XScreenSaver is available on Android. Google requires a privacy policy

https://chaos.social/@scy/112591102162587559

by ColinWright • 2 years ago

107 63 2 years ago

saurik2• 2 years ago

It really sucks that these privacy policies Google requires everyone to have also have to be hosted on a normal website. This means the privacy policy can change on a whim, and it means you can't read them until after you have already sent your IP address to the developer (as part of connecting to their website).

metadat2• 2 years ago

What is the value of the developer potentially knowing your IP address? They receive (1) a signal you were potentially interested and (2) can use GeoIP to learn your approximate location. This doesn't seem particularly valuable or egregious, what am I missing?

saurik2• 2 years ago

Until after you read the privacy policy, you can't know what they intend to do with that information. As a trivial example, they might be handing IP address information to third-parties--hell: the website itself might be hosted by a third-party (or might be behind a CDN provided by a third-party) or use frameworks/fonts hosted by third-parties, even if it isn't as ostentatious as "the website this policy is hosted on has a tracking pixel / login button / ad on it from a third-party"--who can then correlate that IP address with accesses to other websites. Really, depending on your Internet provider, your IP address should be thought of as a direct personal identifier; in my case, I use a residential cable service, so my IP address only changes about once a year, making it trivial to correlate what I do across sites.

forgotmypw17• 2 years ago

In the security space, there are often modes that you can't think of ahead of time that become accessible through chaining a series of seemingly benign access modes. But here are some ideas:

GeoIP location is a real threat, sometimes you can get very precise. Cross-referencing with other services is another threat. It can also help with other targeted attacks, like phishing and exploit attempts. It can aid ISP and other types of surveillance.

nottorp• 2 years ago

They may be using google analytics, for example.

jasonjayr• 2 years ago

They don't use a content-hash (or some other means) to detect changes?

Ologn2• 2 years ago

I had a small role in helping Jamie port XScreenSaver to Android. It was fun working with someone whose writings I have been reading for thirty years or so, and I learned a lot from him (like the difference between HAVE and USE in C, or how to architect and run a project).

Patches are always welcome! Jamie (and/or other helpers) ported things like X11/Xlib to OpenGL, and then OpenGL to OpenGLES for iOS and Android. Jamie and so forth ported some of X11/Xlib's XFillPolygon to OpenGL - like for Convex shapes, and I did the Nonconvex shapes part, but we still didn't do Complex shapes yet. Lots of stuff like that outstanding (also it is still using GCC and make for the NDK, although Android has moved more towards LLVM/Clang and CMake).

Lots of interesting stuff and the code is open/free. As I said, patches always welcome, especially on the Android (and iOS) front.

fanf2• 2 years ago

C doesn’t have things called HAVE and USE. Sounds to me like something to do with Xscreensaver’s build system?

Ologn2• 2 years ago

I mean the conventions of HAVE and USE prefixed macros in C, as opposed to the C found in K&R or C17-ISO/IEC 9899:2018.

Like this (they use HAS, not HAVE)

https://perl5.git.perl.org/perl5.git/blob/HEAD:/pp.c#l1259

or this

https://github.com/ruby/ruby/blob/master/st.c#L115

kccqzy2• 2 years ago

I don't get this complaint. Of course I expect to find a privacy policy. And of course you can choose to write it in an unconventional way. Saying no data sent out of your device is a privacy policy. Saying it in a fancy way that contrasts between this app and something else is also a privacy policy.

Marsymars3• 2 years ago

Of course I expect to find a privacy policy.

If the app store allowed you to specific in app metadata that no data leaves the device, and that was enforced by device policy, I wouldn't expect a privacy policy.

GuB-422• 2 years ago

Device policies are actually harder than it may seem (to enforce that no data leaves the device). Here is a comment by a Google employee. It is about the internet access permission, but this part illustrates that side channels exist.

Requests to be able to remove internet access are almost always really requests to “make sure this app can’t get any data off the device.” However, just removing this permission does not actually give that guarantee; there are numerous side-channels apps can use to still get data off the device. An obvious one is to launch the web browser with a URL for their web site, which has stashed in it a bunch of data they want to exfiltrate. And there are many others. It is really hard to actually give a guarantee that no data can be exfiltrated, while still giving enough capability for most apps to be functional.

Source: https://old.reddit.com/r/androiddev/comments/ci4tdq/were_on_...

kccqzy2• 2 years ago

"No data leaves the device" is such a vague policy that it means nothing.

At a minimum, your app displays some UI containing its data. Bravo, information from the app now leaves the device through the photons emitted by the screen. Same for speakers.

Now consider the clipboard. The user copies some text from your app and pastes it into an online forum. Bravo, information from the app now leaves the device through the clipboard.

atum475• 2 years ago

I had to rewrite my Google privacy policy at least 4 times before they accepted it.

This is the current accepted one: https://victorribeiro.com/privacy_policy.html (i copied from somewhere else and changed it).

This is the one they rejected: https://victorribeiro.com/privacy_policy.txt

dvngnt_2• 2 years ago

I mean... the accepted one is better formatted. i would have done the same tbh

jpalawaga• 2 years ago

it took something easily readable and straightward and transformed it into something nobody is going to read.

Is that really better?

kbenson2• 2 years ago

I appreciate that the version they indirectly encouraged you to use by rejecting the other one is much more clear about how you not only don't store anything, but don't collect anything. For the pedanticists here which might argue you can't collect anything without storing it, I suspect there's a lot of wiggle room there (even if only in the developers mind and not legally), and the additional information is useful to guard against that.

For example, getting paid to receive and forward data, or to send it directly to a third party may be something a developer could do and thing they are complying with "we don't store your data". Technically correct, probably not legally correct, but unlikely to matter legally unless noticed and they are sued.

Much better to be explicit about things as long as it's still easily readable.

refulgentis2• 2 years ago

It's cute, but: it's a lie.

Data is stored.

We (privacy advocates) won, there's legislation now, this stuff is real, The Man cares.

You can't handwave, saying you don't "store" or "collect", or whatever verb you like that, to you, means "we don't do anything bad" -- when you're in that territory, ex. Google's privacy policy becomes "we don't sell your data" --- can you imagine?

There's precious few applications that don't "store", "collect", etc. The other move I see is people going with "we don't store/collect data": I assume they're trying to claim they don't store data server-side, but very frequently in my experience, they are are storing data server-side, just what they perceived as trivial (ex. cloud sync when the product is cloud only, that's not "we" storing "your data", it's us syncing because you asked!)

If you feel good & witty writing your privacy policy, and end up with a single sentence one, something went wrong. If you're sufficiently small you'll probably get away with it, but...ugh.

This also presents a significant opportunity: it's hard to find a good privacy policy, that actually handles all the regulatory obligations you now have as a developer, and isn't just legalese amounting to "We take it, keep it, let us know if we should get rid of it"

qwertox• 2 years ago

Cool homepage, but the Qubes game doesn't load :(

atum475• 2 years ago

I'm loading it from itch.io and apparently they always break something.

Next free time i got I'll load the game from my own server. Sorry about that. You can play it on Android for free if you want

Y_Y• 2 years ago

That apostrophe in the first sentence doesn't belong. Apostrophe rules are impossible even for natives, but I thought you might like to know.

atum475• 2 years ago

...of its user?

I'll update ASAP.

chronogram• 2 years ago

The rejected one makes me expect data is still being processed, or stored by third parties. The new one has a lot of fluff but at least it is clear that it doesn't collect anything and doesn't retain anything.

Rygian• 2 years ago

I would also reject the "We don't store your data, period".

That's like a pharmacist telling customers "we didn't add poison to this medicine".

everyone• 2 years ago

I love this. This type of behaviour should be ubiquitous. Fuck all those FAANG corps imo.

politelemon• 2 years ago

For a screen saver. A privacy policy. For a screen saver.

The point is that it is obvious to you. It's not obvious to your users. That's what the privacy policy helps with. An app of any kind can be doing more than you may think.

There are many things to complain about with Google. This isn't one of them.

GauntletWizard• 2 years ago

Many, many pieces of malware were distributed as windows .scr files. Some were just viruses abusing the extension. A ton were bonzi-buddy-esque data-harvesters where users were encouraged by advertising to install "Free cute and funny screensavers!" (many were literally just oneko+malware).

Oh, and the part about location data is blatantly untrue, because one of the options on mapscroller is "Current City".

eesmith• 2 years ago

Where do you see that option?

I don't see "Current City" in the source, and the documentation only says:

"Random‐city" means to select from a built‐in list of several hundred major cities. This is the default.
Otherwise, this must be a latitude/longitude pair, as floats.

Furthermore, hacks/glx/mapscroller.c says:

  * Network access and management of the image file cache happens in the
  * mapscroller.pl helper program, since doing https from C code is untenable.
  * Sadly, this division of labor means that this program won't work on iOS or
  * Android.

spondylosaurus2• 2 years ago

You know how we always hear about basic flashlight apps that get used to run advertising click farms in the background, or Flappy Bird knockoffs that collect detailed location data and have access to your photo gallery?

I'm with you on this one. In a perfect world it would be evident that a simple little app isn't doing anything nefarious, but... clearly even a screensaver app can be a front for some nasty shit. Making your good intentions explicit can only help!

WesolyKubeczek• 2 years ago

You know how we always hear about basic flashlight apps that get used to run advertising click farms in the background, or Flappy Bird knockoffs that collect detailed location data and have access to your photo gallery?

But they would sure not be lying in their privacy policy, right?

compiler-guy• 2 years ago

Dozens of innocuous-seeming apps collect private data. I wish the world wasn't filled with bad actors, but it is. So having a basic privacy policy even for this is annoying, but the answer to "It's a screen saver, why in the world do I need this?" is "because bad actors do bad stuff so everyone suffers."

MostlyStable• 2 years ago

I wonder if this couldn't be solved at the OS level. Maybe there could be some kind of a flag that, if the OS sees it, the app is not allowed to store/save/communicate/whatever. Then, any app that has this flag doesn't need a privacy policy because it is OS restricted from doing anything that might require such a policy?

I suggest this as someone who has no experience whatsoever in making apps or mobile operating systems (beyond being a user of one), so I don't know how practical it is.

dblohm7• 2 years ago

Android has a permission for internet access. It's still there, but enabled for everybody by default. This was an intentional decision on the part of Google.

Back in the day, you could install Android apps that explicitly did not use the internet permission. You could make your installation decisions based on whether apps requested that permission and whether it made sense for them to do so. Some AOSP mods even let you disable that permission for apps (though YMMV as to how well that actually worked in practice).

johannes1234321• 2 years ago

It's probably an absolute minority of apps which doesn't do any network stuff at all. And even if they don't reach for the network themselves they might have a link to open a support website, prefilling some data based on the device/user, in the default browser.

hulitu• 2 years ago

Dozens of innocuous-seeming apps collect private data

Like Google Play, Google Chrome, Google Photos, Google Phone, Google Contacts and so on and so forth.

This is a very perverse thing from Google.

izacus• 2 years ago

Remember when "just a flashlight" apps outright stole user data? That's why.

netsharc• 2 years ago

I had the chance to develop on BlackBerry in the early 00's, and they prompted their user if the app wants to access things like the user's calendar or address book. If the user denied it, an exception would be thrown and a good app would be able to deal with it...

And then iPhone came along and Apple said "Trust us, our store review policy will save you.". And Android did the same. And Zuck said "Your data is safe, a Facebok app can't steal your data, because it'll get into trouble with us!". And then Cambridge Analytica data-mined FB users and used targetted ads on the gullible to deliver the election to Trump...

SpaghettiCthulu• 2 years ago

Part of the problem is that many users will be just click "Yes" without thinking.

The other part of the problem is that the apps receive an exception or equivalent at all. IMO, they should receive fake access that returns either no items or garbage data as applicable.

juliushuijnk• 2 years ago

I used to have a privacy policy in a tweet. That worked for many years, but updating my offline apps (no backend, no analytics) always took multiple times. Until it just didn't pass. I had probably around 20 mails back and forth, where I pointed out that the tweet was according to all the requirements for the policy, but they kept rejecting.

Finally a human responded and said they just couldn't use social posts because of the comments or something like that. That there was zero risk for the end-user did not make a difference.

Since I suspected to be talking to an AI, I asked to mention 'cow' in the next response as a way to make clear I was talking to the human. The response was either by an AI, or a human who was able to express any humor:

We appreciate you getting back to us and we apologize for any inconvenience this is causing you.
Yes, you are communicating to a human being and per your request, please see the word "cow".

kelnos• 2 years ago

Maybe just link to the actual source (https://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/google.html) rather than some random social media post?

(IIRC jwz's "testicle cup" image HN referrer redirect is no longer active/functional.)

Anyway, I get that jwz loves to be inflammatory toward everyone because that's who he is, but if Google didn't require privacy policies for every listed app, I'm sure a bunch of people would be crying foul.

I could easily imagine a shitty ad-supported screensaver that was somehow using your data to target/sell ads. Remember that we live in a world where flashlight apps have been used to exfiltrate data from phones. Or perhaps a more innocuous use of user data: maybe the app tracks which screensavers are used and sends that data to the developer.

And, regardless, I see no problem with a company not wanting to have to do manual review to determine what apps do and don't require privacy policies, and just blanket-requiring them of everyone.

tappdarden• 2 years ago

turns out. the testicle cup referrer is still active.

petepete• 2 years ago

I knew what I was getting and still clicked

79a6ed87• 2 years ago

Odd, I didn't get it when I clicked on that link

ColinWright• 2 years ago

Maybe just link to the actual source (https://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/google.html) rather than some random social media post?

I did submit that and it was DOA, and I saw that there was another post of the original which was also DOA, so I submitted the post where I saw the reference.

somat• 2 years ago

My problem with privacy policies. is that they are not enforceable, or, at least I don't think they are enforceable.

It is not a contract with the end user. it also is not a machine(program) that has to operate a specific way. what happens when it is violated. who figures out what was violated, who the damaged party is and what and where the fines are to be paid. Nobody.

They would be better off called "statement of intent" rather than this theater of pretending there is a policy in play.

nullc• 2 years ago

JWZ's headline perhaps should have been: "due to intentionally defective design android is unable to guarantee apps cannot steal your data and so google requires app makers to make unenforceable promises about which data they will and won't steal"

m463• 2 years ago

What I find ironic is that his privacy policy probably stores more data than the app. (there must be logs, or at least ephemeral connection tables on the webserver)

related, I think privacy policies should be local, on-device. Not a pointer to possibly changing data. Not requiring a network connection (and possible identification).

XScreenSaver is available on Android. Google requires a privacy policy

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