Google’s latest flagship smartphone raises concerns about user privacy and security. It frequently transmits private user data to the tech giant before any app is installed. Moreover, the Cybernews research team has discovered that it potentially has remote management capabilities without user awareness or approval.
Cybernews researchers analyzed the new Pixel 9 Pro XL smartphone’s web traffic, focusing on what a new smartphone sends to Google.
“Every 15 minutes, Google Pixel 9 Pro XL sends a data packet to Google. The device shares location, email address, phone number, network status, and other telemetry. Even more concerning, the phone periodically attempts to download and run new code, potentially opening up security risks,” said Aras Nazarovas, a security researcher at Cybernews…
… “The amount of data transmitted and the potential for remote management casts doubt on who truly owns the device. Users may have paid for it, but the deep integration of surveillance systems in the ecosystem may leave users vulnerable to privacy violations,” Nazarovas said…
Who truly owns the device is a question that has been answered ever since Android came into being.
Ask yourself: do you have root access to YOUR phone? No you don’t: Google does.
It’s the so-called “Android security model”, which posits that the users are too dumb to take care of themselves, so Google unilaterally decides to administer their phone on their behalf without asking permission.
Which of course has nothing to do with saving the users from their own supposed stupidity and everything to do with controlling other people’s private property to exfiltrate and monetize their data.
How this is even legal has been beyond me for 15 years.
And this is different from Apple. Right? Right?
Weirdly, Pixels are actually the best Android phones for installing custom ROMs, at least out of the major manufacturers. So for me, there isn’t another choice, because I can finance a Pixel, and I can’t finance a Fairphone or something.
GrapheneOS is really the furthest away from Google you can get on an Android phone and it’s mainly developed for Pixel.
Please read the many write-ups by developers of well regarded privacy and security ROMs, such as grapheneOS and divestOS.
Who detail in great length why root access is a bad idea, and why many apps that require root access, are just poorly developed security nightmares.
That said, I agree that it should be an option, or at least a standardized means of enabling it. As well as all bootloaders should be unlockable. But phones are more personal devices than the PC ever was, and there are good reasons NOT to push for the proliferation of standardized root access.
Yes. On a Pixel 9 Pro Fold.
Ironically, Google Pixels are among the few (US available) brands that still let you fully unlock the BL
Not if you run the stock OS you don’t.
My comment was generic. The vast majority of Android users don’t unlock their bootloader and install a custom ROM. The people who do that are fringe users.
My point was that when the normal state of affairs is Google controlling YOUR property that YOU paid with YOUR hard-earned, and you have to be technically competent and willing to risk bricking your device to regain control, that’s full-blown dystopia right there.
out of interest, what use cases do you have in mind that require root access?
I used to use a root based solution to block ads system wide via hosts but now I just use ublock origin in Firefox.
Ownership.
okay cool but what are you specifically using system or systemless root for now?
I own my Pixel 8 Pro. No root. GrapheneOS. So, your logic is therefore flawed.
Yep, what radicalized me against Google was all the way back when they had bought Android and rolled out the Play Store for the first time.
I was on my first-ever phone, and yes, it did have rather limited internal storage, but then the Play Store got installed, taking up all the remaining space. I had literally around 500KB of free storage left afterwards, making it impossible to install new apps.
Couldn’t uninstall the Play Store, couldn’t move it to the SD-card and it didn’t even fucking do anything that the Android Market app didn’t do. It just took up 40MB more space for no good reason.