1253
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by 1984@lemmy.today to c/technology@lemmy.world

I'm happy to see this being noticed more and more. Google wants to destroy the open web, so it's a lot at stake.

Google basically says "Trust us". What a joke.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] lobster_teapot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 21 points 1 year ago

As other have pointed out, it goes way beyond ad-blocking. It's a complete reversal of the trust model, and is basically DRM for your OS:
Right now, websites assume rightfully that clients can't be trusted. Any security measure happens on the server side, with the rationale that the user has control over the client and you as a dev control the server. If your security is worth two cents, you secure server side. This change propose to extend vendor power, by defining a set of rule about what they deem acceptable as a client app, and enforcing it through a token system. It gives way too much power to the vendor, who gets to dictate what you can do on your machine.
We actually have a live experience of how that could go down with safetynet on android. Instead of doubling down on the biggest security issue there (OEM that refuses to support their software for more than 1 or 2 year after release which, quite frankly, should be universally considered as unacceptable), google decided that OEMs should be allowed way more trust than the user. Therefore modifying your own OS in any way, even if it's ripe with security flaws to begin with and you're just trying to fix that, breaks safetynet. If you break safetynet, "critical apps" like banking apps stop working altogether.
The worst part is that there are ways to circonvent safetynet breakage, because in the end, if DRM taught us anything, it is that if you control the client and know your way around, with enough work you can do pretty much anything you want with it. So bad actors are certainly not kept at bay, you just unjustly annoy people with legitmate usecases or even just experimenting with their hardware because in the end, you consider that your user are at best dumb security flaws, at worst huge cash machine, often both at the same time.

[-] vvvvv@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

We actually have a live experience of how that could go down

Another example: latest iteration of Google Captcha. Released with promises to end manually inputting text captchas, the main thing it turned out to check for is whatever you are logged into your google account. If so, you get through automatically, or, at worst have to press a checkbox. If you are not logged in, enjoy selecting fire hydrants and crosswalks.

this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2023
1253 points (98.2% liked)

Technology

59197 readers
953 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS