FTC Issues Warning Letters to App Developers Using ‘Silverpush’ Code

Re:FTC Issues Warning Letters to App Developers Using ‘Silve... by kabdib on Sunday March 20, 2016 @12:43PM (#11323546)

IIRC, there was US legislation in the 1990s that required phones to have an indicator to be wired in that lit up when a microphone was enabled.

Either this was relaxed, or reinterpreted (or I'm mis-remembering), and it was deemed okay to activate the LED with firmware. Clearly a mistake. And it probably only applied to land-line phones.

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Re:FTC Issues Warning Letters to App Developers Using ‘Silve... by comex on Sunday March 20, 2016 @02:40PM (#11324048)

iOS really ought to put a "currently recording audio" icon in the menu bar, in addition to the existing one-time permission request. Sophisticated hacks could bypass it, but it would at least help in more pedestrian scenarios like this one.

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Re:FTC Issues Warning Letters to App Developers Using ‘Silve... by dan1234 on Sunday March 20, 2016 @03:17PM (#11324208)

It already does! The menu bar turns red, with the name of the app using the microphone, as shown in this example[0] where Shazam is backgrounded but listening for songs.

[0]https://imgur.com/a/OzS4Z

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Re:FTC Issues Warning Letters to App Developers Using ‘Silve... by comex on Sunday March 20, 2016 @05:20PM (#11324726)

Yeah, I know about that. But that doesn't really help if the app only listens while foregrounded. (In that case the red bar does usually show up briefly before the app responds to the backgrounding event, but that's not very noticeable and basically a bug.)

Location Services is a model here: like sound recording it asks for permission first, like sound recording it flashes the menu bar if an app is using precise location in the background, but there's also a small icon that shows up in the menu bar whenever it's being used, even by the foreground app.

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Re:FTC Issues Warning Letters to App Developers Using ‘Silve... by tlrobinson on Sunday March 20, 2016 @03:44PM (#11324314)

Except for system software like Siri. I didn't realize I had the 'Allow "Hey Siri"' option (which constantly listens for the trigger word) turned on until I happened to check the settings, which was a little unnerving.

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Re:FTC Issues Warning Letters to App Developers Using ‘Silve... by dan1234 on Sunday March 20, 2016 @04:16PM (#11324456)

You're right, I hadn't considered Siri. But, I don't think it would be much use as I'd assume if the system software was about to do something nefarious it would just disable the notifications.

Best assume if you have Hey Siri enabled, it is always listening.

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Re:FTC Issues Warning Letters to App Developers Using ‘Silve... by TazeTSchnitzel on Sunday March 20, 2016 @05:51PM (#11324841)

At least Hey Siri is an offline feature, it won't send anything over the network unless it actually detects that phrase. This can be easily verified by turning on Airplane Mode and trying it, it still works.

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Re:FTC Issues Warning Letters to App Developers Using ‘Silve... by colejohnson66 on Sunday March 20, 2016 @03:07PM (#11324160)

I think it already does that if an app requests to run in the background while recording. Spotify and the Voice Memos app leave a red bar at the top of the screen (like the green one while on the phone) if you background them while recording.

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Re:FTC Issues Warning Letters to App Developers Using ‘Silve... by rm_-rf_slash on Sunday March 20, 2016 @05:26PM (#11324751)

I would rather have a dedicated light and switch to know for sure that when I set my camera and microphone to off, they're off.

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