Taking screenshots isn't allowed by the app after upgrading to Android 11
support.google.com
support.google.com
Now, I'm as frustrated as anybody else here that I'm forbidden to use whatever feature I want from MY phone, for which I paid, with MY MOENY (and nobody else's apart from mine). But then again, what choice do I have? Not buy a phone? Switch to what? There are no viable and practical alternatives. It's a "take it or leave it" situation.
Unlock the bootloader, install Xposed and this module: https://repo.xposed.info/module/fi.veetipaananen.android.dis...
Also, how do I do all you said above? (I need a step by step tutorial). Also is it reversible? Are there any other security implications?
Depends on how paranoid your bank is. There's this SafetyNet thing that checks for "system integrity". It's part of Google Services. For now, it's possible to bypass these checks using Magisk, but I've read that Google is testing the new method involving TrustZone — a hardware trusted execution environment within the SoC where you aren't one of the trusted parties.
> Also, how do I do all you said above? (I need a step by step tutorial).
There should be plenty on xda-developers.com
> Also is it reversible?
On Google devices, yes, completely. You can reflash the factory images that Google provides and relock the bootloader. On others... it varies, on Samsung especially.
> Are there any other security implications?
If you leave the bootloader unlocked, anyone with physical access to your device will be able to reboot it into the bootloader and load arbitrary code with OS kernel privileges. From there they'll be able to modify the installed system. They won't be able to read the /data partition [right away] because it's encrypted with your password/pattern.
IMO it's really a shame you can't re-lock the bootloader with your own signing key.
But it requires you to set up your own build + signing server in AWS.
I haven't tried it, but I believe part of the reason that AWS is recommended is due to the build time.
If you live in a country where you have to use your phone for banking and can't use the web then you need to talk to your politicians. That seems like a pretty extreme violation of your freedom.
As much as I dislike the US at least we don't have that.
I have two of those, and I chose them because of unique banking features (not the mobile app) not offered by other banks which I found valuable. It's nothing to do with the country.
To be honest it would be nice to have web access as well (or even phone banking), but we take what we can get.
During this pandemic I've found that to be a big deal, much more important than whatever technology or access method is offered.
It's not only the challenger banks: nowadays banks will also encourage you to use their app for 2FA. You can use a proprietary token instead, but you'd have to pay for it (the app instead is free). 2FA sms is not supported with some banks (and that's good).
I think the UK is an exception, since for 2 of the banks I had accounts with, they just used a 2nd "memorable" password as "2FA" (avoiding the requirement of a smartphone)
I'd switch banks or at least branches to this new province, but my current visa won't allow it (and for whatever reason, you cannot transfer accounts but need to open a new one).
- Barclays (App won't work with LineageOS, website is horrible).
- Monzo (App only, no website, works with LineageOS).
- Revolut (App only, no website, works with LineageOS).
- TransferWise (Web and App, both work well, but never tried it on LineageOS).
- ING Home Bank (App won't work with LineageOS, website is manageable, but still a pain compared to the app).
Of course I don't have to use any of these, but there are clear advantages to using any of them, depending on the situation (you wouldn't take a mortgage from TransferWise, split bills with Barclays, and hold foreign currency in Monzo, mainly because they don't support that). Also you don't have to use a phone, just walk around without one, make people email you instead of calling, and ask people for directions instead of looking at a GPS map.
My point is, I paid for my phone (me alone, nobody else chipped in) so I want to use every feature it provides without restrictions, as it is my property. That goes for both taking screenshots and using apps. And when it's not possible, I look for alternatives. Right now none are practical, nor feasible, so all I got left are tricks like scrcpy and rants on forums ;).
Just looked, and apparently Revolut is 1) app only 2) tied to a mobile number. So not only is it annoying to use, but likely also susceptible to sim jacking. Again, why would anyone want to use this; I hate having to deal with wells fargo (they bought a loan I have) but even they seem less crappy. Not trying to hate on OP, I'm just shocked at how crap their service appears to be.
You can't. That's why you don't use them for serious work.
> why did you even open an account
Different use cases, different circumstances. I don't depend on them but they give good exchange rates and zero fees when transferring or spending money abroad. It's the "it just works" and "fast and cheap" effect that the traditional banks don't have. And opening an account is done online, and you get access to your account in hours, compared to Barclays which took 2 months of ping pong, when I first moved into the UK (since I did not have a bill issued in my name at my UK address I could not open an account, so I could not pay my landlord rent so I could get an address to open an account, fun times). Without that Monzo account I could have not been paid in my first 2 months.
But if you want to know how crap Revolut really is, try contacting their support to report a bug in their app, they don't have an email, but instead ask you to get in touch with them on Facebook.
But seriously, not even a support email? Good God, I would trust PayPal with my money more than that; but I suppose they needed to hit all the fintech bingo buzzwords.
The Barclay's part is just an old practice. How I ended up doing it after two months was by having a letter from my employer stating that I'm registered with them at a particular address. But what I learned from somebody else that went through this, after those two months, is that they could have said my "home" address was the address the company is registered at instead. This is how they've used to do it with other people that have hit this problem, it just didn't occur to me to ask for something like this, and it didn't occur to them to suggest this either since they assumed I had everything in order (since I already submitted my Monzo account for salary payments).
Monzo only seems to have and login for their business accounts. For personal accounts it's still phone only. And business accounts are a recent addition.
Revolut has login now, but you can't do anything there, except viewing your balance and blocking your card. And this is a new thing, maybe and beta version, otherwise they would have officially announced it somewhere, like in the bragging emails they like to send from time to time.
Sometimes you don't have to, but it's much more convenient. For example, I can use my bank app just with my fingerprint. To use the web app, I either have to login with my phone (reading a QR code) or have to use one of those devices where you insert your card and enter a couple of codes (if I find it...).
Also, if the phone has a vendor supported way of unlocking the bootloader, it will typically also trigger a wipe / factory reset (presumably because to keep DRM enforcers etc happy).
Is it not possible to unlock the bootloader but modify the OS tell apps that the bootloader is locked no matter what? Can we do this with Xposed?
If I understand correctly.
What's old is new again?
I'm not so sure. Back in my Windows days (95? 98, maybe?) if I played a DVD on my computer, the window that the video was playing in would be black if I took a screenshot.
A dangerous game on anything other than Xiaomi phones these days, the only company to provide official bootloader unlock software, but yeah otherwise, go download it from some shady website and not have a care in the world about the most sensitive device you own.
> install Xposed
Last updated 2014 :\
You'd be safer shooting heroin into your eyeballs than installing Android root software from 6 years ago.
How on Earth is this advice allowed here?
How exactly do you unlock bootloaders from modern phones (past 2 years)? You get jailbreaks from the internet and sideload them right? Do you disassemble the binary code? Does it void your warranty? Which mobile device manufacturers offer official bootloader unlocks today? There's only one I know of.
Did i happen to mention the big bad China company in a good light to warrant such disdain for my as yet undisputed comment? Is that the problem here?
As for root, yes you have to install something which is Magisk which is open source and vetted and had been around for around 5+ years.
My wife that has never done it just did it for her new pixel 4a a few weeks ago. All I did was direct her to a step my step tutorial (I vetted the tutorial) and she did it flawlessly.
Can anyone vouch for this Xposed alternative that seems to be more on top of Android releases than Xposed, but also seems closed source?
I guess my other choice is to carry two phones so I can take a photo of the screen...
I thought it was my phone, afraid not.
As the owner of the device my desire to take screenshots of anything I want should come first, regardless of what everybody else wants.
That's not a screenshot. That's a photograph.
What is interesting is that Android appears to be rendering every frame two times, because when I scroll down the notification drawer, which contains some semi-transparent elements under which you can see the restricted contents on the screen of the phone, but on scrcpy the transparent elements have black under them.
The same thing happened when I wanted to use my Android TV as a poor man's HDMI grabber.
EDIT: also tried recording a youtube video in firefox private mode, worked, but without the sound.
The link here states, that the screenshot settings were apparently broken due to a bug. So no bad intent from Google here.
Besides that, apps can declare their content as sensitive and add the `FLAG_SECURE` to their activity which then hides the app content form "unsafe screens", the "recent apps" screen and screenshots. But this is a choice of the app developer instead of Google.
Including a feature in the OS that allows apps to prohibit the user from capturing the output of their own screen is bad intent.
Bypass what policy? The post seems to be about a bug when you use .nomedia in the snapshots directory.
Any Android devs know if it's something that any arbitrary app can turn on?
This is what I'm referring to in my post above.
What's their threat model here?
This whole discussion is about whether small fish in a mixed market economy have access to the means of production. They do, to a greater extent than ever before in history. Yes, if you only have $3k, you can't control a company that is worth a billion dollars. But you can invest in it, which option was not available before the joint stock company was invented (in the 7th century in Asia and the 13th century in Europe).
401k is also a boon to workers because it allows them to save for retirement by investing in the means of production at a tax advantage.
"who benefits more" is an interesting question but some of us shy away because it invites intersubjective utility comparison and we're not comfortable with the use of cardinal utility to make judgments of that nature.
There isn't a mobile phone on the planet that doesn't run proprietary software at some level.
I own a Galaxy S3 & intend to get Replicant running on it.
It doesn't exist, and never did. Learn how to adapt and make the most of the systems that exist now.
I dare to say, if you even actually achieved those fantastical scenarios, the damper on economic and population prosperity would be such that you might not have been conceived to wish for it.
It's a little extreme to let a mobile phone's operating system call for the revamp of our economic systems.
if this were the attitude, the free software that android is built on wouldn't have existed in the first place...
We really need to show it to 'em who is boss. My phone ultimately should listen to me, not Google.
An incomplete choice is not a choice.
He wants to cross a bridge without paying a toll. Telling him that he can take a rickety bridge, an unsupported bridge, build his own bridge, or wait for a new bridge to be finished doesn't get him to the other side.
They're saying we're not getting a solution from the corporate sector, so we need to build it.
Android phones > Linux phones!!![0]
I got so sick of these kind of shenanigans, I built a simple, non-mobile phone with a Raspberry Pi 3B+, a Raspberry Pi 7 inch touchscreen, and a Logitech headset. It runs off Wi-Fi or Ethernet only.
It does voice and SMS only, but it does what it does very well. I wrote all the software myself (Python3 and C).
I've been using this as my daily driver for over a year now.
I'm planning to make it available to the public soon. All of it will be open source, of course. My goal is an open source alternative to Apple/Google.
Thanks for the interest.
That said, because of how DRM works, I doubt the video data is available to any userspace applications.
Samsung disabled the oxygen sensor (SPO2) on their phones for Canada. For other countries they moved access for the SPO2 feature further into the Samsung Health app. But for Canada SPO2 sensor access is gone not accessible.
No warning (probably buried in an email) just one day my SPO2 sensor stopped working. I suppose it was due to some legal thing but it certainly pissed me off. I'm never buying Samsung again why blow $1000 on a phone only to have physical hardware disabled?
I can understand new devices being sold would not have the device enabled due to some patent or legal issue. But to have Samsung disable a physical device on a two year old phone is frustrating. I bought the phone I own it Samsung shouldn't allowed to do such a thing or at least make it more obvious and give the option to opt out of the change.
I see this thread below and there is a phone number you could call to get answers. I believe there are legit sites with older versions of apks you might try as a test.
https://us.community.samsung.com/t5/Samsung-Apps-and-Service...
What happened to letting the user at the very least have the choice to just disable all of the hand holding?
I would certainly demand more information. Who actually opposed the sensor on phones, who actually sued whom, etc.
If not, then why is doing the same, but on a computer, remotely reasonable?
It is not like the company is making ongoing changes that benefit the company's business at your expense.
(This is satire.)
In some cases, life is easier when you decide "I do not have a choice". This allows complaining to be substituted for having to make hard choices and taking responsibility for the consequences.
I'm curious if the /u/distalx posted this because they were interested in a discussion about the former or the latter.
If the former then it has largely strayed off topic. If the former then there might be a better page to link to that is more clearly about that specific "feature".
* apps that show sensitive personal info (e.g. credit card numbers, SSN, etc.) should ideally self censor the sensitive info to help prevent accidental leaks
* corporate devices where the phone and all of the data within it belongs to the employer
What's missing is just a user override of "no really screenshot this that wasn't an accident", that's about it.
When it comes to piracy of copyrighted music and movies, the analog hole is deemed to offer a significantly degraded signal and therefore DRM is still effective enough.
When it comes to screenshots, I think a native screenshot and a photo of a screen offer more similarities than differences and therefore it's not worth blocking one without blocking both.
This made it trivial for any application to read the display, totally bypassing any Android screenshot/screen recording API (not that one existed at the time). Some of those devices also had readable /dev/event/input* files, which allowed touchscreen interaction to be monitored.
In related news, I have seen at least two proprietary drivers which allowed userspace libraries to program the hardware without any kernel oversight, incuding things like DMA engines. Pointed it out to one vendor; "yeah, we guess it's not ideal, but you know, details of the hardware is our secret sauce and customers demand no binaries in the kernel because reasons, blah blah".
I assume many of those embedded OpenGL implementations may work that way. Anyone with evidence to the contrary?
Here's another similar in concept (though much worse) one from Samsung: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2012-6422
Simply from the error message alone, it's obvious that this is a bug. As well as from how easy the workaround is.
Google might do many things wrong intentionally, but I see zero evidence this is one of them. Just a bug, folks.
Sure, you have workarounds for power-users, but Google is locking the Android ecosystem progressively for regular users. Just like the Manifest v3 for Chrome.
Maybe Google is doing the "Embrace, extend, and extinguish" strategy that worked really well for Microsoft in the past.
The thread is about behavior caused by a presumably erroneous ".nomedia" file residing in certain users' screenshot folders.
The FLAG_SECURE feature doesn't appear to have anything to do with that. Two entirely separate things, unless you can show otherwise.
Quoting the Android SDK reference : "FLAG_SECURE [...] Treat the content of the window as secure, preventing it from appearing in screenshots" [1] Try to screenshot while in Chrome's incognito, you'll see it in action.
[1] https://developer.android.com/reference/android/view/WindowM...
Read the error message! It's clearly related to the real feature, which means the bug can't be "entirely separate".
FLAG_SECURE has existed for as long as Android has. It can't possibly be evidence of locking down the ecosystem progressively as it's always been part of the ecosystem.
To me that implies Android supports individual apps locking down your device so that you can't use certain features (like screenshots) while the app is open.
https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/93362
However, I'm not really sure that would work, since I don't think that would be able to bypass iOS prompting you to give that app access to your photo library.
There's a third-party "ScreenShieldKit" which claims to be able to do this:
So, apparently it's technically possible to block this, but AFAIK, Apple doesn't provide an equivalent to Android's FLAG_SECURE ("treat the content of the window as secure, preventing it from appearing in screenshots or from being viewed on non-secure displays").
DRM-protected video can't be recorded (or screenshotted) in iOS, but as another comment noted, that seems to be a video-specific thing.
If someone were to prevent screenshots intentionally, and I had mal intent, I would make my best effort to make it seem unintentional.
I don't understand why modern software has to suck so much. If you can't perform some operation for some reason, for the love of god, at least show a sensible error message so people who haven't spent ridiculous amounts of time reading the source code of your product as part of their job can troubleshoot their systems. Not "something failed, go read logcat, maybe it helps, good luck".
While I’m not sure whether it’s true, I think the reasoning behind this is that to the average user, a sensible error message is about as useful as "something failed, good luck".
In this sort of scenario the better choice rather than implementing error detection is just fixing the original problem that caused an infinite loop so users don't need to fix anything in the first place. I think the reason why debugging/resolving issues seems so complicated in modern times is in part because we already did fix most/all the "easy" issues from the past generation -- the only remaining issues are extremely hard to catch or, in the case of the Halting Problem you experienced, mathematically impossible.
Sure, not having the bug would be better, but I can only assume that the developers didn't intend to make the conversion loop. They failed to not have the bug then, and most likely will fail to not have bugs in the future; that's life. The solution in this case may not be to detect an error condition, but to just indicate what the software is doing. Ex a persistent notification for 'updating database schema', maybe appearing after a 5 minute timeout; if that sits around for an hour or five days or something, you can google around for it.
The only way to do this typically is to either already be aware of the issue so you can add an error (And in that case you would have just fixed the issue)
Or to dump a stack trace.
Suppose Apple occasionally sent "anonymized" screenshots back up to Apple as part of "screen services." You could say you could disable screen services by not turning on the display, and that is what disabling location services is like on Apple devices.
On iOS, if you want to get your location at all via any app, even an app that keeps the locations it receives on the device, you automatically consent to having your location sent to Apple, and Apple doesn't even tell the user that they're doing this unless they go out of their way to find the privacy policy.
I think this is exactly what the average user would expect. In fact, users may not think location services have been disabled if apps are still able to show their location after the fact.
Do you happen to know if the location look-up (probably for nearby hotspots) is anonymized or not? I can imagine this would be an issue if your specific query can be tied to a specific device. Obviously this isn't an issue if you have Find my iPhone enabled since you consent to Apple having your location anyways.
Why would people expect that they can't get their location without telling Apple? On Google Android devices, there is a separate toggle to turn the ability to request your location on and off device-wide in the quick settings toggle that is separate from the ability to turn Google Location Services on and off, which you have to open the full device settings app to toggle after initial setup.
Everyone acts like we're all subservient slaves but we all have our limits.
This has caused some issues for covid apps since, to use BLE on Android, you need to request the location permission - which people were naturally afraid to do.
For an app to use bluetooth, it needs location permissions as well as bluetooth permissions. Reportedly, this is to prevent an app from using bluetooth beacons to determime your location without permission.
Otoh, it sucks for bluetooth stem toys; you can't use them on an Amazon Fire tablet in a kid's profile, because location permissions are not allowed for kids' profiles.
There are also legitimate reasons for blocking the disabling of location services. If I have devices with proprietary applications or access to proprietary data sitting in a secured room, I want to make sure nobody can take that device out of the room, and if they do, the device should enter some sort of lockdown or sleep mode so as to prevent the leaking of sensitive information. This is a legitimate feature that would make sense to implement on commercial (not consumer) devices. That the OS ships with the ability to disable disabling location services is not an indictment on the OS - it is only an indictment if the OS does so without your permission.
Couldn't someone anyways display the content on one screen and take a photograph with another device. For text content, the degradation of image quality doesn't even matter. Doesn't that make screenshot-blocking a pointless exercise?
Of course they could, but you reduce the probability that any random person can do that by taking precautions. Screen photographs also betray information that screenshots don't, for example nearby surroundings where the photo was taken, any reflections on the screen which may show who took it, metadata that can be used to conduct forensics to figure out which device took the picture, etc. In order to avoid giving yourself away, you'd actually have to plan a photographing mission, which may be made impossible by the circumstances (e.g. the device is held in a room with security cameras, nearby coworkers question why you're taking pictures of documents on your screen, your workplace may not allow secondary devices past the entrance, etc.)
Whereas with a screenshot you just hold two buttons and you now have an image that you can exfiltrate through a variety of ways into the hands of the bad guys.
The latter has more opportunity for confusion. Just a guess, I don't know what the rationale is.
There's probably some more nuances that I'm not aware of.
If you use Chrome Canary you can now enable a feature flag under this URL:
chrome://flags#incognito-screenshot
Seems to affect both Incognito and standard mode.
The screenshot disabling is an absolutely massive strike against Android and Google.
So as an app developer I can either set the `FLAG_SECURE` to hide both or I need to create own workarounds like navigating to the root view element and setting it to invisible whenever the app is paused just to hide it from the recent apps.
Porn is not allowed in the app store. They cannot regulate porn videos (child porn might slip through) and the headline next day would be ''Google allows child porn apps on the play store''
Do you know the difference between a open browser and a app store meant to distribute apps?
Chrome is not responsible for the website's content. But the app store will be help responsible for an app's content.
If the objection is that Google doesn't want to provide an app that can be used to access illegal content, then why provide a browser? I would think that there is less of a chance of finding child porn on a major porn site app than what would be avaliable via a browser.
The only difference I can think of is that a browser has other functionality besides adult content.
Congratulations. You may see it like that, not many others will.
> The only difference I can think of is that a browser has other functionality besides adult content.
Yes. Same reason why the reddit app exists in the play store. There is some other content other than porn on reddit.
Not hosting something on their store doesn't mean they're trying to fight it. You're free to install whatever app you want outside of their store. Or just use the browser like everybody else.
Another pet-peeve is banking apps doing the same. I understand they don't want stuff to show up in the app switcher and stuff, but it's annoying when I have to screenshot some expense or numbers to send to others.
Perhaps "Screen capture" should be in the permissions API instead of blocking it...
But for all the people complaining here, is there a legitimate app with this function that you use on a daily basis?
The feature isn’t literally supposed to prevent you from recording the screen, but it’s enough of an annoyance/deterrent that people don’t. The goal is to prevent people from having sensitive information sitting in their camera roll by accident and send a unambiguous signal to the user that you shouldn’t be screenshoting it.
It’s the same feature Gmail enterprise offers that “blocks downloading and forwarding.” Like of course literally it doesn’t and can’t possibly prevent someone motivated but it drastically reduces the chance of someone leaking confidential information when they have to go through a bunch of kludgy steps.
Though it would probably be nice if it asked you to confirm with a thumbprint, thereby allowing you to bypass the security.
How can people even change that since Android is directly controlled by Google?
In my experience, it mainly seems to be banking and messaging apps that monitor or block screenshot events.
There’s a screenshot functionality in the OS and there’s a Share button which should work just as fine and be way more secure.
Here, simplified that for you.
You can totally make an app that streamlines this and doesn’t cast doubts on its privacy hygiene at the same time.
It might seem like a niche application, but it seems there is tutorial creation software for other platforms already. It's probably pretty useful for people working in IT departments.
If not, why? And what are all apps that use screenshot APIs doing? “Worse than stock but with some branding and ads?”
Just looked at what iOS screenshot apps offer. Mostly, just what I wrote above: worse functionality but with branding.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Event/isTru...
Isn't it sort of a responsibility of an "operating system" to know that stuff?
Why this blocks manual screenshots with no override though is bonkers insane. But likely a case of an incomplete feature than malice as it's not unreasonable to assume both entry points for screenshots hit the same internal path.
Because they don’t want sensitive information persisting in your camera roll.
I'm still unclear whether this was some intentional issue or an error.
The fix seems easy enough, if a bit opaque and non-obvious.
That thread's also from September, does this issue still exist?
That seems like it.
https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360043469312-Sc...
No! They already took that away in Android 10... https://github.com/termux/termux-packages/wiki/Termux-and-An...
As mentioned in many other comments, it's nice to own your device and not have it broken by automatic updates pushed from some external entity (intentional or not).
A quick writeup for how to do this is available here: https://udia.ca/posts/2020/08/root_pixel_3_with_ota/
GTK and Qt on mobile is not a new thing, Maemo/Meego were earlier examples. In my experience, it worked fine.
If you have a separate phone that you use as a second factor for your 2FA, you have a convenient way of photodocumenting any screen that you see.
People shakily recording their TV doesn't win any awards, but is evidence enough in a serious pinch.
I wont be surprised if iOS screenshots are eventually also altered/prevented in the future using similar levels of control.
Is this a parody, or do you truly think DRM is good?
In principle is DRM bad? Sure, the current implementations are pure cancers, but if they weren't, wouldn't DRM be a rather good thing?
Netflix seems to be quite popular, and it's users don't seem to be bothered by the DRM - try taking a screenshot of it on the desktop, you'll get a black picture.
Like how they stopped showing movies on TV once VCRs entered the market, or stopped playing music on the radio once home taping killed it. If only we had had DRM on radios and TVs back then, perhaps there would still be some entertainment industry left.
Where is the user outrage over Netflix using DRM and blocking their rights to fair use.
And if you don't like it, don't subscribe. Are you against companies being able to choose if to use DRM or not? Do you want to ban DRM? What about encryption, do you want to ban that too?
I addressed your point directly. You claimed content might not be available otherwise (and that this is the reason consumers want DRM), I gave examples that showed that to be obviously false. And DRM is much more than just not banned - it's illegal to circumvent, thanks to DMCA.
> And if you don't like it, don't subscribe.
I don't. But you're still not happy - I guess you'd also like me to shut up about how bad DRM is for consumers, and allow you to spread your false claims how Netflix wouldn't exist without it, unchallenged?
> Are you against companies being able to choose if to use DRM or not? Do you want to ban DRM? What about encryption, do you want to ban that too?
So you agree that DRM is bad for consumers and society, you're just not sure how to fix it? Because that is the only reason you'd want to skip directly to arguing what should be done about it... unless you were hoping to make it seem like DRM is good by proposing some overreaching "solution", and make it look bad by association with an encryption ban. But that would be an incredibly dishonest and slimy way of arguing, so I'm sure that's not what you were going for!
For the record, no, I don't want to ban encryption. But if DRM continues to infringe upon people's rights (such as fair use, or even regular property rights, like when Amazon remotely deleted an e-book, or Sony disabled OtherOS on PS3, or HP disabled "unauthorized" ink with an update to already sold printers), a DRM ban could be warranted. Many types of contracts are already banned, but you think consumers should just bow their heads and take it while corporations lock away their rights behind DRM?
Do you believe the only choice consumers should have is whether to buy a product or not? They shouldn't advocate for consumer-protection legislation? They shouldn't even complain about anti-consumer practices, judging by how much my complaints bother you?
Encryption is good, private companies should be allowed to use encryption however they want, but them using encryption for DRM or SecureBoot is bad.
The market is right, except when it chooses DRM products or big slim smartphones with unchangeable battery and no headphone jack. Then it's bad.
What's the consumer damage done by Netflix having DRM? Where are the damaged consumers hiding?
BTW, circumventing encryption used in Signal is also illegal.
When I point out consumers are harmed by this, that's "interference".
It's a stupid "feature" that lulls user's into a false sense of security.
The real motivation is to prevent badly behaved apps from taking screenshots in the background, but requiring the user shortcut input to do that would be more secure and a better option.
If you want a phone for daily use, get an iPhone or galaxy.
On iOS the balance of control is still in the user's favor, not the apps', and increasing with every release (like discrete permissions, limited location sharing, being able to choose which photos each app can see).
> You can jailbreak your iPhone
And defeat all the security of the platform? No thanks. Plus, that relies on exploits being available (which I would hope for my own sake that they are not).
And iPhone doesn’t give apps unrestricted screen access.
Sure, I think the exact opposite is the case. Fortunately so far Apple has been on my side here. When that changes, I'll have to reevaluate the utility of the iPhone.
> Meanwhile I do think it's important that apps can't arbitrarily look at my screen contents
Hmm. Do you have any resources I could read to understand how iOS apps are able to arbitrarily read my screen contents? Thanks.
It's the same justification in both cases: ensuring the user's data stays private. I would prefer no screenshots over no sideloading if those are the only options.
This is untrue. Not a single person purchased an iPhone in order to prevent themselves from loading apps.