this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2024
1490 points (98.1% liked)

Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

54716 readers
224 users here now

⚓ Dedicated to the discussion of digital piracy, including ethical problems and legal advancements.

Rules • Full Version

1. Posts must be related to the discussion of digital piracy

2. Don't request invites, trade, sell, or self-promote

3. Don't request or link to specific pirated titles, including DMs

4. Don't submit low-quality posts, be entitled, or harass others



Loot, Pillage, & Plunder

📜 c/Piracy Wiki (Community Edition):


💰 Please help cover server costs.

Ko-Fi Liberapay
Ko-fi Liberapay

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Image comes from the monstrous work the Asahi Linux team did to get Netflix working on Linux on ARM Macbooks: https://asahilinux.org/2024/01/fedora-asahi-new/

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] brbposting@sh.itjust.works 2 points 10 months ago (2 children)

[Some apps] push the boundaries to the limit and collect literally every input of every sensor to have as much data about your environment as possible.

Scary. Recommend any further reading?

[–] Illecors@lemmy.cafe 3 points 10 months ago

I don't have something specific to read, my statement comes from questioning the declared permissions by apps. Why would, say, facebook - an app that, essentially, downloads and uploads content via http, need access to location, gyro, contacts, texts, call history, making calls, microphone, etc? Also, while I can't prove it, as someone who works in computing I can guarantee there are undocumented/buggy/testing APIs and just straight up bugs that companies with enough resources can and do find and abuse. Cambridge analytica has only strengthened my view on this.

[–] Rikj000@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Take a look for yourself with a rooted phone.

Blocker will show you all the recievers/services/activities/providers the app uses,
and will allow you to block them.

https://github.com/lihenggui/blocker

Apps often still work correctly with about 80-90% of their recievers/services/providers blocked, since they're spyware, which doesn't add functionality to the app.

XPrivacyLua will allow you to lie to apps when they request sensitive data.

Aditionally it will show you timestamps of what it lied about, to which apps, reveiling what they try to collect on you.

https://github.com/M66B/XPrivacyLua

ClassyShark3xodus allows you to decompile and scan apps on the fly,
to check which well known trackers are embedded into it.

https://bitbucket.org/oF2pks/fdroid-classyshark3xodus

Idk if these apps still do it,
since I have not used them for years,
but that's how I learned about many things like:

  • 9GAG contained a face detector service at some point.
  • Facebook Messenger requests access to your microphone, even when you are not calling with it.