Google to ban financial lending apps from accessing user photos, contacts

https://www.pcmag.com/news/google-to-ban-financial-lending-apps-from-accessing-user-photos-contacts

by satoshiiii • 3 years ago

286 161 3 years ago

eimrine• 3 years ago

I am so sad that I live in the society which is needed in such regulations. This change sounds like something good, but ability of vendor to do all kinds of things with a device makes me a smartphoneless person.

ikiris• 3 years ago

Almost all regulations are written as a result of some entities' abuse. That's why it's always so baffling to me how libertarians exist. Like the entire world view requires the holder to not understand history.

ranting-moth• 3 years ago

I reality, very few apps should have access to that data in the first place.

version_five2• 3 years ago

It's "good" in the same way that "google stops punching man in the face" might be good.

In a sea of predatory applications, why is lending the only one that gets blocked here? A whitelist would be better (say approved photo and contact apps could access photos and contacts), and better still would be the app can only access what you transfer to it and doesn't get blanket permissions.

I also agree with the other comment that this shouldn't be within Google's power to decide, it should be regulated - if you force a closed OS on users, you should be limited in what it can access

simfree3• 3 years ago

There is such a thing as going too far though. An app I'm familiar with had Apple rejecting the app for accessing contacts, even though the contacts stay on device at all times and the only way they are exported is if you send a debug log which has a warning modal about their contacts being logged and gives the user the chance to edit those out.

There was nothing to be done that would satiate Apple besides disabling the contacts permission, so the user experience is now worsened. It's still death by a thousand cuts when working with these app stores.

version_five2• 3 years ago

What did the app need the contacts for? I'd say I side with apple on that (I can see how it could be abused to shut down competition though). There really would need to be a good reason to have the contacts. (I don't want to debate the threshold, just interested in a "benign" example of needing contacts)

nerdjon5• 3 years ago

As the other person said, what did it actually need the contacts for?

Was it being rejected for asking or for being broken if it didnt get the permissions?

Or was it simply not able to give a justifiable reason to Apple for needing the permission?

You say it was staying on device but once you have access to those contacts it would be trivial to add the ability to send them to a server or have them leak via third party tools like the facebook sdk. That would be completely invisible to the user after giving past permissions.

The fact that you say that the user experience is now worsened makes me believe that contact access was not an absolute requirement for the app to exist (like say... a contacts organizer or something) and is extra functionality.

Personally with very very few exceptions I will not grant an app access to my contacts since anyone in my contacts don't have the luxury to also consent to some company having their data.

supriyo-biswas3• 3 years ago

In a sea of predatory applications, why is lending the only one that gets blocked here?

Because lending apps are the only one to engage in egregious behavior, see [1] as an example. The relevant sections are quoted below:

If a user was late to repay, the app had previously indiscriminately texted or called contacts in the user’s phone as part of loan collection efforts. This process began immediately after a loan repayment was delayed, according to user reviews.
Numerous users reported that friends, family, employers, and other contacts were harassed and threatened through Opera’s apps when a borrower was late.

(...)

In another example, the apps threatened to place friends or family of a borrower on a national credit blacklist if they didn’t convince the actual borrower to pay:

[1] https://hindenburgresearch.com/opera-phantom-of-the-turnarou...

AlexandrB4• 3 years ago

If a user was late to repay, the app had previously indiscriminately texted or called contacts in the user’s phone as part of loan collection efforts.

Didn't LinkedIn do something similar early on? Harvest your contacts and then email everyone trying to get them to join.

expertentipp2• 3 years ago

predatory loan apps

Loan sharks?! We reached a point when I don't even allow chat app (WhatsApp) to access my contacts. Banks' apps love contacts as well ("send money to phone number"). With "convenience" bait they get birth dates, physical addresses, emails, profile photos, and whatnot. I see from behind my keyboard how banks salivate to calculate some credit worthiness from the contacts uploaded (and confirmed by the entry in the other person's address book).

babyshake• 3 years ago

I just immediately uninstall any app that requests access to contacts without me first indicating I'd like to use that app to share something with my contacts.

toastal• 3 years ago

This is the correct kneejerk, but I assume it's not for the majority of users. It makes me hesitant to give out contact info knowing it'll end up building shadow profiles despite how useful having a easily-shareable vCard should be.

josephcsible• 3 years ago

This feels like treating one particularly visible symptom of the problem instead of fixing the actual problem. What Google should do instead is prevent apps from refusing to work or disabling unrelated functionality just because some permissions are denied (e.g., if you deny your banking app permission to access your camera, everything but mobile check deposit should still have to work). They should use a two-pronged approach to do so:

1. Make that a rule in the Play Store and ban apps that violate it

2. Make Android present convincing fake data to apps when permissions are denied

supriyo-biswas3• 3 years ago

That approach would leave users confused as they see fake contacts or photos being surfaced through the app that was denied said permissions.

waboremo• 3 years ago

Only if you use fake contacts and photos that look real. Instead whenever this is done elsewhere, there is text on the image and the names are obvious. Google can even add a page within privacy where you see the fake options before you can enable it system-wide/per-app.

asddubs• 3 years ago

it should just present an empty list, like a newly installed phone with no pictures taken yet / no contacts added. if apps detect that and refuse to function, ban them from the app store

michaelmior• 3 years ago

2. Make Android present convincing fake data to apps when permissions are denied

What about apps that aren't malicious? How can they tell the difference between a user who denied the permission to reasonably offer alternatives?

fbdab1033• 3 years ago

Reminder the user on the screen that permissions have been denied?

amluto2• 3 years ago

As a good rule of thumb, apps are malicious. If they are not, the libraries they include are. If, somehow, even the libraries aren’t malicious, the attackers who compromise the app or its backend are definitely malicious.

waselighis• 3 years ago

2. Make Android present convincing fake data to apps when permissions are denied

That reminds me, years ago I used to run a module called XPrivacy that does exactly this. It does require a rooted Android device though. I haven't used it for a long time, but seems it continues to live on as XPrivacyLua.

aceazzameen• 3 years ago

I used to use that too. It was great! I haven't run a rooted device in like 8 years though. These days I don't bother installing most apps on my devices anymore. I mainly use the phone, messaging, camera, and Firefox. And I use Netguard to block the uninstall-able apps from internet access.

vitehozonage• 3 years ago

2. Make Android present convincing fake data to apps when permissions are denied

GrapheneOS can do this. I believe you can even choose to make only chosen photos visible to a certain app

charrondev2• 3 years ago

This functionality is built into iOS as well.

marissachan• 3 years ago

"2. Make Android present convincing fake data to apps when permissions are denied"

This is actually a feature with MIUI, though I am not sure if this is part of the global release or only Xiaomi.eu, a modified version of the chinese release). https://xiaomi.eu/community/attachments/screenshot_2022-10-2...

riedel• 3 years ago

This is cool, why is that not a wider available feature in custom ROMs particularly. I used XPrivacy with xposed some time ago to inject that functionality. It was even possible to only expose randomised or fixed GPS and an excerpt from the address book (only favourites).

hakre5• 3 years ago

Additionally there should be a sandbox mode. While you give the app access to Photos and Contacts, it's an actual sandbox not containing any photo nor any contact. So the app gets what it asks for (the permission) while the user can still control the data.

charrondev2• 3 years ago

This is how photos access on iOS works. An app can ask for access to photos and you can choose 3 options:

- no photos - only specific photos (the system picker will appear to select them) - all photos

IceWreck• 3 years ago

LineageOS used to patch this on top of android afew years ago, not sure if its still there.

theptip• 3 years ago

This is the obvious solution, it’s really annoying that it is not available for every permission. (Contacts is the big missing one in iOS, but you could even have a fake GPS that returns random positions.)

copper-float• 3 years ago

GrapheneOS supports this with a feature called Storage Scopes. Instead of giving an app access to your entire photo library and files, you can limit its scope to an individual folder of your choice.

That way the app still gets the permissions it asked for, but they're specifically what you want it to see.

causality0• 3 years ago

I seem to remember this worked a lot better a few years ago. Nowadays you can't even deny an app permission to access the internet.

aembleton3• 3 years ago

I can deny the internet to individual apps on my Pixel 7 running Android 13. I can even deny just mobile data.

I often do it when I first install an app that shouldn't need internet access.

celdon25• 3 years ago

The actual problem is that travesties of this scale are allowed to happen on Google’s watch for so long, despite the Orwellian grip it has on deciding what apps are allowed to be listed. A good example of why that system needs to be reformed.

This particular issue didn’t get addressed until at least 8 months after TechCrunch exposed the practice. Where was Google?

Control of the App Store and Play Stores should be carefully transferred to an independent organization, with an open governance model and a mission to serve consumer interests. It won’t be perfect but it would be a big step up.

If that can’t be done for whatever reason, find another way to disrupt the App Store. I struggle to think of why not doing so is a net good for society.

amelius• 3 years ago

I wrote almost exactly this comment more than five years ago. It is a shame that it is taking them so long to get security right. Do they even use their own software?

akomtu• 3 years ago

Isn't the entire business model of Android that it's a data collection platform with zillion of sensors linked to PII that apps and phone vendors can use for profit? If Android did what you're siggesting, Samsung and others would simply fork Android and cut ties with Google.

rblatz• 3 years ago

I don’t have much faith in Google for doing that. The Google Photo app only works on iOS if you allow it access to the iOS photo library. I wanted to use it to access photos shared with me, or otherwise stored in Google Photos, not to give google access to all the photos on my phone.

prepend4• 3 years ago

It’s pretty funny that Google has this rule and then slurps up all data for their own purposes and there’s no way to opt out on android if you use the google distro.

zaphirplane• 3 years ago

It’s ok to give credit to Apple for doing this already

2Gkashmiri• 3 years ago

Android has this issue.

There is the new permissions for locations. Accurate and not so accurate.

Apps are told that "you are given coarse location" so they refuse to work.

Same for contacts. I refuse to use truecaller because it "requires" contacts access. I don't want it so I am at an impasse.

Permissions should be transparent. As you said, if the user decides on system level to disable location, apps should be told "no signal" or "no location for now, carry on"

plagiarist• 3 years ago

Make Android present convincing fake data to apps when permissions are denied.

I have wanted this for years. I eventually left Android because the permissions models were deranged (IIRC the number of apps that "need" phone access to pause something during a call). iOS isn't perfect but they seemed to be enforcing your prong #1 at least a little more than Android when I switched.

UncleMeat• 3 years ago

#1 is a nice recommendation, but not trivial.

You've got three major systems for detecting policy violations: static analysis, dynamic analysis, and human interaction. You don't want too many false negatives or else you get bad media coverage complaining that you aren't doing enough to enforce policy. You don't want false positives or else you hurt benign users.

Static tooling will be able to detect specific kinds of ways that an app might refuse to work if you don't have a permission, but will struggle mightily in general. Dynamic analysis needs to be driven to the specific feature that triggers the behavior. Both will struggle if the app's response is something like returning to a home screen with a custom message. And good luck teaching one of these systems what "disabling unrelated functionality" looks like.

Human interaction works better but is a gazillion times more expensive. Training people is also harder than one might think. You can train humans to identify "disabling unrelated functionality" but that's fuzzy enough that there are going to be some errors. Doable, but every single new policy costs significant amounts of money.

Policy overload is also a problem for developers. There are already a lot of rules on both app stores. Developers get a new "hey this is a new rule you need to comply with" email all the time. You can only roll things out so fast or developers will get overwhelmed with just validating that their apps remain in compliance.

These are often solvable problems in isolation, but when taken as part of the overall effort of policy enforcement on app stores they become quite a bit more challenging.

jbritton• 3 years ago

I think the OS should provide the ability to select items and then give opaque handles to applications. The app could send a message to the OS to display photo selector. The OS could send a message back with a handle to selected photo. One could then asks the OS to send a handle, which would forward selected item somewhere else.

20after42• 3 years ago

iOS already has this feature precisely. I can either grant access to all photos or only a selected subset, or even just one.

abyesilyurt• 3 years ago

Or none, then the all would think you have no photos, instead of getting permission denied error.

nerdjon5• 3 years ago

I feel like this was introduced within the last couple years and did not get a ton of attention when it did.

But like many things with iOS Apple did this and apps had no choice but to work with it since (seemingly) as far as the app is concerned it is the same situation as before.

I do wish though it was easier to grant more images without needing to go to settings. I have had one app that somehow gave me the ability to add more images, but I am not entirely sure how it did it.

HeavyFeather3• 3 years ago

And I love it, but it has two issues:

- Apps can refuse to work with that, like Google Photos (it used to work during the beta and it was perfect for me)

- Apps still offer their awful photo picker on top of your already-picked photos, so selecting new ones requires a lot of taps.

I wish Apple would reign in some of these apps. In-app browsers and custom photo pickers should be banned unless they have demonstrated advantages.

ninkendo• 3 years ago

They really need to implement this for contacts. The main reason I’ve never bothered using WhatsApp or any other third party messaging service is that they all refuse to work unless you give them access to your entire contacts database. No thanks.

isametry• 3 years ago

Yes, or better yet, UIimagePickerController [0].

It’s a hook for the system’s built-in image picker sheet — as such, it allows the user to browse their entire library, however the the app only gets (one-time) access to the individual piece of content they pick. Nice thing is that the app doesn’t need to ask any photo permissions at all (as far as read access is concerned).

With some exceptions like Messages, which presents a custom picker UI, this API gets dog-fooded by almost all Apple’s stock apps (Safari, Notes, Mail, the “iWork” office suite etc…).

An example of a 3rd party app implementation is MaskerAid by Casey Liss [1]. However, the amount of apps I’ve encountered that use this interface is suspiciously low.

The realistic answer is probably that the sheet looks pretty barebones, and most developers seem to prefer a sleeker, custom-designed integrated gallery view, and/or need write access.

But the paranoid part of me raises the question: why do so many apps insist on continuous access to at least a portion, but preferably the entirety of the user’s photo library?

0 – https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uiimagepicke...

1 – https://apps.apple.com/app/maskeraid/id1590163828

bt4u• 3 years ago

Android does provide this. Your app can send out a message on the system: "i need a picture" and usually the built-in camera-app will accept the request, and send a picture back to the requesting app (which then does not need camera permissions since it, itself, never accesses the hardware).

This feature is actually quite foundational to the Android architecture, where the vision was a bunch of small apps working together in this manner.

Unfortunately it's a slightly more clunky user experience than what users these days have gotten used to: big monolithic apps that handle everything themselves.

jeroenhd• 3 years ago

Both mainstream mobile operating systems have APIs for this. Even Linux has this at this point! Android has been restricting apps for at least a decade now, every time under heavy user protest because some weird app doesn't work anymore with the restrictions enabled.

The backwards compatibility of Android is a problem in this regard, because apps targeting old versions of Android get old, often less private, behaviour from the system to keep them working. Google has been forcing developers to upgrade their targeted version for a while now, though, so any app that still receives updates should be forced to use the modern API.

In the end, there will always be apps that need full media access. File managers, galleries image collage tools, you name it, you can't completely disable the generic file API. All other apps can use more appropriate APIs and often do, but those that hoover up data have little incentive to use the modern, privacy friendly versions. They're dragging every well-meaning app down with them through their terrible business practices.

I fully blame the advertiser laden crapware for the fact I can't sync my phone's clipboard in the background through KDE Connect anymore. The fact Google restricted the APIs instead of kicking the borderline malware out of their store irks me to no end and the fact Apple has placed similar restrictions onto their platform tells me it's not just Android.

nerdjon5• 3 years ago

Off topic of the lending apps but something I have long wanted to see is actual information about the data accessed by these apps.

Maybe Android has this, but on iOS I can go into privacy and easily see what apps have access to what data (and easily revoke that permission).

But I don't see any kinds of metrics that would indicate that an app is possibly abusing that permission.

For example, it would be awesome if I could go look at photos or contacts and see a percent for how much that app has accessed that data and maybe even a graph overtime so I can see if it was a one time thing or its mining for data.

There is the app privacy report on iOS that gives me some of this data, but it doesn't give me how much data it is accessing. Which I think is the critical part.

If I give an app access to my photos I expect its going to access it, but without knowing what its doing its not quite as useful. Still useful, but not as useful.

mattzito• 3 years ago

Android has it:

https://techcrunch.com/2022/04/26/google-play-launches-its-o...

nerdjon5• 3 years ago

Unless I am missing something, that is all on the play store side before you download an app?

I am talking after you have the app installed to actually see what it is doing. Specifically what it is doing.

On iOS I can see that an app is accessing photos and I can see when, but I can't see what or how much.

The feature you mentioned is similar to the labels that iOS has. It even says that in the header.

swframe2• 3 years ago

I am curious. Why not give each app a private copy of common user resources? Every app has access to contacts but by default only the ones they create. Then android should allow sharing across apps based what the user wants to share. It would be a little bit tedious to share but an OS provided sharing tool can reduce that friction.

Ekaros• 3 years ago

So I take they also prevented Google Wallet from accessing that data?

iamleppert• 3 years ago

They need to ban that Dave app. I signed up because it offered a loan for $500, but when I got in the app they forced me to "connect" my checking account, sucked up all the data, then offered me only $20. With a daily notification to setup one of their "checking accounts".

The app was advertised as a short-term loan with borrower-friendly terms ("give us a tip!") -- yeah right. Come to find out it's just a new accounts funnel. Yet this app is allowed to blatantly exist on the app stores, despite not doing anything like what it was advertised to do and tricking you into handing over all your transactions data from your checking account (probably to look at your cash flow and decide how valuable you are from a new accounts perspective).

FormerBandmate• 3 years ago

These apps are literally just friendlier payday lenders. They will also go under soon because the unfriendliness of payday lenders is essential to the business model and it doesn't scale well. Dave's delinquencies are probably atrocious

HWR_145• 3 years ago

Why would the unfriendlessness of payday lenders be essential to the business model?

SecretDreams• 3 years ago

There is no universe where I'm connecting my bank account to some ghetto ass app for a seemingly too good to be true loan.

newZWhoDis• 3 years ago

Me neither, but the banks are probably selling all your data to the same clearinghouses anyways… we need banking secrecy laws like the Swiss used to have, AML be damned

prepend4• 3 years ago

Never give your bank info to a third party. Never. No good will come.

You could offer me $1000 cash and I wouldn’t do it. It’s just not worth the hassle as setting up and establishing a new bank account is a bit of a hassle.

whitemary• 3 years ago

You could offer me $1000 cash and I wouldn’t do it.

You may not need $1000, but some people literally do.

aembleton3• 3 years ago

Never give your bank info to a third party. Never. No good will come.

How do you pay for your electricity? I set up a direct debit with my utility company. That involves handing over bank details.

xrd• 3 years ago

Wow, those are an entirely new category of dark patterns. Sending manipulated photos of relatives to get someone to pay a debt. Incredible. All those Meta employees that were lamenting the damage caused by their work at a social media company can rest easy when they tell themselves that at least they aren't working for a Kenyan scammy loan app.

Tycho2• 3 years ago

Do we really need apps? Usually when I want to use one, I've got to update it first. Better to just use websites.

charcircuit3• 3 years ago

Apps do not require updating to launch and they autoupdate in the background. If an app is forcing you to manually upgrade either they have poor backwards support oh your computer for some reason isn't downloading the updates.

Tycho2• 3 years ago

What if i don’t want it automatically downloading updates?

Johnny555• 3 years ago

Very few apps should have full contacts access. There should be a way to share a contact at a time with an app, like if I want to send an email payment through my banking app, it should call an android function to open a contact selector so I can share just that one contact. Or really, just the email address of that contact, not the rest of the data I may have associated with it.

expertentipp2• 3 years ago

Could be also manually allowing only selected CardDAV fields (e.g. only FN and mobile phone) across the address book.

jpalomaki• 3 years ago

There’s currently a lot of pressure for Apple to allow alternative app stores or sideloading.

That means more choice, but can also weaken the protections for users. Alternative stores will likely have more loose policies for what apps/behavior they accept.

morkalork2• 3 years ago

Didn't google flat out ban pay-day loan businesses from buying ads on Google search? Why would they even let them in the app store.

hedora4• 3 years ago

The top google three hits for:

pay day loan mountain view

are labeled “sponsored” and look sketchy to me.

morkalork2• 3 years ago

Strange considering: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/05/11/477633475...

555552• 3 years ago

> pay day loan mountain view

This might be the first time anyone has ever Googled that.

Volker_W• 3 years ago

I never understood why Program permissions is such a big deal on Android and IOS, but not on Desktop Windows/Linux, where any application can to everything.

cj• 3 years ago

That’s sort of like saying seatbelts shouldn’t be required in cars because you don’t need one on a motorcycle.

thomasahle• 3 years ago

It's just that innovation on the desktop side died years ago.

AlexandrB4• 3 years ago

You say that, but Microsoft is only a few years away from integrating Bonzi Buddy into Windows 11 and Edge. For the benefit of the user, of course! /s

omoikane• 3 years ago

Depending on the scope of "everything", Windows may pop up a dialog box asking for permission, and Linux will return error to the application.

I believe most modern operating systems will not just grant blanket permissions to every application, except maybe single user systems like BeOS.

autoexec• 3 years ago

I'd love permissions for desktop apps too, but it's not as big a deal because on a desktop I have root access and can monitor what applications are doing myself. I can see which files or hardware is being accessed and when. I can see what network traffic is being sent and to where. I have full control over what applications are installed and what they are allowed to do. I can even fully sandbox apps or run them in VMs.

The phone in my pocket isn't mine, I paid for it, but it belongs to Google, and they make changes to it all the time without my permission and without giving any indication to me that something was changed on my device. Google prevents me from being able to see what the apps on it are doing, and prevents me from changing how they run, or from monitoring all in/outbound communication.

Google's shitty permissions system is such a big deal for mobile because it's literally all we have "protecting" us, and that isn't much. Naturally that leaves us with zero protection from Google itself. but that's the price we pay for having a mobile device that gives us more freedom than Apple ever would.

tap-snap-or-nap• 3 years ago

What programs do you use for this ?

supertrope2• 3 years ago

Status quo and inertia. Smartphones had it from the beginning. On Windows there was a struggle just to make default user accounts non-administrator. Personal software for Windows has for the most part adapted to UAC. There's plenty of legacy enterprise software that requires installation with local administrator privileges, domain controller privileges, remote desktop access, no firewall, etc.

chmod775• 3 years ago

where any application can to everything.

Sandboxing has existed for ages and recently a lot of effort is being invested into making it mainstream on desktop Linux.

schemescape• 3 years ago

Flatpak, Windows/Microsoft Store both address this, if I understood correctly.

nr2x• 3 years ago

Except for Google Pay.

cornholio• 3 years ago

How about we leave access to Contacts only to apps that, you know, allow you to contact other people and legitimately need either the email or number? Make it a global XOR: you can ask for Contacts OR credit card/financial data, but not both.

In any case, there is never a legitimate need to know the entire address book to "send money to your contacts": mobile OSes could just offer an interface to manually pick a single contact and return it to the app, which could then validate it as a financial partner

quitit• 3 years ago

Europe has the KYC (know your customer) and AML (anti-money laundering) regulations.

To satisfy KYC/AML, providers of financial services on apps thus ask to see photo id and pair this with a photo taken by the app itself.

I'm not fully across the KYC loopholes, but it seems like this would make fulfilling the regulations very difficult or potentially impossible as the required identification options needed to satisfy KYC each include a headshot.

https://www.ecb.europa.eu/paym/groups/pdf/dimcg/ecb.dimcg210...

MagicMoonlight• 3 years ago

“Apple is evil bro, we need to remove any sort of restrictions on what apps can do”

ThorsBane• 3 years ago

This is a cool feature, good job Google.

caskstrength• 3 years ago

Was was that ever allowed in the first place?!

nubinetwork• 3 years ago

Maybe I'm just being a smooth brain, but wouldn't that mean I can't deposit a cheque by taking a picture of it anymore?

aembleton3• 3 years ago

Not sure. You might still be able to access the camera, just not all of the photos on the device.

pleb_nz• 3 years ago

Recently wanted to know what day a particular date was, so on Samsung, I opened the first calendar app I could find. On opening it asked for location, I denied its request and the application shut down. WTF. I understand why a calendar might want location, but it did not need it to be used as a calendar. Such crap....

two_handfuls• 3 years ago

What we really need is finer-grained permissions like “let the OS pick a photo and hand it to the app” and “let the OS pick a contact and hand it to the app” and then require that most apps use that instead of overly-broad permissions that will be abused.

Google to ban financial lending apps from accessing user photos, contacts

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