorrect configuration of it.