> buy fairphone because I hate constructors adding their bloatware to my phone.
> Boot it up, insert SIM.
> Next reboot, my carrier tries to get me to install their shit with a permanent notification (thankfully I can hide it, just have to do it every reboot).
I thought that could only happen in third world countries like the US but unfortunately this is in France. I’ll reboot my phone to show you.
Edit : well, apparently that’s related to connecting to the carrier’s network because right now I’m in another country and it doesn’t happen
I can show you a screenshot of the shitty app it installed the first time that happened, that it appears I can’t uninstall without rooting the phone. Keep in mind I bought the phone directly from Fairphone so it was not “SIM locked” to my carrier :
I looked again for more info about that app and it appears they are pulling that shit with the phone constructor’s consent. After all they are the main mobile phone carrier in France by a huge margin, which probably helps for these kinds of deals. I would have liked to have been consulted too though…
That app in the picture was installed automatically? 😮 Abhorrent and totally scary. Does that mean they can install whatever they like on your phone any time they want? Do you know how this works?
Keep in mind even if you decline everything and use a special ROM, your SIM card is a tiny computer running Java (yes, I know) and your carrier can run arbitrary applets there with access to your modem and some RAM.
It has been shown multiple times that they can track locations this way, and some exploit chains have allowed them to use this to fetch other data from the phone.
> buy fairphone because I hate constructors adding their bloatware to my phone.
> Boot it up, insert SIM.
> Next reboot, my carrier tries to get me to install their shit with a permanent notification (thankfully I can hide it, just have to do it every reboot).
How the fuck is that even legal
Is this some US thing? What do you mean? I’ve never seen this.
I thought that could only happen in third world countries like the US but unfortunately this is in France. I’ll reboot my phone to show you.
Edit : well, apparently that’s related to connecting to the carrier’s network because right now I’m in another country and it doesn’t happen
I can show you a screenshot of the shitty app it installed the first time that happened, that it appears I can’t uninstall without rooting the phone. Keep in mind I bought the phone directly from Fairphone so it was not “SIM locked” to my carrier :
I looked again for more info about that app and it appears they are pulling that shit with the phone constructor’s consent. After all they are the main mobile phone carrier in France by a huge margin, which probably helps for these kinds of deals. I would have liked to have been consulted too though…
That app in the picture was installed automatically? 😮 Abhorrent and totally scary. Does that mean they can install whatever they like on your phone any time they want? Do you know how this works?
Keep in mind even if you decline everything and use a special ROM, your SIM card is a tiny computer running Java (yes, I know) and your carrier can run arbitrary applets there with access to your modem and some RAM.
It has been shown multiple times that they can track locations this way, and some exploit chains have allowed them to use this to fetch other data from the phone.
Holy shit, what? Do you have any examples of this?