Power user



  • Some computers on the production floor were having problems connecting to our local network. They would see only 3-4 hosts on the LAN, out of like 15+ available.

    An hour ago, one of the senior producers, who is kind of the most technical of the bunch, asked me to look into it. His machine was also suffering from this problem, and it was impeding his work (no access to local file server). Let's call him Power User.

    I walk over to his PC and start troubleshooting.

    Check IP. He is on the same network as everyone else.
    Check sharing settings. Everything is enabled and set to the most liberal settings.
    Check computer name. Its workgroup is "WORKGROUP", fine.
    Check HomeGroup. It's turned off.
    Check firewall. Default settings.
    Check antivirus. None installed.
    Plug ethernet cable into a different socket. Nothing.
    Change the machine name, restart computer. Nothing.
    Check adapter settings. Wins enabled.
    Start googling, digging into obscure registry settings. Halfway through dumping the registry, Power User speaks up.

    Power User: You know, I am thinking. I like to disable some windows services, so that computer would work faster. Could it be one of those that's causing a problem?

    I open services and order by Disabled. One instantly draws my attention.

    Me: You disabled this one?
    Power user: Yes, I don't need that shit, I always turn it off.

    It's TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper.

    Check other misbehaving PC-s, it's the same thing. Turns out, as this guy moved around different machines in the office, he "optimized" each one.

    God save me from power users.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @cartman82 said in Power user:

    God save me from power users.

    I will drink to that.


  • FoxDev

    @cartman82 said in Power user:

    God save me from power users.

    there's a reason i'm not in infrastructure.

    👨 "My PC isn't working!"
    accalia "okay. i'll restore to base image"
    👨 "MY FILES! THEY'RE GONE"
    accalia "We have the network drives for a reason."

    👨 "I accidentally deleted my files!"
    accalia "I see no recent deletions in your network drive."
    👨 "From my PC i mean"
    accalia "Well, sucks to be you then. we don't back up your PC. we have backups of your network drive."



  • @accalia
    👨 My most important e-mails are all gone!
    izzion Where did you last see them?
    👨 I file them in the Deleted Items folder to make sure they're somewhere secure
    izzion 🍹


  • kills Dumbledore

    @izzion said in Power user:

    I file them in the Deleted Items folder to make sure they're somewhere secure

    That stuff's already been deleted. What are the odds it would get deleted again? Lightning never strikes twice


  • Considered Harmful

    @izzion said in Power user:

    @accalia
    👨 My most important e-mails are all gone!
    izzion Where did you last see them?
    👨 I file them in the Deleted Items folder to make sure they're somewhere secure
    izzion 🍹

    Anyone sane would use group policy to autodelete stuff from the recycle bin. Frequently. You can either yell at the users for putting their hand on a surface labeled 'do not put your hand on this surface', or you can just electrify the surface and save your breath.


  • Impossible Mission - B

    Counterpoint: At my previous job, we had some special VPN client we needed to set up in order to work from home. It set up and configured a bunch of special network-related services on my computer. There was one in particular--I don't remember what it was called now--that did something bizarre to the network. Eventually after a lot of troubleshooting, I discovered that the VPN would only run if this service was active, and conversely if this service was active and the VPN was not running, it would cause all sorts of intermittent problems for my ordinary network activities (web browsing, gaming, etc.)



  • @cartman82 said in Power user:

    Some computers on the production floor were having problems connecting to our local network. They would see only 3-4 hosts on the LAN, out of like 15+ available.
    An hour ago, one of the senior producers, who is kind of the most technical of the bunch, asked me to look into it. So I did the usual, wipe everything and redeploy the standard Windows image, then it worked again

    Improved That Process For You



  • @polygeekery said in Power user:

    @cartman82 said in Power user:

    God save me from power users.

    I will drink to that.

    Aye, God save us from us, I will drink to that too. :-D



  • @cartman82 said in Power user:

    Some computers on the production floor were having problems connecting to our local network. They would see only 3-4 hosts on the LAN, out of like 15+ available.

    An hour ago, one of the senior producers, who is kind of the most technical of the bunch, asked me to look into it. His machine was also suffering from this problem, and it was impeding his work (no access to local file server). Let's call him Power User.

    I walk over to his PC and start troubleshooting.

    Check IP. He is on the same network as everyone else.
    Check sharing settings. Everything is enabled and set to the most liberal settings.
    Check computer name. Its workgroup is "WORKGROUP", fine.
    Check HomeGroup. It's turned off.
    Check firewall. Default settings.
    Check antivirus. None installed.
    Plug ethernet cable into a different socket. Nothing.
    Change the machine name, restart computer. Nothing.
    Check adapter settings. Wins enabled.
    Start googling, digging into obscure registry settings. Halfway through dumping the registry, Power User speaks up.

    Power User: You know, I am thinking. I like to disable some windows services, so that computer would work faster. Could it be one of those that's causing a problem?

    I open services and order by Disabled. One instantly draws my attention.

    Me: You disabled this one?
    Power user: Yes, I don't need that shit, I always turn it off.

    It's TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper.

    Check other misbehaving PC-s, it's the same thing. Turns out, as this guy moved around different machines in the office, he "optimized" each one.

    God save me from power users.

    Um. Why do they have admin rights? (Take away their admin rights, you take away their ability to fonk with the services.) And of course disabling TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper will make approximately zero difference to the visible speed of the computer. This guy isn't a power user. He's a power moron.



  • @anonymous234 said in Power user:

    So I did the usual, wipe everything and redeploy the standard Windows image, then it worked again

    Improved That Process For You

    That's presuming I was an actual admin in a functional company, instead of playing one on TV.



  • @steve_the_cynic said in Power user:

    Um. Why do they have admin rights? (Take away their admin rights, you take away their ability to fonk with the services.)

    Because we don't have IT, they are basically installing their own machines.


  • Java Dev

    @anonymous234 The procedure here seems to be similar. The policy from the highest-ups is all company-provided work laptops are to be locked down with limited accounts. Locally we give everyone local admin under responsibility, however, as we allow using the work laptops for personal use too. If personal usage or messing with settings causes difficulties with using it for the intended purpose it will get taken in, wiped and locked down however.



  • @pie_flavor said in Power user:

    Anyone sane would use group policy to autodelete stuff from the recycle bin. Frequently.

    Alas, deleting stuff that has been deleted for T period of time (and retaining the stuff that was recently put in the recycling bin) is a bit more challenging...


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @steve_the_cynic said in Power user:

    This guy isn't a power user. He's a power moron.

    I like that phrase.



  • @cartman82 said in Power user:

    God save me from power users.

    I got a new phone. It ate through my data allowance the first time I turned it on because of moronic settings (if I connect to wifi first, why did you use the mobile connection to download stuff??), so I went through the settings and turned off more or less everything that remotely looked like it could try using mobile data.

    Fast forward a couple of weeks when I saw someone here mention Llama and wanted to try it. It never worked (never managed to recognize anything). Until a few days ago when I got bored of getting various error messages and relented and give back various permissions (yes, Google Play, you can access my phone and SMS and contacts... you probably don't need it and I don't want you to, but that's all I can find to make you shut the fuck up). And Llama magically started to work!

    So yeah, I tried to be a power user and just managed to shoot myself in the foot.



  • @remi In your defense, the user-facing permissions system in Android is nonsensically stupid. You have to grant access to contacts in order for an app to store your login credentials because apparently they thought those two things were related enough to be put in the same category. I'm sure there's lots of other weird permissions hidden within unintuitive categories.



  • @lb_ said in Power user:

    the user-facing permissions system in Android is nonsensically stupid.

    This is why I pretty much don't install apps on my phone. I've had this phone over a year, and I have installed a grand total of 8 apps on it; app #1 was Ghostery.


  • Java Dev

    @lb_ said in Power user:

    the user-facing permissions system in Android is nonsensically stupid

    That I can agree on. The category system gives little control. You want an app to read SMS? Well, now it can also send SMS because the send permission will be automatically granted as long as you've given the read permission.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @atazhaia said in Power user:

    You want an app to read SMS? Well, now it can also send SMS because the send permission will be automatically granted as long as you've given the read permission.

    Possibly a bad example; this app doesn't have send permissions but will quite happily read them if you click Cancel...

    0_1507103879936_2017-10-04 08.56.28.png


  • Java Dev

    @pjh Try sending an SMS with it and see if Android will happily approve of it without asking the user for permission. Because as it has read access, the system would automatically grant the send permission when the app asks for it.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @atazhaia said in Power user:

    @pjh Try sending an SMS with it and see if Android will happily approve of it without asking the user for permission.

    That option has been disabled within the app.

    0_1507106459639_2017-10-04 09.32.03.png



  • @lb_ said in Power user:

    @remi In your defense, the user-facing permissions system in Android is nonsensically stupid. You have to grant access to contacts in order for an app to store your login credentials because apparently they thought those two things were related enough to be put in the same category. I'm sure there's lots of other weird permissions hidden within unintuitive categories.

    I didn't knew that. That, or something similar, might very well be why I removed some permissions that were actually needed. I've noticed that very few apps require access to "storage" yet they all store some information -- sure, as a dev I can guess that what they mean by "storage" is "storage outside of the sandbox reserved for the app", but I don't know if that makes sense for many people.

    Also and related, while I like that recent Android versions allow you to cherry-pick which permissions you give to an app, the problem is that there is nothing in the apps that tell you what will not work if you refuse a permission. At best they tell you "something will not work" and that's all.

    For example, I can guess that if I remove the "microphone" permission from some apps (e.g. Google Play Services, which seems to be the underlying engine used by almost all other Google apps?), then it will break "OK Google" or similar voice commands. That's fine, I personally don't need it (and there has been enough horror stories of devices listening without notifying you that I want to limit access as much as I can -- might not make a real difference, but at least I tried...). But then I get popups from time to time about Google Play Services not having enough permissions and that "some critical functions might not work" (not quite sure about the "critical" but the message is worded in a way to be much more scary than just "some stuff might not work").

    So in the end, my experience with restricting permissions is that it's a lottery. You turn off something that seems unneeded and then you wait and see if something in another part of the system starts not-working, and hope that by that time you remember which seemingly unrelated setting you turned off (I still have no idea which app required which permission which caused Llama to not work).



  • @lb_ said in Power user:

    @remi In your defense, the user-facing permissions system in Android is nonsensically stupid. You have to grant access to contacts in order for an app to store your login credentials because apparently they thought those two things were related enough to be put in the same category. I'm sure there's lots of other weird permissions hidden within unintuitive categories.

    Is it perhaps storing the credentials in a "this is you" contact? My iPhone has such a contact. (And yes, I think it's not really an ideal place to store such stuff, but where else would you suggest?)


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @remi said in Power user:

    Google Play Services, which seems to be the underlying engine used by almost all other Google apps?

    It's the core of the user-level layer of the OS. A lot of bits and pieces run through that. It's done that way so it can be more easily updated, as opposed to the OS core which requires a far more intrusive installation step.

    0_1507114419537_b91e4eb4-9e01-4f9b-a7ef-cf689fa29991-image.png


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @steve_the_cynic said in Power user:

    Is it perhaps storing the credentials in a "this is you" contact? My iPhone has such a contact. (And yes, I think it's not really an ideal place to store such stuff, but where else would you suggest?)

    That'd be an insane place to store credentials; there's a proper identity management system built into the OS.

    So yes, it's probably storing them in the contact. :headdesk:



  • @dkf Thanks, I did not know (although I kind of guessed so), and that makes sense. But it is hugely confusing (to me as a user) to have its name contain "Google", "Play" and nothing like "core" or "system".

    I mean, I know that Android comes from Google and that I'll have some Google on my phone whatever I do. But there is a non-Google replacement for most, if not all, apps (e.g. GMail and various mail apps, Chrome and various other browsers etc.), so if something really is a core part of the system itself, don't fucking name it "Google something"!

    (also, it would be nice if non-uninstallable apps were only the core ones. No, Youtube and Facebook are not "core apps" without which my phone cannot work at all. I should be able not only to deactivate them, but to remove them entirely)


  • Java Dev

    @remi said in Power user:

    I didn't knew that. That, or something similar, might very well be why I removed some permissions that were actually needed. I've noticed that very few apps require access to "storage" yet they all store some information -- sure, as a dev I can guess that what they mean by "storage" is "storage outside of the sandbox reserved for the app", but I don't know if that makes sense for many people.

    The actual permissions are called READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE and WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE. The category is just called STORAGE however. Requesting either permission will just say the app needs access to storage without specifying if read or write access.

    Also and related, while I like that recent Android versions allow you to cherry-pick which permissions you give to an app, the problem is that there is nothing in the apps that tell you what will not work if you refuse a permission. At best they tell you "something will not work" and that's all.

    You can only cherry-pick permission categories. There is no way of only granting read access to the storage, as read and write access share categories. As a developer I would have to define that I would need both of them in the manifest to be able to use both however. (Slightly bad example, as write access automatically grants read access without having to explicitly ask for it, but you get the idea.) As a user, more fine-grained control over the permissions would be nice, however. And apps who don't explain what wont work if a permission is denied are :doing_it_wrong: and the devs should read the relevant guidelines.



  • @atazhaia said in Power user:

    And apps who don't explain what wont work if a permission is denied are :doing_it_wrong:

    Yes, but the problem is that it's just a guideline, which is easy to not follow in complex cases (where the explanation would not fit in a couple of words), and more importantly that no one cares about. An app telling me "some features might not work" could as well tell me "you don't need to know, just trust me" (which, usually, is for me a big red flag to not trust them!).

    Plus, Google itself is making things confusing in the core apps, which sets a bad example for all other devs. I'm coming back to this one, but why does Google Play Services request access to e.g. my camera? Now that I know that this app is in fact a low-level system app, I can imagine that it is just in case some other service built on top of it needs it, but 1) I'm just wildly guessing and that's because (thanks to people here) I have a vague idea of what that app actually is and 2) if that means that an app can just piggy-back on it to get access to my camera without actually asking me for it, that's a big no for me.

    And more to the point, why (when I had removed some permissions from it) did I get big scary messages that "some critical features" were broken without any more detail? If you can't explain to me more than "that's a bad thing!" then what's the point of asking in the first place?


  • Java Dev

    @remi That Google doesn't follow their own examples is ofc also a :wtf: and :doing_it_wrong: and I wish they could be better at following their own guidelines. And they also should look over their core apps and their permissions, as Google Play Services should really run with minimal permissions and leave those to the user-facing apps instead.


  • :belt_onion:

    @atazhaia said in Power user:

    @pjh Try sending an SMS with it and see if Android will happily approve of it without asking the user for permission. Because as it has read access, the system would automatically grant the send permission when the app asks for it.

    No, it wouldn't, actually. SMS is weird that way, but send and recieve are two completely seperate things (you can only have a single app that sends messages)


  • :belt_onion:

    @remi said in Power user:

    @atazhaia said in Power user:

    And apps who don't explain what wont work if a permission is denied are :doing_it_wrong:

    Yes, but the problem is that it's just a guideline, which is easy to not follow in complex cases (where the explanation would not fit in a couple of words), and more importantly that no one cares about. An app telling me "some features might not work" could as well tell me "you don't need to know, just trust me" (which, usually, is for me a big red flag to not trust them!).

    Plus, Google itself is making things confusing in the core apps, which sets a bad example for all other devs. I'm coming back to this one, but why does Google Play Services request access to e.g. my camera? Now that I know that this app is in fact a low-level system app, I can imagine that it is just in case some other service built on top of it needs it, but 1) I'm just wildly guessing and that's because (thanks to people here) I have a vague idea of what that app actually is and 2) if that means that an app can just piggy-back on it to get access to my camera without actually asking me for it, that's a big no for me.

    And more to the point, why (when I had removed some permissions from it) did I get big scary messages that "some critical features" were broken without any more detail? If you can't explain to me more than "that's a bad thing!" then what's the point of asking in the first place?

    Also, android protip: Restricting Play Services (or touching it, or looking at it wrong) is a good way to get your phone into a very broken state...



  • @steve_the_cynic I'm talking about this screen:
    0_1507141221447_019de8c3-4185-4dfd-85c6-6d610e19a8f5-image.png
    Though it seems I was wrong in my initial statement about this requiring the Contacts permission. Still, I remember plenty of apps that have requested permissions with a message beforehand telling me why they actually needed the permissions, and it's usually because the entire category of permissions is needed.

    If you go through the App permissions screen on an Android device, there's only 9 permission categories, and then "Additional permissions" only shows a few more depending on how Android is feeling that day. Yet in my mind there's hundreds of things I want to have control over, and there are plenty of things that Apps request permissions for that I don't see as fitting into any of these categories. I'm too lazy to look up a concrete example though.

    @atazhaia said in Power user:

    @lb_ said in Power user:

    the user-facing permissions system in Android is nonsensically stupid

    That I can agree on. The category system gives little control. You want an app to read SMS? Well, now it can also send SMS because the send permission will be automatically granted as long as you've given the read permission.

    Well actually, on my phone:
    0_1507141750154_64a242cc-1203-46e3-af75-ae02bca59123-image.png
    Not sure what "instant messages" are if they aren't SMS, and I definitely have multiple apps reading and writing them...


  • Notification Spam Recipient

    @sloosecannon said in Power user:

    @atazhaia said in Power user:

    @pjh Try sending an SMS with it and see if Android will happily approve of it without asking the user for permission. Because as it has read access, the system would automatically grant the send permission when the app asks for it.

    No, it wouldn't, actually. SMS is weird that way, but send and recieve are two completely seperate things (you can only have a single app that by default sends messages)

    FTFY.

    Hangouts and Messages happily sent SMS messages on the carrier number.



  • @remi said in Power user:

    (also, it would be nice if non-uninstallable apps were only the core ones. No, Youtube and Facebook are not "core apps" without which my phone cannot work at all. I should be able not only to deactivate them, but to remove them entirely)

    So much this. There are about a dozen apps I'd like to remove from my phone (additional examples include WhatsApp, Instagram, and Hangouts) but can't. Not only do they take up space which I could use for things I actually want, but they suck up a significant part of my data cap by constantly needing to be updated.

    I'm in the habit now of leaving my data connection turned off most of the time, and only turning it on when I have a specific need to use it (mainly to suppress annoying and very data-hungry video ads in games, but it's also nice to reduce the update traffic). It's kind of sad that I have to do that; it wasn't necessary with any of my previous (non-Android) phones, even though I had lower data caps with them.


  • :belt_onion:

    @scarlet_manuka said in Power user:

    @remi said in Power user:

    (also, it would be nice if non-uninstallable apps were only the core ones. No, Youtube and Facebook are not "core apps" without which my phone cannot work at all. I should be able not only to deactivate them, but to remove them entirely)

    So much this. There are about a dozen apps I'd like to remove from my phone (additional examples include WhatsApp, Instagram, and Hangouts) but can't. Not only do they take up space which I could use for things I actually want, but they suck up a significant part of my data cap by constantly needing to be updated.

    I'm in the habit now of leaving my data connection turned off most of the time, and only turning it on when I have a specific need to use it (mainly to suppress annoying and very data-hungry video ads in games, but it's also nice to reduce the update traffic). It's kind of sad that I have to do that; it wasn't necessary with any of my previous (non-Android) phones, even though I had lower data caps with them.

    ?

    0_1507182969212_Screenshot_20171005-015540.png

    (that's the default, btw, I never changed that setting)



  • @sloosecannon said in Power user:

    Also, android protip: Restricting Play Services (or touching it, or looking at it wrong) is a good way to get your phone into a very broken state...

    That's exactly what I did and (probably) caused the initial problems. Also, even after I restored the permissions, it did not work correctly until a reboot, which for some time lead me to think that Google Play Services wasn't the issue. Fun fun.

    Now that I've learnt what this "app" really is, I am even more annoyed. I understand why then may want to make it an app, but if they want to be sure no one messes with it, call it something like "Core System Services", or even "Core Android Services" and it would be much more obvious that it's not just one more Google thing. And put a clear message, not "some stuff will be broken" but "this is a system app required by other apps" or somesuch.

    Without going into too much technical words, there are several words that are clearly recognizable by anyone as being really for important stuff (system, core...). Use them, Google!



  • @scarlet_manuka said in Power user:

    @remi said in Power user:

    (also, it would be nice if non-uninstallable apps were only the core ones. No, Youtube and Facebook are not "core apps" without which my phone cannot work at all. I should be able not only to deactivate them, but to remove them entirely)

    So much this. There are about a dozen apps I'd like to remove from my phone (additional examples include WhatsApp, Instagram, and Hangouts) but can't. Not only do they take up space which I could use for things I actually want, but they suck up a significant part of my data cap by constantly needing to be updated.

    What annoys me is that it is not really a problem with Android itself, as much as the way the manufacturers tweak it. Some phones allow removing almost everything, not all phones have all this crap (WhatsApp was not installed on mine), and manufacturers use these "unremovable" apps to push their own crappy versions of things that many other app do better. It is entirely natural that they want to ship a phone with an initial set of apps designed to fit most needs, and that they design their own apps to avoid relying on 3rd-parties. But not making them removable (and again, putting big scary messages that are just lies) is not good.

    I'm in the habit now of leaving my data connection turned off most of the time, and only turning it on when I have a specific need to use it

    Same here, but that's also because I am cheap and have a tiny allowance so if I left it on it would disappear in a couple of days, even with the most frugal of apps.

    Yet this is yet another part where things are confusing. You can turn off mobile data globally, and that works OK. Except that there are a couple of things that can turn it on behind your back (such as Wifi+). And as soon as you turn it on, there are tons of settings everywhere about what is allowed to do what on mobile. Really, it's like you said, the only way to be sure is to turn it off entirely, which should be overkill and last resort solution, not standard use.


  • kills Dumbledore

    @remi said in Power user:

    if they want to be sure no one messes with it, call it something like "Core System Services", or even "Core Android Services" and it would be much more obvious that it's not just one more Google thing

    It's APIs and things that developers putting apps on the Google Play store can safely assume is there. On Kindle devices it doesn't exist and Amazon have had to make their own versions of most of them to allow developers to post things to the Amazon app store. That's why it's called Google Play services; whether that's a good reason is a separate argument



  • @jaloopa I agree, it's an explanation not a reason. It really sounds like a name that a dev would decide, without consideration about how non-devs would see it.

    For non-devs, "Google Play" means "the app store", which in turns does not mean "core features of the phone". So "Google Play Services", to me as a user, reads as "services that relates to installing/updating/... other apps", not "services that other apps can use once installed".


  • :belt_onion:

    @remi said in Power user:

    Core Android Services

    IIRC they used to call it something like that, before the big "make everything Play Services and updatable so we don't have to wait for idiot carriers (Verizon) to push out system updates with major security fixes" thing


  • Dupa

    @atazhaia said in Power user:

    @lb_ said in Power user:

    the user-facing permissions system in Android is nonsensically stupid

    That I can agree on. The category system gives little control. You want an app to read SMS? Well, now it can also send SMS because the send permission will be automatically granted as long as you've given the read permission.

    Why would you give an app access to your SMS?


  • kills Dumbledore

    @kt_ Whatsapp uses SMS read access to automatically get the confirmation code it sends you and prevent needing to copy and paste it in.


  • Dupa

    @jaloopa said in Power user:

    @kt_ Whatsapp uses SMS read access to automatically get the confirmation code it sends you and prevent needing to copy and paste it in.

    Yeah, that’s a convenience, but too small a one for me.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @kt_ said in Power user:

    Why would you give an app access to your SMS?

    Confirmation codes are a common case (even though SMSs aren't a secure system) but the other case is where you are changing which app to use for messaging services. The stock app in a lot of phones is a bit shit, but since you can get a better one easily that's not a Big Deal…



  • @steve_the_cynic said in Power user:

    This guy isn't a power user. He's a power moron.

    ... Are you Rex Tillerson??



  • @gwowen said in Power user:

    @steve_the_cynic said in Power user:

    This guy isn't a power user. He's a power moron.

    ... Are you Rex Tillerson??

    Good Lord, no.



  • @kt_ said in Power user:

    @atazhaia said in Power user:

    @lb_ said in Power user:

    the user-facing permissions system in Android is nonsensically stupid

    That I can agree on. The category system gives little control. You want an app to read SMS? Well, now it can also send SMS because the send permission will be automatically granted as long as you've given the read permission.

    Why would you give an app access to your SMS?

    Because (e.g.) Textra is much better than Shitty Samsung Default SMS or whatever


  • :belt_onion:

    @kt_ said in Power user:

    @atazhaia said in Power user:

    @lb_ said in Power user:

    the user-facing permissions system in Android is nonsensically stupid

    That I can agree on. The category system gives little control. You want an app to read SMS? Well, now it can also send SMS because the send permission will be automatically granted as long as you've given the read permission.

    Why would you give an app access to your SMS?

    Because of both convenience for confirmation codes, and the ability to customize your default SMS app. Also stuff like https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.riteshsahu.SMSBackupRestore&hl=en which obviously would need access to SMS


  • Dupa

    @sloosecannon said in Power user:

    @kt_ said in Power user:

    @atazhaia said in Power user:

    @lb_ said in Power user:

    the user-facing permissions system in Android is nonsensically stupid

    That I can agree on. The category system gives little control. You want an app to read SMS? Well, now it can also send SMS because the send permission will be automatically granted as long as you've given the read permission.

    Why would you give an app access to your SMS?

    Because of both convenience for confirmation codes, and the ability to customize your default SMS app. Also stuff like https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.riteshsahu.SMSBackupRestore&hl=en which obviously would need access to SMS

    1. As I said, confirmation codes should be a non-frequent occurrence, so it’s not a huge selling point.
    2. Another app is probably the strongest here. It doesn’t have much of an appeal to me (messages app on iOS is great), but I understand it might for other people.
    3. Shouldn’t phone backup system be doing this?

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