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by scep12 4422 days ago
It was never released -- they removed access to a feature that was not intended for the public. That seems well within their right. For you to declare "Google seems to have no interest in protecting android users from this either." seems quite misguided, given that they are clearly working on a solution for this exact problem.
1 comments
davidgerard 4422 days ago
>given that they are clearly working on a solution for this exact problem.

Evidence?

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Groxx 4421 days ago
Android's source code has been gaining AppOps runtime permission checks for a while now. It really does look like they're moving towards a runtime permissions model.

The AppOps "release" wasn't a release. It was a private screen that accidentally had a public intent filter (default behavior is public, this is an easy thing to miss). The only reason anyone knows about it is because people made "launchers" that opened the screen, it was never reachable by normal means.

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scep12 4422 days ago
The "App Ops" settings that they accidentally released seems evident enough that the feature is forthcoming. Am I missing something?
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huxley 4422 days ago
No it just means that there is permissions infrastructure not that they intend to make it available.

What would show Google working actively would be to modify APIs or provide solid guidelines for developers to ensure that arbitrarily closed permissions didn't cause an app to crash or freeze. Making app privacy a high priority for future Android development would be clearly working towards it.

Having a hidden privacy infrastructure means nothing at all.

[fixed unclear sentences]

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chinpokomon 4421 days ago
Multiple user account had a similar pre-release. It wasn't initially meant to be seen, but the crafty users a lot of Android developers are, we figured out how to start using it. A future update of Android made it a regular feature. Same with Apps2SD, although the community design wouldn't work for most users, the Android saw value in the project and came up with a solution that was more user friendly.

I wouldn't be surprised if Android v.next had this feature built-in, but it might require a newer API version.

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scep12 4422 days ago
That's fair. I thought it seemed too polished to be an internal debugging tool, but perhaps I'm being overly optimistic. I guess we'll see.
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rasz_pl 4422 days ago
no need to change APIs, just let AppOps insert shim between apps and API calls and return empty datasets instead of null/failing whole calls.

Let that app ask for my location, but let me define location it returns when I refuse real location. Same for contacts/messages.

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jessaustin 4421 days ago
...let me define location it returns when I refuse real location.

This would destroy some apps, e.g. Ingress.

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pgeorgi 4421 days ago
In a sense it already does: there were instances of Ingress players "moving" from place to place at 200km/h or so during rush hour in London.

IMHO it's better if developers know about fake data so they can factor them in, using plausibility checks. As is, they seem to assume that the data source is real.

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rasz_pl 4421 days ago
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lexa.fakeg...

I just wish there was a central place that would let me do this per ap for all permisions.

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