this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2024
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Not sure if this is the correct place to post, but I just wanna kinda rant a bit.

I'm not the only one that hates this, right?

An app can just do a "This App Does Not Allow Screenshots"? Like... wtf?

Like, its my phone, and some app can just decide to disable a fuction of my phone. It's my phone and if I wanna take a screenshot, I'm taking a screenshot. I don't care about whatever "security" the app developer wants.

Imagine if every online shopping app whether fast food or amazon, just used this to block you from taking a screenshot so you can't save the records in case of a dispute.

Which android developer thought it was a good idea to let an app disable a function on your phone. Even iPhone doesn't have this stupid concept.

Sorry for the rant.

Anyone wanna share your stories?

(P.S. I have a cheap secondary phone to take photos of the screen. "This App Does Not Allow Screenshots" my ass lmao, I'm taking the screenshot whether the app wants it or not.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 55 minutes ago

I understand that for security compliance reasons. But beyond that, yupp. It sucks.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

I fuckin hate that Playstation 4 and 5 do this for taking screenshots from movies. I just want to get a good screen grab for meme purposes! Do you think I'm going to screen shot every goddamn frame of a movie, one at a time, paste those back together as a video, then somehow rip the audio too, and then share this necromantically-assembled abomination with all my pirate buddies? Fuck you!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 hour ago

Now that is really stupid, especially given how easy it is to just fire up the movie on your PC and take a screenshot from there.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 3 hours ago (2 children)

I work for a company that builds an app /sdk that handles credit cards / payments. It's one of the (many) requirements for getting an industry standard certification (like PCIDSS / MPOC). The app Must block screenshots, and Must disable the camera while using it...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 hours ago (2 children)

What on earth are those in charge of certification standards thinking they'll achieve with requirements like this?

[–] sbv 7 points 1 hour ago

It's probably to stop third party apps from screenshoting the banking app.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago

Accidentally screenshotting your bank acct and routing number is the only one I can really think of.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Why did you capitalize "must"?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (1 children)

Probably a nod to the written style of RFC definitions, which have the word entirely in capital letters, as in... the implementation MUST do such and such, and SHOULD do this other thing. In this case, the relevant security standard(s)

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

We have italics and bold characters for that.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 hour ago

RFCs were being written back when line printers couldn't do either.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 hours ago

I agree that it's infuriating! I downloaded an LSPosed module called CaptureSposed that overrides it.

It shouldn't take a specific module hack on a rooted phone with a custom OS with an unlocked bootloader to get this functionality back.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

I like that it's possible, but I think it should be treated like a permission with a user accessible toggle in settings for each app.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (2 children)

I would like to see the same thing for clipboard read access. In the same way app has to prompt you for location permission it would have to prompt you to read the clipboard and you would actually have the option to allow it all the time which is handy for some apps like clipboard manager, or don't allow it alltogether which is handy for some random apps you don't trust.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

It’s a really good feature imo and I’d love to see it be more common. This is how iOS does it:

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 hour ago

It could be nice, but also annoying in some cases. I would at least want to have an option to allow all the time.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Oh yea, something needs to be done about the clipboard. It's unsettling to know that a random app can just get your clipboard. Sometimes bitwarden doesn't detect a password field for some reason so I have to copy it to the clipboard 😖 don't feel safe...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 hours ago

I believe Bitwarden has a setting to “wipe” the clipboard after some time.

Not perfect, but better

[–] [email protected] 29 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

That's nothing. My workplace disabled copy/paste on everyone's work iPhones completely. Not in their own apps but system wide. Apparently that's something ios allows them to do. Doesn't affect me much because I use the phone as a glorified dual auth token but some people have it as their primary phone.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (3 children)

work iPhones

some people have it as their primary phone.

Bruh, I have no idea how people can put up with their employer being able control their device. Like... the employer can freak out about some perceived "security breach" and decide to wipe everyone's phone and you lose all your data like photos. Also, their employer can see if they are shit talking about the employer or mangement people, and it's a terrible idea if they want to unionize.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

As an IT guy that manages MDMs, no we cannot see communications on the device

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

As another guy that does, yeah we can push ediscovery apps to the phone and pull all kinds of data

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago

Something I've been dying to ask an industry expert. If your users setup a second user profile on android , and exclusively uses the second profile for work-related apps (assume full control), can you see the contents of the first (unrelated) user profile?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 hours ago (4 children)

They are okay with it because it isn't their phone. It's a free phone that comes with the job.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 hours ago

My work phone battery lasts for like 5-6 days because I only have Slack, MFA app, and outlook on it. It's crazy to use it for personal use

[–] [email protected] 49 points 7 hours ago (3 children)

The point of many of android's "protection" features isn't to protect the user from apps, but to protect apps from the user. I hate it.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 6 hours ago (10 children)

In this case, I think it's protecting apps from other apps. No secret screen recording going on while you're looking at bank statements, etc. I find that annoying, too, but I'm less annoyed by the reasoning in this case.

Now if Google could explain why toggling wifi through Tasker requires root, I would LOVE to hear the reasoning...

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (2 children)

In this case, I think it's protecting apps from other apps. No secret screen recording going on while you're looking at bank statements, etc.

I think with all the engineers at Google developing Android they could come up with a solution of how to discern whether the act of screenshot was triggered solely by the user, or an app on the phone. They are the ones in power of all the APIs that allow other apps to capture the screen content in the first place. Maybe I am simplifying it too much, but this seems as a bad excuse to me.

Maybe it would be too hard of a solution since there's so many ways third party apps could capture screen content (including for example the Android accessibility service which also allows apps to read content of the screen and even simulate screen touches and gestures which many automation apps make use of) that blocking the screenshot alltogether is by far the most feasible solution.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 hours ago

For me and my family, I think the best solution would be to leave it as-is but with a way to lift the restrictions for power users that doesn't involve root access. Something akin to enabling developer mode without having to buy a specific rootable phone

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (1 children)

There is already a solution:

Third-party apps, unless a user specifically go to settings and find that option, don’t have the permission known as “Draw Over Top” that’s required to do screen recordings/screenshots.

So by default, a user is already safe from a malicious app trying to steal info. (That is, unless they just be an idiot and give the app "Draw Over Top" permission)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Some password managers want draw over top.

Bitwarden required it, iirc

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 hours ago

Well you are gonna be trusting the password manager anyways, since its literally storing all your passwords. If you trust Bitwarden to store all your passwords, then you can trust it to not abuse the "Draw Over Top" permission.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Or changing or just adding a system font.

Or setting a charge capacity limit.

Or adding separate quick access tikes for wifi and cellular.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

The first two don't bug me but dam, give me my 6 buttons back!! I hate these fat notification tray icons. And yes, fuck Google for making it take MORE clicks to toggle wifi/cellular than before.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago

Unless they changed something in Android 15, which I haven't been able to try yet, I don't think the separate WiFi / Mobile Data tiles were ever removed. At least they still exist on LineageOS 21 (Android 14), just hidden in the tile editor. You might want to check if you still have them there.

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[–] otp 11 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Being able to block screenshots is "supposed" to protect users from having malware take screenshots of banking apps and other such information.

If app developers were good, this could have been a good feature.

But I agree with OP. It still should be the user's choice.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 hours ago

My Banking App does have the option to disable this feature.

It's all fine if it's a user choice, very annoying if it's not.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 hours ago

"Protections" are fine, as long as there's an override for it.

User doesn't like potential malware from "sideloading"? Then don't enable "Install from Unknown Sources".

Same thing with everything else, there should be an override switch.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

Like, its my phone, and some app can just decide to disable a fuction of my phone.

Is it your phone though?

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 8 hours ago (5 children)

iPhone absolutely has this concept

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 hours ago

Drives me nuts too! Signal at least has a toggle for it, so the user can decide. I wish more apps would do the same, maybe with a pop up warning explaining the risks.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 hours ago

I get banking and financial apps doing it. But shopping apps yea, wish we had a permissions override

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