OnePlus OxygenOS built-in analytics

https://www.chrisdcmoore.co.uk/post/oneplus-analytics/

by os7borne • 9 years ago

422 180 9 years ago

chrisdcmoore.co.uk

rqs• 9 years ago

It's funny how OnePlus Support helping him to disable that application.

OnePlus Support: Alright. Please try doing a hard reset http://bit.ly/1TbY1RZ and see if there are improvements.

How this could help improve that situations at all? Do OnePlus Support Team even read user's problem detail?

Very unprofessional I must say.

tmikaeld3• 9 years ago

That's the answer I've always gotten with OnePlus, ever since OnePlus One. "Please clear cache" or "Please reset the device", even when it's a proven faulty hardware they force you to do this 5-6 times until they MAYBE ask you send it it in to them (While paying for shipping).

boomboomsubban2• 9 years ago

The question sounds enough like "how do I stop this app from eating data cap" that running them through standard malware fixes makes sense. Tech support deals with a lot of people that are terrible at wording their questions, so you tend to look for key phrases and suggest easy fixes first.

the_dege• 9 years ago

I wonder if this is even legal in Europe (probably not in Germany).

mike-cardwell2• 9 years ago

This definitely feels like it would have a high chance of being illegal in the EU.

mino2• 9 years ago

Of course it is illegal in the EU.

victornomad• 9 years ago

Is it different than any other Android from a different vendor? Android, sadly, is a bit about that, grabbing data from the user in one form or another.

jchw3• 9 years ago

Google is a bit about that. Android was about crushing Microsoft's mobile strategy, ironically.

Still, it's not like Apple is really significantly better.

ajjai• 9 years ago

pathetic

tmikaeld3• 9 years ago

Anyone know what data iOS send to Apple?

princekolt2• 9 years ago

https://www.apple.com/privacy/

SimplyUnknown3• 9 years ago

The sales page is nice and all, but this is the page that matters: https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/en-ww/.

TL;DR: we collect the shit out of you and share it with third parties as we see fit. If you disagree you will get a crippled experience

mulmen2• 9 years ago

What does Apple have to do with OxygenOS?

tehbeard• 9 years ago

Compare and contrast.

Perhaps they want to see what data is universally collected, where android goes deeper and if apple collects anything android doesn't?

Gaelan3• 9 years ago

Apple gives you an option for telemetry on first boot. No idea how much that option turns off. Not sure if the phone sends anything to Apple with that option and not using Apple services (that’s pretty hard because of the App Store; if you really care about iPhone privacy you’d want to download all your apps once then never touch the store again).

nicolasbistolfi2• 9 years ago

Some friends using apple complain about the data usage and they don't understand where the data consumption is coming from, even with the data tracking apps. Don't know what's going on with the latest versions of iOS.

guelo2• 9 years ago

No because Apple would do a much better job of encrypting the data the OnePlus's silly Base64.

pkrefta• 9 years ago

Holy moly O_o.

Those kind of stories are keeping me back from buying any Android devices in nearest future. Somebody might say that I can flash it with clean Android ROM but that's great for people who have too much time :-)

SimplyUnknown3• 9 years ago

What other options do you have if you want a smartphone? I severely doubt that other devices (most notably Apple) are any better. I think that if you don't want this to happen you have to buy a dumbphone, which may or may not be an option for some people.

cyphar2• 9 years ago

The Librem 5 just passed its crowd-funding goal[1]. That's what I'm getting for my next phone.

[1] https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/

jiggunjer4• 9 years ago

I'd settle for a dumbphone with WhatsApp and a solid browser. I miss having to only recharge once a week.

rtkwe2• 9 years ago

It doesn't take that long to flash a ROM though.

jchw3• 9 years ago

You could make the "too much time" argument about reinstalling Windows or installing Linux when you get a device. Flashing may take some extra time, but it's not harder than normal expected device maintenance usually.

wastedhours3• 9 years ago

"expected device maintenance" by whom?

Anecdata, but 90% of people I know have never installed Linux (and the few times I've had to try and find recovery discs, going to bet reinstalling Windows is at about the same percentage), and not sure I know anyone who's flashed a new ROM on Android.

I'm genuinely curious as to where this expectation that everyone should be au fait with OS tinkering comes from?

zeratax2• 9 years ago

While I agree that noone should need to flash their device just to have basic sane privacy, I think saying "for people who have too much time" is pretty insulting for us that do care about our privacy and invested that time.

Again it shouldn't be necessary to do this and I won't expect anyone to do this, but I don't see why you have to insinuate that only people with too much time would do this...

mike-cardwell2• 9 years ago

This is why I have no desire to upgrade to a new Android device and why I put my money into the Librem 5 project.

This data collection is beyond ridiculous and if it's not already illegal, it should be.

gman83• 9 years ago

Or just run LineageOS?

cyphar2• 9 years ago

There's are still many privacy problems with Android beyond just this. Lineage has the proprietary Google Play Services (luckily they don't support SafetyNet -- one the most ridiculous breach of privacy and user's rights).

CharlesDodgson5• 9 years ago

I have absolutely no doubt there is some data centre in Shenzhen full of my Huawei phone metrics! I think this is the biggest issue with android phones, they are full of potential data leakages like this. Privacy is definitely a concern and a pull factor to getting an iPhone again. There is a lot to be said for a company that is focused on hardware and not on serving content to that device. Then again it's also a reason to get a Pixel2, I feel I can trust Google with my data more than some other android manufacturer or reseller. Sure they'll serve me more adverts, but it's to some ends at least.

nocoder2• 9 years ago

But i dont understand this, why should I have to part with my data when I am buying a fully paid product? I know the justification being used for free services but i find it hard to accept this for a piece of hardware that I pay for.

brazzledazzle• 9 years ago

I'm not trying to justify it by any means, but I sometimes wonder if the cost of devices are sometimes subsidized by data collection.

lucideer• 9 years ago

I feel I can trust Google with my data more than some other android manufacturer or reseller. Sure they'll serve me more adverts, but it's to some ends at least.

I'm not sure I understand this logic. Can you explain your reasoning here? What makes Google different?

Is it just about data security (e.g. you don't care what anyone does with your data as long as they don't leak it publicly)?

Gaelan3• 9 years ago

Google is also a US company, which means you at least have a different set of intelligence agencies after you. Given those two options, I think I’d prefer to give my data to the NSA, not the Chinese government.

Isn0gud• 9 years ago

Better PR?

lilbobbytables• 9 years ago

Much better security policies, presumably.

If anyone has my data, I'd want it to be the one that you can hope is implementing best practices.

CharlesDodgson5• 9 years ago

you're are right, I was a bit unclear. I guess I just feel I can trust Google more. Sure Google will take my data and deliver me targeted adverts, share it in some sort of aggregate form with partners and possibly use it to learn more about be than I know about myself, however I feel Google is good with dealing with privileged data. There data security is good and I never feel my account will be leaked, it's not Yahoo! (yet? .. that's another conservation).

It's business is fundamentally about trust, people trusting its services, I feel it offers good data security on its accounts and it offers services that I am happy I don't have to pay for. Almost 2 decades of email services, search, and drive space is something I'm glad I never pay for.

In certain cases I do keep data away from Google, I'll never upload all my photos to google photos, or put my media collection on a google drive, and i'll keep certain documents locally, but for the majority of the ephemera in my life, it's a fine place to leave it.

Nothing about my life is really that important or sensitive that security is a must and I need to be completely clandestine, if I leave a trail of breadcrumbs for someone to use to pipe adverts at me, so be it, but I can always stop them in browser with a good ad-blocker or a network level filter.

If I want that level of privacy I can always go down the proton-mail account route and use PGP or encrypted messaging. Although that's not really necessary when I'm just send my GF a gif of a seal playing a saxophone or deciding if I cook fajitas for dinner!

consto• 9 years ago

If nothing else by buying a phone manufactured by google and running stock android, you need to trust one less party.

gruturo• 9 years ago

I'm not sure I understand this logic. Can you explain your reasoning here? What makes Google different?

The cynic in me would suggest that on a Google phone, only Google gets to peek at what you do, otherwise it's Google plus the vendor. Also - Google, despite being a bit too nosy for my own comfort, at least is likely to have decent security, so this data is less likely to get exfiltrated and end up published (or sold on a darknet).

sampo2• 9 years ago

What makes Google different?

Maybe he's American and trusts American companies more. For Europeans, it's tougher: You can choose between being spied on by the Chinese or by the Americans.

Sir_Cmpwn• 9 years ago

Just run AOSP?

amelius2• 9 years ago

This makes me wonder: why can we have a top of the line desktop PC which is totally libre, but not a smartphone? What has gone wrong?

hbosch• 9 years ago

App stores.

rightos4• 9 years ago

If you're running Windows 10, even "top of the line desktop PCs" engage in data collection these days - I have to turn off pages of settings and set group policies to disable it all properly and even then there are still some things which can't be disabled, like the Bing hit every time you type in the search box even with internet search disabled, so I have to use hosts file blocking.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/08/even-...

Android is pretty much as close as you're getting - I'd say it's quite comparable to the situation on desktop PCs today if not a little better because the open source community around it is quite potent. In fact, OnePlus is quite popular in these communities for making cheap, well-spec'd phones with unlocked bootloaders where you're free to have full control over your device.

And all this is missing one of the biggest sources of this spying - apps. Most apps send pretty much everything they can get their hands on when you start them, I launched a game the other day and had it connecting to 6 services for 2 analytics, ads, and crash reporting, all of which were contacted every time the app was started. For this I'm very grateful for tools like XPrivacy and LineageOS's privacy guard which all you to trivially block this and such tools are not commonly available on other platforms.

kbart4• 9 years ago

"why can we have a top of the line desktop PC which is totally libre, but not a smartphone?"

"totally libre PC"? All major CPU manufacturers implement hardware level backdoor we can't disable. The newest version of the most popular OS tracks your every step by default. All of these tiny chips in pretty much any modern electronic device are full of binary blobs you have no way to inspect. Maybe we live in different worlds then.

api3• 9 years ago

Smart phones followed a very different path of evolution that was heavily influenced by cell carriers. Apple had to fight really hard to get the iPhone carried, and to do that they had to lock it down to comply with what I am sure were a long laundry list of carrier demands.

This was the era of flip phones when carriers had full control. They really didn't want to lose that control. I doubt a company smaller and less influential than Apple could possibly have gotten a full-fledge computer of any kind onto cell networks.

This led the entire mobile ecosystem down a path where the device is locked down by design even though today carriers are less able to influence that.

Add to that the emergence of surveillance-driven advertising as a way to monetize "free." It's very hard to compete with free (or subsidized) products. Most people compare price vs feature set, not privacy or security. So there was a huge economic incentive to turn phones into little surveillance devices to siphon up data to be used to drive advertising.

Without surveillance capitalism most apps would cost money and phones would probably cost a lot more.

dTal• 9 years ago

That we ever had "libre" desktops is an accident of history resulting from home computers, widespread internet access, and awareness of public key crypto arising in that order.

IBM took on the personal computer market and made the PC standard, which launched the chain of backwards compatibility that continues to this day. Because they did this in 1981, the idea of "secure bootloaders" was not on their radar. By the time anyone started thinking along those lines, the standard was well entrenched; this same standard gave Linux and other free OSs a relatively static target to hit, just as the internet was gaining ground (a force multiplier for hippie free-software types). Before PC clones took off, every home computer was a different design, OSs were specific to each model, and open alternate OSs were not really a "thing".

For a glimpse of an alternate history where these things happened in a slightly different order, take a look at TI graphing calculators; each is a bespoke microcomputer using very 80s-ish technology (z80/m68k cpus, built-in BASIC etc) and each has RSA signed OS images, the keys for which were only factored in 2009. Even now that every single microscopic detail of the hardware is known, and the keys available, alternative OSs are niche and usually incomplete projects confined to a single model, because there is no standard to target.

All we have now is a reversion to the natural order of things, permitted by the shift to "mobile" breaking all the rules and allowing all the norms to be reset.

kllrnohj3• 9 years ago

You can have a similarly libre smartphone. All the phones Google sells have unlockable bootloaders and you can build Android from source yourself including the kernel. There are many 3rd party open-source ROMs built on this.

But since you end up with essentially the same OS with essentially the same userspace doing essentially the same thing it raises questions of why go through the effort and hassle. You're completely free to do so, though.

You will, however, still end up with binary black box device drivers. Just like you do on a top of the line desktop if you want to actually fully use the hardware.

rurounijones• 9 years ago

https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/ are attempting the totally libre smartphone.

They met their $1.5 million funding goal and had some backers pitching in at 20k a pop which implies rich people / company interest

blackoil2• 9 years ago

You and us were lucky, Apple lost the PC war. We have an ecosystem of components with competing vendors for each. In an Apple style vertically integrated world, you'd have only one vendor deciding for you.

rodgerd• 9 years ago

why can we have a top of the line desktop PC which is totally libre

It was an accident of history, leading to the ISA bus x86 clones, and Compaq not losing a court case around clean-room engineering.

IBM even tried to roll back that accident with the MCA bus, and possibly would have succeeded if they hadn't been so greedy.

zamber• 9 years ago

There were partially libre attempts - Mer and Maemo.

Now Librem 5 from Purism got fully funded (1), so in a year you'll have a fully free phone.

The market for a fully free phone is there but it's small(ish). Hopefully they'll get a piece of the pie with their anti-walled-garden mission statement.

1) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15436716

O_H_E2• 9 years ago

puri.sm/ shop /librem-13/ for example

JoshMnem• 9 years ago

Alternate idea: get rid of the smartphone. There are many benefits.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/05/smartphon...

CharlesDodgson5• 9 years ago

I did this for 2 months, mainly forced to, I had my phone stolen, it was kinda nice, I read more newspapers and learnt i could send SMS messages from payphones!

Feniks3• 9 years ago

Apple cares about your data, but they just lock you in. That's how people perceive Apple cares about your privacy.

I bet Apple at this point knows FAR more about their users than Google or OnePlus does.

"There is a lot to be said for a company that is focused on hardware and not on serving content to that device"

Lol you can't even install anything on your iPhone without passing through Apple. Come on. And an iPhone comes with a ton of nice shiny Apple apps. They are serving Safari, iTunes and Apple wallet.

nocoder2• 9 years ago

This is really shocking, this data along with my google data can be used to learn a lot more about the user like what i surf when, how much time i use my mobile in office and what do i use it for. I am wondering if there is a way to corrupt the data being sent by some way masking or sending gibberish data. For me rooting is not an option because my office email will not work on a rooted device.

orliesaurus2• 9 years ago

got you, bud: https://www.xda-developers.com/uninstall-carrier-oem-bloatwa...

pieter_mj• 9 years ago

In this case there's a rootless solution using dns66 (the issue affects all oneplus devices) :

https://www.reddit.com/r/MovieHDLite/comments/5zfj9y/how_to_...

redirect server open.oneplus.net.

Ofcourse, it is likely many other android devices have a similar setup.

HalfwayToDice• 9 years ago

If this data collection is not declared in the user-agreement, then is it illegal?

lokerfoi• 9 years ago

Of course not. One of the reasons why this kind of industry popped out of no where is because these kinds of things are not regulated. If they were, targeted ads would be a much harder problem.

dkersten2• 9 years ago

I don't think this is legal in the EU. I suppose somebody has to complain to the correct commission or sue to find out for sure though.

ajdlinux• 9 years ago

It probably is declared somewhere deep in the user agreement.

mino2• 9 years ago

Irrelevant.

Even if it is declared somewhere, that would not make this behaviour legal in the EU.

boomboomsubban2• 9 years ago

I bought a OnePlus phone because I knew it had an unlocked bootloader, good LineageOS support, and at least a small chance of someday being supported by Replicant. OxygenOS sounded sketchy from the start.

KuiN• 9 years ago

  > ping open.oneplus.net                                                                           
  PING hadoop-1219418324.us-east-1.elb.amazonaws.com

Your phone usage data going straight into OnePlus' Hadoop cluster?

dkersten2• 9 years ago

Can we start sending it dummy data to make it useless?

WorkLobster• 9 years ago

My guess is we'll need someone to provide OAuth tokens to spoof data for. Or at the minimum, details on what fields are required by "/oauth/token" for it to issue new ones.

RKearney• 9 years ago

No?

  ryans-mbp:~ ryan$ curl https://open.oneplus.net -D-
  HTTP/1.1 200 OK
  ...
  Server: nginx

Hadoop is the name they gave to the ELB on AWS. It could have just as easily said totallynotspying-1219418324.us-east-1.elb.amazonaws.com.

Granted the data could end up in a Hadoop cluster, but they didn't expose that directly to the internet.

melvintamray• 9 years ago

The purpose of buying a OnePlus device is to get decent hardware for an okay price (I have the 3T), and then take advantage of their unlocked bootloader and the multitudes of highly functional kernels for it. Sultan's LineageOS ROMs are quite nice and even include WireGuard. If you're not immediately removing non-free OxygenOS when you receive your phone, you're most certainly already doing it wrong, data collection or not.

jiggunjer4• 9 years ago

That was the purpose, but I think nowadays they're priced pretty mainstream.

darklajid2• 9 years ago

So, I owned the OnePlus One, two OnePlus 3T and currently run the OnePlus 5.

I always used CM (or LineageOS) before the 5, they never completed the first setup once before I unlocked the bootloader, thereby reset to factory and I flashed a different ROM right away. Right now I'm on the stock ROM (and affected ofc) though.

Question time:

1) Do you use your camera? I had the feeling that everytime I went from stock to CM/LineageOS I lost features and quality.

2) Why would you pick "Sultan's LineageOS ROM" (not trying to slight Sultan, whoever that might be. I'm curious) instead of going with the official LineageOS builds?

def-• 9 years ago

At least for the OPO, Sultan includes the improved camera stuff that stock LineageOS is missing.

wastedhours3• 9 years ago

The purpose of buying a OnePlus device is to get decent hardware for an okay price

Think you might need a full stop there. OP might have a reputation amongst the "root/flash/ROM" brigade, but that by no means makes up all of their userbase, and user-blaming that it's your own fault for not randomly knowing about custom flavours of Android isn't really helpful.

This is consumer software, on a consumer product, by a consumer company, that's doing something that raises genuine questions about personal privacy and the access to information we give to hardware manufacturers. The default answer to all of this really shouldn't be "install random OS XYZ", in the same way that questioning Windows 10 analytics isn't "just install Arch".

AndrewCHM• 9 years ago

Google's is similarly excessive https://i.imgur.com/fWvV7R4.png

Though I get the feeling google's approach of trying to desensitize me (emailing me about how great I am for traveling to mcdonalds like a slob, and gamifying my use of google maps, for example) instead of shamefully hiding it, is a fair bit worse

ohgodmorecow• 9 years ago

You can easily turn off this feature. But it's forced on Oxygen.

4827947937928943• 9 years ago

That doesn't really make a difference. Opt-out is essentially the same as just forcing it. The vast majority of users will never even know that they could be opting out.

ForHackernews2• 9 years ago

Is that true? You can turn off your ability to see your activity history in Google, but does it actually delete (or not send?) any data from Google's servers?

Klathmon• 9 years ago

Wait so google's approach of explicitly showing you the information they gather is worse than hiding the information they gather?

pc862• 9 years ago

I think he means the end result is worse. By being constantly shown the information you get desensitized to it. After years of that, you're much less likely to oppose this type of tracking than you would be had you never heard about it.

MildlySerious• 9 years ago

I wouldn't say worse per se, but it is bad in its own right for the reason the parent comment stated.

If it's "normal" to track every step and shove it in your face, surely you must be paranoid to not let them do at least some of that stuff.

I'm not saying there's no use for the data, and the services provided. It's just the opt-out nature of invading my privacy that I personally don't approve of.

zeratax2• 9 years ago

I don't feel like they explicitly tell you. Seems to be more the tip of the ice berg to me.

remir• 9 years ago

You should take a look at this post from Android Police: http://www.androidpolice.com/2017/10/10/google-nerfing-home-...

Apparently there's a feature in the Google Home Mini that allows you to long press on the speaker to bypass the hot word detection ("Ok/hey Google"). Apparently there was a bug on this feature and random sounds could activate the listening of the Home, so it was recording data all day long.

basemi• 9 years ago

I think (just a feeling) that every vendor and a lot of app devs is phoning home collecting data. I'm using Netguard to block net access to most of apps. On a rooted device I would use AFWall+.

mxstbr2• 9 years ago

TL;DR: OxygenOS tracks your every activity in every app, and there's no settings to disable the tracking.

To get rid of it you have to uninstall the tracking app via adb: (no root access needed)

  $ adb start-server
  $ adb shell
  > pm uninstall -k --user 0 net.oneplus.odm

Note: This requires adb to be installed, your phone to be connected and USB debugging to be enabled.

tuxxy3• 9 years ago

I caught them doing this a while ago when I first got my OnePlus 3:

https://twitter.com/__Tux/status/754085708843786240

darklajid2• 9 years ago

You _are_ featured in the article with that exact tweet, right? :)

apocalyptic0n33• 9 years ago

This is great, but what is to prevent them from re-installing in an update? Or throwing it in a service that can't be uninstalled?

In my mind, the only options are either dumping your OnePlus or flashing a third party ROM (I plan to flash Lineage tonight and probably start shopping for a replacement for my OP3 as well)

tuxxy3• 9 years ago

Flashing a third party ROM is probably your best bet.

I'm curious to what phones you're considering to replace your OP3 with, though.

For myself, I've been looking for something that has "much better than average" security and, unfortunately for any mobile platform, that looks like it's probably not going to happen.

The closest ROM I've found is CopperheadOS, but it is only supported on a few devices.

exabrial• 9 years ago

Can one use this method to uninstall other "uninstall able" apps from their phone? I fucking want to get rid of samsung pay.

nrki• 9 years ago

+1 (but for other apps, like some google baked-in stuff)

mxstbr2• 9 years ago

According to @01abhishekjain on Twitter[0] you can also do it in a single command:

  adb uninstall -k --user 0 net.oneplus.odm

Can anybody confirm that? I've already run the three commands above on my phone.

[0] https://twitter.com/01abhishekjain/status/917785829455446016

_qjt0• 9 years ago

I wonder if there's an opportunity to reduce the privacy problem by having the phones log data to an intermediate server. The intermediate server will be open-source and run by a trusted entity (EFF, Apache Foundation, whoever). OnePlus will be able to submit whatever code they want to this server after a public privacy-focused code review by the trusted entity.

The proxy server will aggregate and anonymise the data before uploading it to upstream OnePlus servers. For example, it can strip out IP addresses. Eliminate data points which are too few and can therefore dangerous. Maybe if too few people are using an app, records about the usage of that app aren't uploaded to upstream OnePlus servers. If OnePlus wants to know how many photos an average user is taking, the intermediate server could just that information, or percentiles, not data about each individual user. These are all not possible to do on-device.

With this, we don't have to worry about what code is running on the phone, or what OnePlus servers are doing, both of us are closed-source and unavailable to us to inspect. But the intermediate server will be open-source.

kbart4• 9 years ago

Who will pay for that and how are you going to force manufacturers to participate in such scheme? Most people "have nothing to hide" and don't care about privacy, so they won't be happy as manufacturers pass cost of this to them. More realistic way (though not easy too) is to install a firewall on a proxy all traffic is run through and filter suspicious/unknown connections.

nicolasbistolfi2• 9 years ago

This should have been asked when you're first booting up. I'll receive my one plus in a few days and track whats going on. Transparency is always the best path and supports that you've the best intentions.

raresp• 9 years ago

OK.. now what should I say about my Xiaomi "smart"phone?

loki22• 9 years ago

Are similar services found in other more popular phones such as by Samsung or LG?

snvzz3• 9 years ago

I own a oneplus3 device. Since I switched to LineageOS, it's faster, the battery lasts way longer, and it doesn't even get warm on 3d games where it got burning hot before.

The devices are a mixed bag, some of them are quite decent.

OxygenOS, however, is garbage.

4827947937928943• 9 years ago

Did you install the Google Play Services along LineageOS or not? Those by themselves also already make a big difference in the aspects that you named...

snvzz3• 9 years ago

Yes, I did. Whatever is wrong with OxygenOS isn't due to Google Play Services.

ProAm3• 9 years ago

Could you add a host file entry and send open.oneplus.net to 127.0.0.1? Similiar to how DNS66 works?

orliesaurus2• 9 years ago

I did that as soon as I read the article...gonna check back later to see if it worked

SparkyMcUnicorn• 9 years ago

Same. Ping, wget, and curl all resolve localhost now so I'm assuming this worked.

ProAm3• 9 years ago

Let me know. I added it too, how are you verifying it works? DNS66 logs? or Network Connections app?

zeveb3• 9 years ago

This is part of why Google's move to forbid users from installing SSL certificates is so anti-security and anti-privacy: it disables the ability to MITM one's own device in order to observe traffic.

I'd support regulation forcing Google to permit users to install our own root CA certs.

sprayk• 9 years ago

You can definitely install your own CA certs on Android. https://support.google.com/nexus/answer/2844832?hl=en

Only problem is that you have to explicitly enable the use of custom CA certs in your app, so it won't work with Google apps as you say.

Is there no other way to get at this traffic? Possibly something at the application level, like throwing a debugger at the calls that are originating the telemetry traffic?

zeveb3• 9 years ago

Only problem is that you have to explicitly enable the use of custom CA certs in your app, so it won't work with Google apps as you say.

Or any other app doing nefarious things.

Enabling apps to ignore user-installed certs is flat-out evil an inexcusable.

sgwealti• 9 years ago

I'm a OP3 owner and I love my phone. I don't mind that they do this -- especially if it means that they can use the data to improve the OS/fix bugs but they should clearly notify users that they do this kind of logging/data gathering so that people can make an informed decision about the device they are buying.

dom962• 9 years ago

I'm an OP3T owner and I dislike my phone. This may just be the straw that breaks the camels back for me. It would be fine if they asked me explicitly whether I am happy for them to collect these statistics and to offer a way to disable this, but as it is right now this is just unacceptable.

The more time I spend with this phone the more I believe that Apple aligns with my interests more (plus their hardware is simply better). Sure, I'll spend a bit more money but at least I won't have Google + OnePlus collecting stats on what apps I use.

guelo2• 9 years ago

Why do you think Apple does not collect device analytics?

snvzz3• 9 years ago

OP3 owner, I love my device.

But I run LineageOS. It's far better than OxygenOS, which trouble knows no end.

ForHackernews2• 9 years ago

Does anyone know if Google or other companies collect similar data as part of their background services on Android devices? What kinds of OS permissions would a service need to monitor activity in other applications?

taobility• 9 years ago

why no Tesla users complain against with them? https://www.quora.com/Does-Tesla-collect-data-from-the-cars-...

JeromeShaw• 9 years ago

It can be turned off, just turn off the"join users experience program"in"advance"option,

Loofe2• 9 years ago

Hey how do i actually uninstall that ''thing'' so they cant track my data. I am a noob :(

Loofe2• 9 years ago

How do i actually stop this? im kind of a noob when it comes to this

OnePlus OxygenOS built-in analytics

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