I installed NetGuard about a month ago and blocked all internet to apps, unless they’re on a whitelist. No notifications from this particular system app (that can’t be disabled) until recently when it started making internet connection requests to google servers. Does anyone know when this became a thing?
Edit 2: I bought my Pixel 6 phone outright, directly from Google’s Australian store. I have no creditors.
Were the courts not enough control for creditors? Since when are they allowed to lock you out of your purchased property without a court order?
I don’t even live in the US, so what the actual fuck?
Edit 1: You can check it’s installed (stock Pixel 6 android 14) Settings > Apps > All Apps > three dot menu, Show system > search “DeviceLockController”.
I highly recommend getting NetGuard, you can enable pro features via their website if you have the APK for as low as 0.10€, but donate more, because it’s amazing. You can also purchase via Google Play store.
This type of tech is already being put into vehicles as well. I used to get laughed at 20 years ago when I predicted this. Nobody is laughing anymore. If anything, they just accept it.
your self driving car will just drive itself back to the lot when your payment is late
shhhhh
That’s cool. I was envisioning something even worse. Maybe in cahoots with the IRS they wait till you were also late on your taxes and did a double whammy
Requests the app made today.
This is my phone I own outright, by the way. I don’t have any creditors.
Update for those curious:
I find it interesting that yours is
com.google.android.devicelockcontroller.I checked mine on GrapheneOS and it looks like it’s the AOSP version of the package:
com.android.devicelockcontrollerMvp comment there. I checked mine and I am in the US, on a phone I originally bought on credit. I do not have that app installed. Go figure. 🤷♂️
Definitely worth checking out your app list to make sure. I wonder if it accidentally came downstream from AOSP into the alt ROMs, and that’s why it’s not in my stock, proprietary, US market, flagship Google pixel device.
I am at such a loss, because I can see it in NetGuard, and open it’s app details from there, but it doesn’t work even appear in system apps in Shelter.
Just following up that it
is indeed in my apps listdeleted by creator
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I know this is a privacy community, but I’m not sure I’m onboard with the outrage on this particular one. If you rent/lease or go on a payment plan for the device you’re using, then it isn’t yours, it belongs to the entity you borrowed it from.
If I don’t make car payments, the bank can repossess my ride. If I dont pay my mortgage or rent, I can be evicted by my landlord or bank.
If I don’t make my phone payment, the company should have recourse to prevent me from using their device.
This could open up the ability for bad actors to disable my device, and I agree that’s a horrible prospect. But the idea of a legitimate creditor using this feature to reclaim their property is not something I find shocking.
Oh nono no, the world is much worse than that:
-
If you make all your car payments on time except one, the bank can still repossess your car.
-
If you pay your mortgage or rent on time every time except once, the bank can initiate the process of eviction.
Remember: the power triangle points down
I paid off a car without ever being late, and they reported my account as unpaid and in collections at the end. They had no reason to do so and to this day I still don’t understand why they did it. I contested it and the best I was able to accomplish was getting the entire loan removed from my credit report. So 2 entire years of on-time payments and satisfactory completion of a loan resulted in no positive credit boost for me, and a big PITA, just because the company made a mistake. Companies are not responsible enough to wield the type of power that this app grants.
Yes? That’s why loans with collateral charge a lower interest rate than unsecured loans.
My point being that if said bank screws up whilst dealing with your loan, and you make a fuss to hold them accountable, the worse thing that happens to them is that they issue an apology.
-
Not an unreasonable thought, but my question is what is the process to disable? In your examples, there are legal steps/requirements to repossess those assets.
In this case I can’t imagine the process is longer than “press the brick button and extort money”
Is it extortion if it’s contractually obliged?
¯_(ツ)_/¯ eye of the beholder I suppose
That’s not how it works, at least in Spain.
I agree completely, but it’s an odd way to go about repossession.
And there’s the rub. Sure, it’s a financed phone. It doesn’t follow that we have to suspend judgment on the means they resort to, to enforce their terms.
I find it funny how differently Lemmy reacts to something like this vs reddit. The Lemmy community is certainly very different than reddit.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/jpdup2/google_app_lets_banks_lock_your_phone_if_you_dont/
What about for people like me?
I bought my device outright. No loans, no payment plans and no reason for that functionality to exist on my phone. Yet there it is, just waiting to be taken advantage of whether there is a valid reason or not.
This is the kind of apathy that leads to phrases like, “If only we had known” but we do … and do nothing about it.
I can and will at least do my part for myself and encourage others to do the same.
For every single one of those scenarios, a set of legal processes need to be exhausted. This app gives the lender the ability to do whatever they want, whenever they want, without following a set of legal processes.
That’s dystopian mentality at it’s greatest.
When I saw this on a custom ROM, it was basically the same thing, but said that my financial institution or whoever had admin access to my phone, including seeing texts and everything else, until my phone was paid off. Still not sure why that was there in a custom ROM, but I ended up not using it.
This is classic efficient market hypothesis brain worms, the kind of cognitive dead-end that you arrive at when you conceive of people in purely economic terms, without considering the power relationships between them. It’s a dead end you navigate to if you only think about things as they are today – vast numbers of indebted people who command fewer assets and lower wages than at any time since WWII – and treat this as a “natural” state: “how can these poors expect to be offered more debt unless they agree to have their all-important pocket computers booby-trapped?”
-Cory Doctorow from his blog, unintentionally addressing you
you will own nothing and be happy
Hey man, quit repeating that. Each time we do it becomes closer to truth. Reality is what we make of it and we if tell these fucks no means no, it’ll stop.
We’ll own things, and we’ll be unhappy about people trying to take away the things we own and paid for.
I think the point of the phrase is to generate outrage to push against it
It is, but words are powerful, if not tempered with explanation, simple slogans quickly turn into phrases exploited by the enemies of the greater people.
Does it though? Isn’t there a risk of creating outrage but leading to increased learned helplessness rather than actual action?
learned helplessness is going “we own nothing and we’ll be happy” or more accurately being entirely apathetic to the existence of no longer having ownership.
in my experience, the vast majority of people (in tech circles) that use that phrase, are practicing what they preach.
No, learned helplessness is “we own nothing, it sucks, yet we see no alternative and we gave up on looking”.
If you were to imply that’s my situation happy to report it’s not, cf https://fabien.benetou.fr/Content/SelfHostingArtificialIntelligence or how I, just as an example, deleted my e.g Google and Meta accounts few years ago, and gave a workshops to RightsCon last year, unfortunately not recorded.
Well to be specific here. The example of learned helplessness that everyone loves citing, is when we put animals in a cage with a floor that will continually give them an electric shock that is impossible to avoid. And what is commonly seen is that the animals eventually just stop caring, become apathetic in a sense, and just wait to be shocked.
So my application of apathy here applies, and is reflected in your interpretation as well. So realistically the best way to phrase it would be “We own nothing.”
Then those people are not citing the experiment properly because the whole point about it is NOT that it’s unavoidable. The experiment goes on an the threat is actually removed YET animals, either the same or new ones who get in touch with the others who were subject to the threat, keep on not trying. They LEARNED to become helpless despite the situation being objectively solvable.
i mean, i literally run my own server, hold 8TB of media archived locally, host numerous services for my family and friends, as well as provide them with help. I think i’m doing my part here.
I am quite literally, telling them no, by not using any of their bullshit products. I mean we’re on lemmy for fucks sake.
That entire idea is terrifying.
Version 14 is installed on my Pixel 7 in the USA. I bought this phone outright, no credit, directly from the Google store.
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This app isn’t available on Google Play in your region.
Looks like I’m good.
anyone remember the time when google removed(!) their internal “don’t be evil” rule? guess this is part of the outcome of that “be evil” that came along with removal of the opposite. Abuse of this mechanism is IMHO veery predictable ;-)
There are plenty of google-free cellphones, one could easily stick to better products of better companies. help yourself, google’s not gonna do that for you within the next 5billion* years as they IMHO already stated they “want” to be evil now, always remember that ;-)
*) thats round about when our sun expands too much for earth, so i currently dislike doing any predictions beyond that point ;-) i do not predict google would last that long, only that they’ll keep beeing evil until their end.
anyone remember the time when google removed(!) their internal “don’t be evil” rule?
I remember when media falsely reported clickbait articles that they did and people bring that up to this day. They moved it from the introduction to the closing statement. Which you can argue makes it less prominent or whatever, but it was never removed.
Of course it makes no difference, it wasn’t followed either way, and definitely isn’t followed now. But no, it was never removed. You can see it yourself right here at the end: https://abc.xyz/investor/google-code-of-conduct/
it was never removed
Context is key. It went from
Google Code of Conduct is one of the ways we put “Don’t be evil” into practice
to
And remember… don’t be evil, and if you see something that you think isn’t right – speak up!
So from a “we won’t be evil” to telling others to not be evil.
So yes, the context in which the statement was applied, means its very basis was removed.
hm you have a point that it might not have been removed completely, but the problem with that point that i personally have is that this reached me too late to just believe it was really never removed. For some reasons i would not believe blindly in “evidences” that are in control of the one that is in question and could manipulate it later for such claims and also was experienced to not be trustworthy for what they say…
saying that, there are ways to check if something was there at a time or not. the one source i know that could help here only seems to store records from 29th jun 2023 18:44:33 onwards which is too late for this.
https://web.archive.org/web/20240000000000*/https://abc.xyz/investor/google-code-of-conduct/
you are right, it does not make a difference in if they can be trusted, but it makes a difference in why not and what to expect if you do so despite the red flags or -as a gov- just let things go on. A person who by accident was speeding should maybe be treated differenrly than a person who intentionally(!) does so while risking others lifes. and what would be more proof of intention than a written statement or removed canary? thus such a statement does make a difference in terms of they just cannot handle their stuff, don’t care at all or maybe even have evil intentions.
examples:
some kids making a fire in the forest cause they don’t know the risks
vs.
some young adults making a fire in the woods cause they just don’t care despite knowing the risks
vs.
a company making fire in the woods because its cheaper to do stuff there and they lack the resouces to do it safe and someone else will pay the firefighters anyway.
vs.
a company stating to want to do so cause they like it despite they could afford doing it secure but just no one could or would sue them anyway.
while i don’t want to say google is like no.4 here, to me these examples all make huge differences, no matter if the woods actually cought fire or not.
Devs still need to eat so we will need a better alternative to adsense. As long as we depend on these corporate services their stranglehold will only continue strengthen like this.
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You act like it is Google’s fault that someone found questionable software on the phone they got from Rent-a-center or Alibaba.
They say it was made at the behest of a service provider in Kenya. Given that I can’t find the app and it’s not on my phone I’m inclined to believe them. It certainly sounds like something a service provider would request too.
EDIT: Someone else pointed out you have to toggle show system apps to see it and I see it after doing that.
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https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.devicelock
There you go. Just so you know, you could’ve Googled this instead of making a pedantic ass of yourself.
So then send the URL to the play store page from the app posted in ops photo. Go ahead, waiting.
lol, what? i did, in another comment, shortly before you posted this. here it is again: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.devicelock
That’s just disgusting, but still so normal in the market religion. Google act as judge and executioner above all local laws. Never ever buy a phone that can’t be rooted and reconfigured. …oh, and never again deal with anything Google… …oh, or any other big US tech for that matter. …fuckit, never deal with ANY Capitalist cheater/scumbag unless you have to.
Unfortunately GrapheneOS still only supports Google Pixels, otherwise I would use something else in a heartbeat
I checked to see if this was on my pixel 6 pro. It wasn’t but I found this.
Not something I installed and not something I would allow.
The uninstall did not appear to work UNTIL I disabled the app and cleared the data.
Do you use your phone for work?
Never. Keep work and personal completely separate.
Have you tried Universal Android Debloat to disable it?
https://github.com/0x192/universal-android-debloater
Stuff like this is why I root or just flash my phones.
Oh this looks great, thanks!
still allows access to settings
Oh thank goodness
I hope developer settings to flash a free ROM
Root the phone and remove insane garbage like that. Rip and tear until it is done.
Removed by mod
damn and no one at google saw this as dystopian?
They saw this reality and thought it was awesome.
This isn’t a Google thing. It’s not normally installed on your device.
It’s literally phoning google services, and the package name has google in the name.
It’s a google thing.
Were the courts not enough control for creditors? Since when are they allowed to lock you out of your purchased property without a court order?
I don’t think courts are typically involved for civil repossession.
But it sounds like this is used when the device isn’t your purchased property, but leased on contract.
I guess it makes sense for them to do this if people started leases, paid the first month to get the phone in their hand, then walked away with the nice new phone they paid like $35 for, to sell or just use off-network.
Well, I would say this is what small claims is for.
Should the bank should have keys to a mortgaged house? When you don’t own the house outright yet? I’m gonna go with no.
And second, why is it installed by default on all phones? Really not cool.
why is it installed by default on all phones?
Absolutely batshit.
Should the bank should have keys to a mortgaged house? When you don’t own the house outright yet? I’m gonna go with no.
Hmm, do they only not have keys because you can’t drive a house away?
So obviously poverty fuggin sux and we need universal basic income etc.
In today’s BS world:
If we ban car repossession, what happens to car prices and access to transportation?
Likewise - if digital repossession of phones is prohibited, will there at least be a couple impoverished people who have to use dumb phones even though they could’ve afforded a reposessable smartphone?
Maybe a few people have to go without those cheaper phones because allowing lenders to killswitch phones causes greater harm to the whole. Anybody wanna speculate?
I’ll just point out that phone plans (to pay off a phone) and vehicle loans have been a thing and worked fine before this bullshit.
So yes, the level of access ought to remain the same I’d this were banned.
What’s stopping someone from enabling debug mode, downloading adb tools and running pm uninstall --user0 then the package name? Surely with the app removed, the app can’t brick your phone. Or running a custom rom like lineage or graphine os?
What’s stopping someone …
Your average someone has no idea what any of that means.
I’ve used odb before to debloat and I barely remember how I did it 😂
My guess is they are leveraging the techninical and technology illiteracy of the average consumer to not only not know this can be done but to even know how to even look it up. I have done some tech support for people that I have known for 20 years here and there and I am still oustanded at how little people know about tech outside social media sites, or have but only the most superficial knowledge on anything outside their work related applications. Many, many People just can’t do their own research today specially, or so it seems in the aggregate. Unless perhaps if it is a hobby.
Also, perhaps some of these people may have shitty phones that may not have an option to install a custom ROM, too. Assuming they even know want a custom ROM even is.
