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"Piracy is a service issue.." (Image is a real story btw, link in post) (lemmy.ml)

submitted 10 months ago by OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

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Image comes from the monstrous work the Asahi Linux team did to get Netflix working on Linux on ARM Macbooks: https://asahilinux.org/2024/01/fedora-asahi-new/

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[-] Illecors@lemmy.cafe 23 points 10 months ago

That's... Not at all how it works.

Don't worry, you're one of today's lucky 10000!

Launcher on android is just that - an app to launch other apps. Other apps can and do run in the background, without ever being explicitly launched. Think play services, location provider, wifi connection manager, etc. Since google runs its stuff at the highest level - nothing can hide from it. Other apps, like netflix, utilise internal telemetry. Assholes like facebook push the boundaries to the limit and collect literally every input of every sensor to have as much data about your environment as possible.

TL;DR - custom launcher cool, but no cure.

[-] brbposting@sh.itjust.works 2 points 10 months ago

[Some apps] push the boundaries to the limit and collect literally every input of every sensor to have as much data about your environment as possible.

Scary. Recommend any further reading?

[-] Rikj000@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Take a look for yourself with a rooted phone.

Blocker will show you all the recievers/services/activities/providers the app uses,
and will allow you to block them.

https://github.com/lihenggui/blocker

Apps often still work correctly with about 80-90% of their recievers/services/providers blocked, since they're spyware, which doesn't add functionality to the app.

XPrivacyLua will allow you to lie to apps when they request sensitive data.

Aditionally it will show you timestamps of what it lied about, to which apps, reveiling what they try to collect on you.

https://github.com/M66B/XPrivacyLua

ClassyShark3xodus allows you to decompile and scan apps on the fly,
to check which well known trackers are embedded into it.

https://bitbucket.org/oF2pks/fdroid-classyshark3xodus

Idk if these apps still do it,
since I have not used them for years,
but that's how I learned about many things like:

9GAG contained a face detector service at some point.
Facebook Messenger requests access to your microphone, even when you are not calling with it.

[-] Illecors@lemmy.cafe 3 points 10 months ago

I don't have something specific to read, my statement comes from questioning the declared permissions by apps. Why would, say, facebook - an app that, essentially, downloads and uploads content via http, need access to location, gyro, contacts, texts, call history, making calls, microphone, etc? Also, while I can't prove it, as someone who works in computing I can guarantee there are undocumented/buggy/testing APIs and just straight up bugs that companies with enough resources can and do find and abuse. Cambridge analytica has only strengthened my view on this.