Google Becoming More Like Apple (User-Hostile Lock-Down, Users' Software of Choice Maligned as 'Sideloading'), Not the Other Way Around
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer.
Google Attacks User-Installed Apps and Promotes Their Own Spyware in Bizarre Misuse of the Word “Security”.
Google has announced that it plans to start interfering with the user’s ability to install APK packages locally. To get other application repositories, such as F-Droid, means installing one of these APK packages.
F-Droid contains no spyware. It’s a Free and Open Source Software repository.
There wouldn’t be any reason to put spyware in software like this because everyone can see it, someone would take it out and make a version that doesn’t do that, and then if the F-Droid repository hosted it, people would quit using that and replace it too.
The Google Play Store, on the other hand, contains very little other than spyware.
See, Google is an ad company, and as an ad company, it peddles spyware libraries that are bundles with the majority of the “apps”, which are actually adware, and monitor what the user does with their entire phone, because almost all adware is also spyware.
The user, by installing things from Google Play, agrees to this, often for some functionality that is minor compared to the dozens and dozens of unnecessary (for the stated purpose of the “app”) permissions, which are intended to let it do things like monitor your use of the phone, figure out where you’re at on Earth to within 3 feet (1 meter), even when the “app” seems to be closed, monitor your phone calls and texts, and uploading your contacts list.
There are actually many more permissions in the Android permission model, and these are just some of the creepier ones.
“Apps” like these can be anything, from McDonald’s, a car insurance company, or even just a program that says it has wallpaper images.
If you try to sign into a particular “app” called Grindr, which is an app for gay people to find sex partners, you may not see everything it does in most countries, but if you have an IP address in the European Union, you will get a “consent” screen about several hundred other “partner companies” they may share your data with.
And if you have a Facebook account, you can go to your “off Facebook Activity” screen, which is hidden rather well, and see that Grindr has been talking to them.
In America, they don’t even ask before they do this.
They’re telling Facebook and Google your HIV status and when the last time you were tested were, and they (allegedly) keep logs of who you are having sex with, and all of your nude photos, even after you delete your account. Seriously!
This was according to a high ranking executive named Ron DeJesus, who was let go recently.
Ron DeJesus claims that he was responsible for trying to keep Grindr compliant with multi-jurisdictional privacy laws, and Grindr basically flouted them all and fired him so that it could continue. He is suing them.
Almost everything in Google Play is some form of malware.
It’s so much worse than what we used to call “spyware” back in the Windows 98/XP era, when it was just something like Bonzi Buddy or Conducent, or New dot Net.
Almost everyone walking around with a cell phone in their pocket has “apps” like this, because they use the Apple App Store or Google Play.
But now Google is saying that the malware problem exists “outside” of their malware store. Which is quite clever.
Soon, according to the plans already revealed by Google, there will be no way to “sideload” (install something yourself) without letting Google “Play Protect”, which is rapidly turning into malicious software pretending to be an antivirus program, like Windows Defender is.
The choices listed are “allow scan” or “don’t install”. That’s it.
And I say “malware pretending to be antivirus” because when you click “allow scan”, it sends Google bits and pieces of the program, to a remote server.
So they know everything that’s on your phone, and they can block modified APKs that you get where someone has removed the spyware libraries from things that are in Google Play.
They can block anything they want and say “malware”, and who are you to stop them? Peasant!
Make no mistake about this, the timing is impeccable.
Right after Google apparently came down hard on people for using ad blockers (I haven’t seen the demand to turn off my ad blocker because I use Brave and they just bump it to deal with f***ing Google for me.), we get this announcement about “sideloading”.
“You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. […] It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it. You and I are not in the big club. And by the way, it’s the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head in their media telling you what to believe, what to think and what to buy. The table is tilted folks. The game is rigged, and nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care.”
-George Carlin
There’s no telling what all is in store for Android.
Like I said in my article about Samsung falling apart, Android was designed to gain marketshare. To do this, part of the deal was that it was somewhat less bogus than iOS about not letting you use it as a real computer.
They let all the other OEMs fight each other over crumbs building up the marketshare, and then Google came in and cleaned everything up and makes the “best” Android phones now.
Well, “sideloading” is the same. They needed it, to gain marketshare, and now they’ll be wanting that back.
I suspect that within five years, the practical benefits of owning an Android phone instead of an iPhone, such as local music playing and the option to use F-Droid, will be gone.
And, basically, Apple gimps the iPhone so bad, that if you have one you might as well just get the cheapest because it doesn’t really do much of anything anyway. It can’t even play music without the network. Without the network, it’s an expensive brick.
The iPhone calls people and has an “app” that makes fart sounds for $1,800.
Google probably won’t take such action until they defeat this fake Anti-Trust Trial in the federal court (the judge is a corrupt stooge who is working with them to hide almost everything from the public) but they will do it.
The media is so bad that instead of criticizing this and calling it what it is, they repeat Google’s press statement. However, there is much more going on than we are being shown. █