This house has been invested, one way or another in broad technology since the late 1970's. We remain invested in this area today.
Well, here we are in 2018, eh? I write this in regard to the recent disclosures involving Facebook.
I've been involved with technology in one form or another for many years. I exclude engineering, as this was not my area of involvement. The employment and pay available in this area over the years has provided the option of living/travel outside of the U.S.; as well as being able to invest monies over the years to allow this house to find a decent position into retirement (could not have fulfilled this without a wonderful spouse providing a majority portion of income). Work in the tech. sector was/is an ongoing educational event; as so much changed often; as with today, too. But, this work helped keep my curious brain in active mode; from building (early days) pc's at home, to continuing learning about protecting our ventures onto the internet from the snoops and related. As the cost of a home pc's continued to drop, we found ourselves purchasing a desktop and later a number of laptops over the years. These retail units (at least the PC type, non-Apple) came loaded with all sorts of bloat-ware programs. It was my nature to uninstall all of the crap that was not needed to operate the PC.
Today, the same bloat-ware arrives with a smart phone (Android based, at least). I suspect, as with the PC; the phone manufacturer is obtaining some monetary payment for inclusion.
However, these programs are now more invasive as to one's privacy.
I list below, a typical "permissions" needed in order for one to "use" an app/software (for the older folks).
So, this is the basic Love - Hate portion related to technology over the years.
The App (software)---
Peel Remote. Used to allow their smart phone as a remote for their tv, which may also be synced with a cable network
*** Permissions required by the user, for use of this program- read phone status and identify
- read your contacts (names, as a minimum stored in phone, but for many includes other "personal notes"
- add or modify calendar events and send email email to guests without owners' knowledge; also read calendar events plus confidential information
- modify or delete the contents of your SD card, read the contents of your SD card (memory expansion, same secure data cards used in digital cameras.) An add-on SD is used by most folks to store pics/video; but apps may be moved to this card, too.
- find accounts on the device
- connect and disconnect from Wi-Fi full network access
- receive data from the internet
- transmit infrared
- change your audio settings
- expand/collaspe status bar
- view network connections
- view Wi-Fi connections
- access Bluetooth settings
- pair with Bluetooth devices
- run at startup
- allow Wi-Fi Multicast function
A broad list of standard permissions required for most apps that folks download and use on their smart phones (list contains definitions of the permissions.
https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/android-permissions-guide/14014/'Course, aside from all of this are the "hacks". My oh My, imagine the folks using home apps for an integrated alarm/video system.
Lets see................. hack the alarm app, disable the alarm, monitor the cameras (all of time), verify their location (cause they have location set on their phone, because they are using Google Maps). Wow! They're on vacation 500 miles away. Bingo.
Sidenote for current A.I. processor chip sets:
The CEVA AI processors offer performance ranging from 2 tera operations per second (TOPS) for the entry-level processor to 12.5 TOPS for the most advanced configuration. Tera being = trillion. This is a single chip set speed and not in consideration of banking or co-processing; or whatever methods are available today. This speed is not in consideration of "fast" being likely used by others (read, NSA/CIA, etc), but a chip that is available for many simple smart phone and other, the marketplace. Whew!
Okay, I'm going to further freak myself out of this electronic world; better stop now before I believe that almost all of the popular online stuff (Facebook, etc.) and most of the apps that are of value are all hacked/monitored by "Big Brother, of one form or another" storing all of the info at the magic site in Utah.
Summary: The above "Peel" app was pre-loaded onto a friend's phone and they began to have a screen display pop-up requiring they set/choose which cable system to use for the tv remote control to be synced to a cable system. The pop-up blocked all other phone functions. The only way to clear the forced request was a power down and the request did not appear again for about 5 minutes, and then the same request. During this short time frame, the "app" was disabled, and then uninstalled. Further investigation indicated that although the app had been loaded for some time on the phone, it had been just "sitting there" doing nothing, except hogging memory. Presto.....an auto update to the app and it was awakened to cause this problem.
For those concerned, one may search the term bloatware or similar related to a smart phone model; and also "how to" disable and/or uninstall apps not needed for phone function. One of the "love" sides of technology is being able to find free write-ups and videos for the uninstall/disable how-to's. Numerous apps can not be uninstalled, but put to sleep via disable; which should prevent further updates.
We use periodically, a smart phone print app; to print contact and any calendar info in the phone for a back-up hard copy, in case of phone "crash". When finished with the print app, it is uninstalled.
Are we saved from all of the invasive natures of the apps..........nope; but removing as many as possible and still allow phone function helps a little bit.
Obviously, I/we still don't like this privacy invasion; but have a valid use(s) for a smart phone.
***let me know if there is a boo-boo with info in this write, please; and share your thoughts.
Be well,
Catch
