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kllrnohj parent
There's plenty of actually problematic stuff Google does (like this change in the article), there's no need to make up whack ass conspiracy theories, too.
ycombinatrix
The internet permission is the only regular manifest permission you can't toggle in the settings. It is an obvious win for an advertising/surveillance company like Google. What is wack about it?
kllrnohj OP
> The internet permission is the only regular manifest permission you can't toggle in the settings.

That's not even a little bit true? There's a ton of 'normal' permissions, almost none of which are user-overrideable. Like, say, android.permission.VIBRATE. Or android.permission.GET_PACKAGE_SIZE. Android has an obscene number of permissions ( https://developer.android.com/reference/android/Manifest.per... ) and almost none of them have a UI to control them nor any ability to be rejected

> It is an obvious win for an advertising/surveillance company like Google. What is wack about it?

How, exactly? How does Google benefit from random 3p apps having Internet access? And remember, Google has play services on every device to proxy anything it needs/wants.

ycombinatrix
half of the random 3p apps include Google advertising SDKs. How do you reconcile the fact that the internet permission still cannot be toggled, almost 20 years after it was required in the app manifest?
zrobotics
Huh? Not sure how this qualifies as "whack ass". There's an internet permission built in to the OS that Google chose to not expose to the user. The parent poster was claiming there is no reason anyone would want that permission, I then pointed out a whole category of apps that don't need internet to function for anything besides ads and telemetry. All of this is factual info.

So rather than just dismissing the argument via insulting language, can you provide a reasonable alternative explanation for why this setting isn't exposed to the user?

kllrnohj OP
The internet permission is exposed to the user, it just can't be revoked by the user. But that's true of like 100 other permissions, too. It's the default case that permissions are not revokable.

And I did provide 2 reasons why that's the case for Internet specifically, neither of which were even attempted to be refuted in this comment chain

adithyassekhar
I would really like to deny internet access for apps like mx player. The frequency of ads on that app once Times group bought is the worst I've seen in my entire life. One of the best video players on Android, ruined.

Some chinese skins do offer the ability to revoke internet access for apps. I wonder why the western ones don't?

zrobotics
OK, so this is getting ridiculous. The internet permission isn't exposed to the user, unless you are saying that 'exposed to the user' is the same as 'system default and can't be modified'. The user has no way to see or modify that permission.

I pretty solidly refuted your first reason (internet connection is ubiquitious, apps don't need it). I pointed out that there are whole categories of apps that don't need a network connection. You never bothered to refute my argument and are now claiming that I didn't address that point. You claim it is a 'ubiquitous' permission, but haven't said why a level sensor app that just reads the MEMS gyro sensor would need a network connection at all. So that's point 1 sorted, which I already addressed and you are pretending wasn't refuted.

Point 2 was "2) It's not robust, apps without Internet permission can still exfiltrate data relatively easily by bouncing off of other apps using Intents and similar"

I never addressed this, because it seemed extraneous to the discussion. This data exfiltration is purely a hypothetical at this point, since apps can always rely on a network connection. Sure, if the network setting was exposed to the user and was able to be toggled, there might be ways to bypass that. But that is hypothetical, and relies on hypothetical security loopholes. No apps are currently doing this, since apps can't have their network permissions toggled. The possibility of potentially bypassing the system network permission toggle doesn't seem germane, since it's a hypothetical. To use your words, it's a 'whack-ass conspiracy theory' and not a germane concern.

You've resorted to ad-hominem by insinuating that my viewpoint as a conspiracy theory and haven't even attempted to address my point that there are whole categories of apps that don't need network connections. You also are trying to claim that I haven't addressed points you made, while ignoring my argument that rebutted those claims. I'm sorry, but since you want to engage in this way,why are you so addicted to the taste of Google boot leather? Why are you trying to say that Google doesn't want to protect its ad network? Android apps using Google adsense to serve ads to users clearly benefits them, I don't even see why this is controversial.

const_cast
Google relies on ad money is a conspiracy? ... isn't that just... their business model? Like actually?

I mean, would you chop off your own foot? No? Then we should all be in agreeance. Google is definitely forcing network permission for every app to maximize their ad revenue.

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