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Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

Maybe its Google's answer to SnapChat, call it SnapRoulette :-)

But more seriously the messaging story on Android is abysmally broken. There are SMS messages, vendor wrapped SMS/MMS messaging, Google flavored chat apps that sometimes map to SMS/MMS and sometimes to some Google protocol.

Combine that with an insane permission model that basically wants you to hand over access to all your SMS/MMS rights for applications that deal with photos and I wouldn't put it past being a bit of malware in some photo client.

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Samsung has its own SMS client, Samsung Messages. The fact Android allows custom SMS apps doesn't seem like a bad thing.

Apps can send photos via Android Intent without requiring SMS permissions. If an app requests that permission, the user can say no. I'm not sure how that qualifies as insane.

I have a Galaxy phone and have no idea if it's the basic Android or Samsung app. It just says Messages in the app settings, there is no Samsung Messages app.

Samsung Messages is also called 'Messages' and uses and orange and white icon. I went to Menu > Settings > About Messages and no where does it state that it is a Samsung app (but it is).

Yep, Android (Google) Messages' logo is a white text bubble on blue background. If you have a Samsung phone and didn't explicitly install another SMS app you're probably using the Samsung one. Ditto for the email client (Email), the photo gallery (Gallery), calendar (Calendar) etc. Samsung likes to do their own thing.

Edit: occurs to me that they don't have their own Maps app though. I'm honestly a bit surprised they didn't try to make at least their own UI for Google Maps, seems like a Samsung thing to do. I should also add that I don't mind the Samsung apps at all nowadays, but I do kinda wish they would just stick to the Google stuff (and quietly take Bixby out back and shoot it).

The default one on Samsung phones that can neither be uninstalled nor disabled is Samsung's. It can be made not-default, and you can turn off all of its permissions, but you can't get rid of it.

Not without root, that is.

Or on unrooted phones, you can use adb to remove software.

So you're saying that you could remove all the bloatware that comes with Android phones these days simply with adb?

Didn't realize it was that easy.

It one of the reasons why it's a security issue to leave usb debugging enabled all the time. adb has almost unlimited access to your device when it is.

But, yeah, i think you just type 'adb uninstall <package name>'. I can't remember exactly since it's been a while.

But you can get to the app permissions and revoke all permissions, rendering the app incapable to run

> The fact Android allows custom SMS apps doesn't seem like a bad thing.

Only if it's clearly distinguishable. Call me old fashioned but I'd like to know if my messages are handled by a core Google-developed android app or by some third party like Samsung, which clearly demonstrate that it shouldn't have that kind of access.

Samsung is not a third party on a phone and OS developed by Samsung, it's more of an OEM.

Fair point. Let me rephrase it - I consider Samsung's OS itself an unnecessary third party on a phone that should be running official Android. Then again, I prefer iOS since I explicitely don't want to deal with the half-baked mess of an OS developed by incompetent OEMs.

I don't understand your issue. If you want to use the normal sms app on a Samsung phone you're free to do. And Samsung doesn't hide that it isn't it, it actually makes it super obvious (because they want people to wish for Samsung, not for Android, see Tizen)

It its something of concern for you, its impossible to find it hard to know if your messaging app is by Google or not.

Additionally, a Samsung sms app is really not third party on a Samsung phone.

And lastly, the biggest concern about this on android is usually "how to get out of Google control" so being able to replace a core app like this by any that you prefer be it Google, Samsung or a special privacy oriented one is hardly something I can consider a disadvantage.

On my pixel 2, messages is the text app, if I want to switch that to something like Hangouts then I have to accept a diag box and allow it. Only one app can do this at a time. This isn't Google, this is 3rd parties being dumb.

But I would say that I hate that iOS apps can't access my SMS messages. I've typed thousands of "pin codes" from SMS and I can't have auto-transactions in my budget app from bank SMS notifications. While I don't like an idea about allowing every app to access SMS messages, I'm fine to allow some apps to access all SMS messages and temporary allow app to access all new SMS messages.

Huh. Android Messenger will prompt me to copy the code to clipboard (which I don't think I've ever used since I'm always actually logging on with my laptop).

I would be happy if I went to add a photo to a text message and it said, "Allow Messages to access photos just this one time?" and I confirmed it. And then it turned off permission again after the message was composed.

What I don't like is when you get an app like "SuperPhotoStickers!"[1] which allegedly lets you take a picture, put stickers on it, and text it to a friend. Asks for permission to access texts all the time, and has a service that runs all the time, and later you find your phone has been sending photos and/or texts to a third party without you knowing about it. That is what I mean it is a broken permission system.

In a sane world you would be able to say "only access pictures taken with the App" and only access the text subsystem (SMS/MMS) only when "the App is open and the UI is on the screen in front of me."

[1] Example name, not a real app as far as I can tell.

something like for this session like how sudo works would work pretty well too

LineageOS has had this function since CyanogenMod.

That should be able to use Intents for both picking the image and sending the message, no permissions required.

Would an option to forward all texts from a phone number to an app (read only, and only a single number authorized at a time) work? Or would it be too clumsy?

iOS 12 automatically copies SMS codes to the clipboard. That said if you can avoid it don’t use SMS for 2 factor.

Even better than that it adds them as an autofill suggestion in the numeric keyboard https://ios.gadgethacks.com/how-to/ios-12-makes-easier-use-t...

That looks solved to me.

Apple definitely works hard for usable privacy.

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