Comments from the last post indicated it made no difference to having the killswitch on their devices as per screenshots.

Still I agree, buying on credit is not a good idea.

I must say Paypal shares customer data with over 600 corporations among other scummy things, so I boycott them. I also boycott eBay because the javascript required to use their website port sniffs your LAN and feeds that back to them, apart from other evils.

But most importantly, I’m not necessarily worried that I would personally get burnt by this. But just like my unwillingness to buy an Intel CPU with a management engine (or AMD’s flavor of this), I am unwilling to buy a product that was designed to work against me. I do not want to finance anti-consumer suppliers. ATM I don’t know how to check whether my version of AOS has this “feature”.

(BTW, I’m not the OP; I just linked their post here)

I'm OOP, I bought this Pixel 6 phone outright directly from Google. This system app has no business being on my phone.

And even IF it was purchased on credit, this is such an unfair power dynamic which hurts the most vulnerable in society.

Miss a phone payment, get locked out, haha have fun trying to access your bank account (many people have a phone as their primary computing device to access banking, and further, many banks might have SMS 2FA).

I say, there is no excuse for this. There were repo methods before software locks, and we'd ought to keep it that way.

It doesn't appear to actually be used, at least in Australia, but having the functionality built in at all should be straight up illegal in a caring society.

I don't think any of the major (I know someone will probably come in here and tell me about some tiny provider that's only in like 2 states that does) US carriers that do phones on secured credit, they default to unsecured credit. Maybe, they have an alternative plan for people with not so great credit, but I doubt it.

I'm OOP, I bought this phone outright. Google seems to be installing this on phones by default (the actual pattern based on people's comments seems to be more recent phones, but not all have it).

It's even shipping within de-googled phones, at some base ASOP level (or the hardware, I dunno, not that knowledgeable), as some GrapheneOS use reported having it on their phones too.

I'm pissed because: 1. It's installed when it shouldn't be, 2. Gives inappropriate power to creditors, which hurts the most vulnerable.

This has nothing to do with Google.

Google welded anti-consumer logic into the kernel. Of course that’s on Google. Just like Intel started making CPUs with a management engine that can only work against non-corporate consumers, basically saying fuck the individuals’ needs.. putting individuals at unconscionable risk without their knowledge or consent.

Consumers have decisions to make. Is a consumer happy to feed a supplier who sells them something that works against them? Some are. I’m not. Going forward they fail to earn my business because they have too many masters.

You going to ditch Linux because they support remote management too?

Linux is not locked down. Users can remove anything they want from it.

I just thought of a new business: Baby Debt.

We trick children into signing contract so we can legally control them financially for life.

Baby Debt: It's Not Illegal

Since this software comes preinstalled and you can't get rid of it, that means it is illegal to sell this phone to anyone under the age of 3.

That or the software itself is illegal which sounds a little more accurate.

Root or get out, I have been rooting since 2020 and I decide what the heck to do with my phone 😁

Iirc when this came up yesterday, it disables Developer tools when active

I think someone mentioned this is in the Playstore services stuff that’s hardwired in to the platform. Which means if a device is unrooted you can possibly do: $ adb shell 'pm disable --user 13 com.google.android.gms'.

I bought it practically on launch in Australia, directly from Google (I'm OOP), so I'd be surprised unless there was some last minute redirection of inventory from Kenya to Australia ¯_(ツ)_/¯

If the creditor wants to collect on a debt, there is a court process for that. I’ve used it. It works.

Locking the phone is not repossession. It does nothing other than sabotage the device the consumer may need to actually make the payment. The phone remains in the buyer’s possession and useless to the seller.

Power is also misplaced. What happens when the creditor decides to (illegally) refuse cash payments on the debt? Defaulting is not necessarily the debtor’s fault. This in fact happened to me: Creditor refused my cash payment and dragged me into court for delinquency. Judge ruled in my favor because cash acceptance is an obligation. But this law is being disregarded by creditors all over. If the creditor had the option to sabotage my lifestyle by blocking communication and computing access, it would have been a greater injustice.

#WarOnCash

Even if this would help (I'm OOP, and according to some commenters it's still installed on their phones running other OSes), I'm still outraged at the concept and the fact it's installed by default.

Plus, "just" installing a different OS is not a terribly mass-market friendly thing.

It should be regulated against by governments. The EU is slowly heading in the right direction. We're letting these tech companies do whatever the fuck they want to.

Most people don't have the time or knowledge necessary to make their digital lives entirely private.

This has "stop global warming by making personal choices" vibes to it.

I want privacy by default, and I'm not going to apologise for that.

I don't think that necessarily helps. I'm running GrapheneOS and "DeviceLockController" is installed there as well. From what I read, it's because it's part of AOSP.

I did take all permissions and from the system logs it reads that this app never has been used or tried to send anything to begin with.

To be clear I linked to someone else’s post. I don’t have the Pixel phone.