> All of this kind of mind control bullshit should be eradicated via regulation. Companies should not have a license to be deceptive towards their users.
I agree with you. However, the impact of scams should not be underestimated either.
To me it seems like fighting teen pregnancy by preaching abstinence. We should be teaching a higher baseline of computer literacy, and providing more secure systems that keep the user in control and in the know when it comes to their own device and the software running on it.
Attacking the problem by reducing user freedoms and increasingly monopolistic control is not the answer, even though Google's PR department would tell you otherwise.
Yeah, it's definitely a piece to the puzzle. I still think it's not so hard to prove that increasingly technical literacy, outlawing deceptive UX and language that prey on information asymmetry, and providing increased autonomy with more fine-grained and visible security controls is a net win for the population, whether or not this particular method of Google's is effective enough against spam compared to some baseline.
Agreed. Android already has seriously big whitelisting requirement for installing applications from outside the Google Play store.
The correct way to do it would be to whitelist other good stores, and allow developer mode installs with an extra process that says explicitly I am extra sure this may be danger, but no. This would reduce Google's income streams.
The way I see it, it must be attacked the way default Internet Explorer was attacked.
> To me it seems like fighting teen pregnancy by preaching abstinence.
More like fighting teen pregnancy by mandating chastity belts... With the same ultimate problems too: those most determined to overcome the block will make use of bolt cutters or their digital equivalent.
.... This doesnt stop scammers. Software will never stop scammers. Its pretty wild that people would be willing to sacrafice their freedom permantely so a scammer can spend two weeks thinking of another approach to scam.
You are correct. But it's not about stopping scammers, it's about making their lives as difficult as possible. The problem is, as seen with Facebook [1], even that was not enough to stop "self-xss" exploits.
The actual way to stop the scammers would be to sanction their host countries into oblivion: India, Philippines and Myanmar are big in targetting English speaking countries, and Turkey when it comes to German speaking countries. Scammer Payback alone has made so many complaints with very little follow up from local authorities, partially due to open corruption. Either these countries clean up their act or they get dropped from SS7 (phone) and the Internet. But I see no way of this ever happening.
I agree with you. However, the impact of scams should not be underestimated either.