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Android won't kill sideloading after all, but new verification rules will make it harder (www.techspot.com)
submitted 8 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 203 points 8 months ago (25 children)

They won't kill side loading (the fact we even call it side loading instead of simply installing software is a problem). They'll just shoot it in the knees a little. No big deal.

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  • [–] 64 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    They'll be able to stop a group of less technically savvy people, who currently are sideloading, from using their phones the way they choose. Apparently that's good enough for Google.

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  • [–] 7 points 8 months ago*

    I don't know, it's possible that the number of people already interested in sideloading and savvy enough to do it, but not savvy enough to get over this new hurdle, may be a very small number.

    I mean there are already some roadblocks to sideloading and scary system messages about safety and security risks.

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  • [–] 27 points 8 months ago (21 children)

    They already don't let you use Google pay if you don't give them control of your phone. This is just tightening the noose a little bit.

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  • [–] 40 points 8 months ago (11 children)

    People shouldn't use google pay in the first place. All of these things being tied together by the same group is a problem in and of itself.

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  • [–] 6 points 8 months ago (9 children)

    Would use something else if I had the choice

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  • [–] 11 points 8 months ago (8 children)

    Don't you have a physical card?

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    Less convenient and less secure.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    I share a card with a family member. They have the physical one as it belongs to them, I use it on my phone

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (2 children)

    You can't just get an extra card for the account? My bank does offer this, and it's how my parents have always shared their account.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago* (1 child)

    Sadly, I can’t. It’s not a legally shared account, and part of a specific legislation in my country (France). Basically, it’s tied to an account that can be used exclusively to purchase food at half the price during work days

    When it’s more convenient (ex: I’m already outside), I buy food for my family using their card and bring it back to them on my way home

    It’s unfortunately one of the things that make me stay on stock iOS rather than Graphene, as I prefer stock iOS to stock Android in terms of looks, comfort, and privacy

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  • [–] 10 points 8 months ago (5 children)

    That is more the fault/worry of the financial sector and not G. The fact that they gave up this amount of leeway is shocking. Their risk tolerance is very low and giving G the ability to manage virtual cards and allow payments with them is huge in itself.

    Even Privacy, which does part of the same thing/idea, still only works for some cards, doesn't work at all for credit cards (last time I checked), and has been in the sector for a similar amount of time.

    G had to lock down Pay to appease the financial sector's risk management. Anything else was DOA.

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  • [–] 9 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    I wonder what an alternate history where Google chose not to become evil would look like.

    What if they had looked at Microsoft's Palladium proposal and thought, as pretty much everyone outside institutional IT departments did that locked devices with remote attestation was a nightmare scenario best forgotten, refused to build it, and made an effort to prevent anyone else from doing so on top of Android? Safetynet didn't appear until 5-6 years after Android launched to the public. What if it never did? Android already had enough momentum by that point I don't think the financial sector could refuse to be on it no matter what risk management said.

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  • [–] 10 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    Well, I kind of know what happened in that scenario... because it did. Until Pay, there was Wallet. The original Wallet, not the current one. Wallet had a physical and virtual prepaid debit card, that you would load up and manage in the app. I used it a few times (new tech woo), and distinctively remember ordering at a McDonald's, the clerk announced the cost, I held my Nexus 7 to the new nfc pad, they started to say 'uhh no you have to-' and then a success beep, and their jaw dropped. They thought it was nuts, I told them in a few years 'this will be everywhere'.

    So before Pay, there was Wallet, and it's own little sandbox of testing if anyone would use this. A couple years later the Wallet card discontinued, and Pay took its place.

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  • [–] 7 points 8 months ago

    A different Wallet/Pay implementation is a possible outcome, but I'm thinking of a bigger picture where Android phones are more like PCs: no non-unlockable bootloaders, no remote attestation anywhere, barriers to root detection at the OS level, third-party ROMs encouraged.

    The early days of Android were like that. I wonder if things had developed along that path, would we have a paradise for power users? A security nightmare for mainstream users? Both? Neither?

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