Google Allows Creditors to Brick Your Phone ( lemmy.world )

rockstarmode , 3 months ago

I know this is a privacy community, but I'm not sure I'm onboard with the outrage on this particular one. If you rent/lease or go on a payment plan for the device you're using, then it isn't yours, it belongs to the entity you borrowed it from.

If I don't make car payments, the bank can repossess my ride. If I dont pay my mortgage or rent, I can be evicted by my landlord or bank.

If I don't make my phone payment, the company should have recourse to prevent me from using their device.

This could open up the ability for bad actors to disable my device, and I agree that's a horrible prospect. But the idea of a legitimate creditor using this feature to reclaim their property is not something I find shocking.

namingthingsiseasy , 3 months ago

All your points are sound. The issue that I have with this is that remote disable functionality is not necessary to achieve any of these aims. Before they were connected to the internet, people were still able to rent/lease autos and the world managed to survive just fine. There were other ways for lenders to get remunerated for breaking lease terms - they could issue an additional charge, get a court order for repossession, etc. Remote disable was never needed or warranted.

So let's start by considering the due process here. Before, there was some sort of process involved in the repossession act. With remote disable however, the lender can act as judge, jury and executioner so to speak - that party can unilaterally disable the device with no oversight. And if the lender is in the wrong, there is likely no recourse. Another potential issue here is that the lender can change the terms at any time - it can arbitrarily decide that it doesn't like what you're doing with the device, decide you're in breach, and hit that remote kill switch. A lot of these things could technically happen before too, but the barriers have been dramatically lowered now.

On top of this, there are great privacy concerns as well. What kinds of additional information does the lender have? What right do they have to things like our location, our habits, when we use it, and all of the other personal details that they can infer from programs like this?

There are probably lots of other issues here, but another part of the problem is that we can't even start to imagine what kinds of nefarious behaviors they can execute with this new information and power. We are well into the age where our devices are becoming our enemies instead of our advocates. I shudder to think what the world would look like 20 years from now if this kind of behavior isn't stopped.

nymwit , 3 months ago

I don't disagree with anything you say. I think it's worth mentioning that the cost of enforcement directly informs the cost of a lease/rental situation. The cheaper they can enforce the contract, the less they can theoretically charge. If they had to get a court order to lock your phone or repo your car, they'd make it more expensive or be much more selective about who they lease/rent to. This maybe enables more people to have phones or get cars?

I swear I'm not rooting for team "aggressive manipulative business behavior widens opportunities for the less well off". Gross. Kind of how I hear about globalization of manufacturing stuff - "they get paid pennies!" "yeah, but that's more than before the factory came? look what they can buy now" I know that's a overly broad generalization but you see those arguments.

s38b35M5 , 1 month ago

This is classic efficient market hypothesis brain worms, the kind of cognitive dead-end that you arrive at when you conceive of people in purely economic terms, without considering the power relationships between them. It's a dead end you navigate to if you only think about things as they are today – vast numbers of indebted people who command fewer assets and lower wages than at any time since WWII – and treat this as a "natural" state: "how can these poors expect to be offered more debt unless they agree to have their all-important pocket computers booby-trapped?"

-Cory Doctorow from his blog, unintentionally addressing you

Max_P , 3 months ago

At least it's open-source: https://android.googlesource.com/platform/packages/modules/DeviceLock/+/refs/heads/main/DeviceLockController/

And that'd be why custom roms have it. It's part of the base Android system.

Max_P , 3 months ago

I was able to start some of its private activities with ActivityLauncher as root. Most of them just crash immediately, but the help page is available. And yikes, they got them covered against a possible bypass, no developer tools or sideloading.

https://lemmy.max-p.me/pictrs/image/3d667fa7-fc8b-4991-9de0-22463253327d.png

https://lemmy.max-p.me/pictrs/image/30ab982a-dfeb-4ea8-8d4d-fc5f548b966a.png

https://lemmy.max-p.me/pictrs/image/ba7cb3e6-0a43-4ef7-9480-b36898b905b3.png

https://lemmy.max-p.me/pictrs/image/9864d0a4-d398-4658-9739-4a73489af791.png

Still disappointed this is shipped in LineageOS, but I suspect not for much longer with that publicity.

milicent_bystandr , 3 months ago

So, that looks like this is less insane than it sounded... This is for if you buy your phone on a payment plan? Not for creditors more generally to have a option to repossess/dispossess your phone?

BrikoX , 3 months ago

In 2020 Google claimed it was supposed to be limited to a single region in partnership with a single carrier. And was never meant to be put up on Play Store.

A spokesperson from Google reached out to clarify some details about the Device Lock Controller app. To start with, Google says they launched this app in collaboration with a Kenyan carrier called Safaricom.

Google has confirmed that the Device Lock Controller app should not be listed on the Google Play Store for users in the U.S., and they will work to take down the listing.

Source: https://www.xda-developers.com/google-device-lock-controller-banks-payments/

Of course, it was a lie since it's still on Play Store an of today and in use.