> If protection of the casual user was an argument, there would be an easy option to unlock your system, be that phones or desktop computers.

Making it easy to unlock could make it easy(er) for scammers to get it unlocked:

> I received the same type of call a little later in the day. They were very adamant they were calling from the Bell data centre, on a terrible line and I made them call back three more times while I considered their requests. They wanted to have me download a program that would have given them controI of my laptop. […]

* https://forum.bell.ca/t5/Internet/Call-stating-that-an-issue...

Easy doesn't mean without any warning, it just means that the device is unlockable by design and without OEM's approval.

It would be reasonable to:

- factory reset the device before unlocking it to protect existing data (like Android phones require)

- display warnings, for example "if someone's asking you to do this, it's probably a scam"

- for the owner to be allowed to permanently disable unlocking, e.g. the commonly cited example of someone setting the device up for their elderly parents

> for the owner to be allowed to permanently disable unlocking, e.g. the commonly cited example of someone setting the device up for their elderly parents

This opens a wormhole that warps us back to one of the core issues / battlegrounds in computing: ownership, and specifically, the balance of power and responsibility between the owner and the user, when they're not the same person.

Unfortunately, the same means and the same arguments cited in case of "someone setting the device up for their elderly parents" also apply to employers "setting the device up" for their employees (where "setting the device up" may just mean letting it access the company network), vendors "helpfully" "setting the device up" for the customers (this is basically the whole history of mobile phones - bootloaders now, SIM locks before), etc.

I don't know what the good answer is. I'm personally strongly biased towards "end-user should always be the owner" perspective, and while I recognize there are strong examples where this isn't the case, I can't figure out how to cleanly separate "legitimate interest" from for-profit or for-power abuse.

It seems relatively simple to me. Only the owner is allowed to make these decisions, more or less. Employers can only do it to devices they own and provide. Phone vendors cannot do it, and cannot make any services contingent on doing it. A family member in this situation is reasonably acting on the owner's behalf.

And while we're at it, let's not allow apps to refuse to run because of rooting.

The balance of power between a company and you, vs you and another person, are vastly different, which IMO makes the issues distinct. Presumably the elderly parents are willingly relinquishing control to someone they trust, and they can always go out and buy their own phone if they don't want that.

In that scenario I think employers should have the right to make this decision since they own the device and it likely contains sensitive data and credentials belonging to them. But vendors selling devices to retail customers shouldn't be allowed to make that decision unless the customer explicitly asks for help.

I think it's pretty consistent, whoever legally owns the device should be allowed to decide what is and isn't allowed to run on it.

Yes, my point is that in practice, this gets abused. In particular, the possibility enables vendors to invent business models that rely on denying users ownership, and those happen to outcompete the fair, honest models.

> factory reset the device before unlocking it to protect existing data (like Android phones require)

I never understood this point. From what threat is it protecting the data from? Surely a thief should not be able to unlock a device without first typing the correct pin/password, and it they can do that they should be able to access the data regardless.

In principle I agree but the edge case I think has to be accounted for is that many people have weak PINs protecting highly sensitive apps (financial, banking) on their phones like that could be backdoored with root access.

There have been times when I really wished that I could OEM unlock my Android device without wiping but overall I think I sleep better knowing that my PIN isn't sufficient to extract all of its data.

> Making it easy to unlock could make it easy(er) for scammers to get it unlocked

Making laptops that weigh two pounds instead of 40 pounds could make it easier for thieves to steal them. Making computers less expensive could increase the number of spammers who can afford one and make it easier to send spam. Making encryption widely available could make it easier for bad actors to communicate.

But these things have countervailing benefits, so we do them anyway and then address the problems by a different means. When someone insists on doing it in the way that "incidentally" provides them with a commercial advantage, suspect an ulterior motive.

> Making it easy to unlock could make it easy(er) for scammers to get it unlocked

Ahh, if only governments would start cracking down on scammers.

Alas, scammers are a feature of modern capitalism. You'd not be wrong if you thought modern businesses are built on scamming people.

Unlocking should require a physical modification, like soldering a jumper or flipping an internal switch requiring disassembly. That would filter out basically all scam victims. If a scammer can teach a complete novice how to do micro soldering, they've earned their pay.

The Chromebooks that require removing a single internal screw are a fairly civilized example of this approach (might be a little harder to execute in a phone).

Maybe requiring a PC connection dev options enabled and ADB, high enough barrier?

The Prusa Mini required you to snap a part of the pcb off to flash custom firmware. I actually like this approach, you have to very deliberately break apart of it to signal that you know what you are doing.

> But on many systems these options do not exist because the vendor likes people dependent on them.

Dependent is not exactly the right thing here. Lower support costs probably is. If a vendor gives out root access. If that root access can brick a machine. Then you will get a small percentage of very high touch broken things as returns. Customers like this are in the 'dangerous enough' but not 'good enough to do it correctly' stage of hacking. They will then not claim any responsibility for breaking it. As they are hoping you just fix it for free.

I had one customer who would randomly change out stored procedures on our code. Then yell at our tech support for thing not working or being broken. Wasting hundreds of hours of time until we realized what he was doing. Locking him out is very appealing. Instead we sold him and his management on 'we will do the work for you for a fee'. Which was more along the lines of 'you do this again we will fire the customer'.

That is but one small thing that can/will happen.

That only explains why a company wouldn't want to provide free software support for software they didn't write. There are at least two alternatives to that. First, sell hardware the user can replace the software on, or that doesn't even come with software, and then don't provide software support at all. Second, provide software support and bill by the hour, in which case the customer messing up their stuff and calling your support is the opposite of a problem.

You can even combine them if you want. Free support for the software that comes with it but if you replace the boot loader then support calls are billed hourly. There is no excuse for not allowing it -- it's leaving money on the table.

Unless the reason is that locking the user out of the device has the purpose of monopolizing ancillary markets, which should be an antitrust violation.

Damage caused by the customer isn't covered by any warranty anyway, and realistically, how many people would tinker with root access as long as the device worked as intended?

I'd be really surprised if the number was more than 1 in 100. And if 1 in 20 brick the device in the process, that's 1 in 2000.

According to [1] the average warranty claims rate for consumer electronics is 1 in 100. I doubt the difference in support load would even register on the scale.

[1] https://www.warrantyweek.com/archive/ww20240711.html

> Damage caused by the customer isn't covered by any warranty anyway

Exactly. We charged the guy for what he did. We gave him 'sa' access to the database and he tried to burn us.

I think you may be assuming people act rationally? They do not. Most will but you will always get 'that guy' especially at scale. People will lie about what they have done. Or not even realize what they did goofed things up. In my example the guy was asking us to pay them back for defective software (millions of dollars). Right up until we proved he had broke it on purpose. I later found out he did it on purpose (confirmed by former coworkers of his 'he likes to mess with vendors'). He was not even alone. At least 3 other people tried that trick on us at different companies.

Most service requests are 'easy'. Small tweak/reship and off you go. But someone who has really broken something can be as easy as 'ship them a new one' to weeks of trying to figure out why a device has suddenly started acting out of spec. That means at least 1-2 people working on something for a period of time. That costs money.

> I'd be really surprised if the number was more than 1 in 100.

It is the time you have to put into looking into why did you end up with a defect that is not a defect. The margin on some of these IoT devices is in the couple of bucks range or smaller. You have to dedicate 2 guys for 3 months to figure out what went sideways can eat the entire profit margin of the whole run.

I was just saying I can see why a company would withhold the info. I did not say I agree with it. Especially for things that are out of warrantee. I think companies are using it to basically have no support and basically leave what would be a decent customer hanging and hoping they can covert to another sale. There is no 'one reason' there is a list.

That seem extremely frustrating.

It does seem like there ought to be a reasonable split between personal software and business stuff. I mean you guys had a big contract, it is some negotiated thing between two peers, it could be reasonable to negotiate root in some subsystems, not in others. In the end you can’t really trust anything a system tells you if somebody has full root of it. It seems like you guys keeping control of the logging would be a reasonable give for them, if they expect support. (But why would you guys have planned around a downright adversarial customer? That guy is weird).

Also, doesn’t this seem like… basically some kind of fraud? I wonder if your annoying user expected to be able to add the savings whatever he got back from the support contract to his “value to the company” somehow.

For personal customers who are just buying smartphones, we don’t really have giant support contracts to screw around with.

It was frustrating. As it was me who got to speed weeks figuring out what this guy did. My group figured out the root cause though was the software was not doing what he wanted. So we made up a new group to sell that custom service to others. Everyone eventually came out ahead there. Because someone in his management chain realized that we had a good breach of contract case. Weird is nice for what he was doing. He was being a jerk because the stuff was forced on him. It broke his small empire of spreadsheets he was holding the company hostage with. Our 'mistake' was assuming our customers were rational. Many are. But you always have a handful that seem to just be in a bad place in life and they like to take it out on others.

For IoT devices/cell/etc it could be 'bad' to give out the root password from a company PoV. As there are so many out there with the exact same password on several thousand devices (poor security but you can image a thousand devices in a few hours). So once given out it is written down into some wiki and everyone has it now (welcome to the botnet). So if you get one change whatever you were given and assume everyone else has it. Or maybe the 'secret sauce app' is under some random user account. But give out root and that special secret account is bypassed. Then it is off to china somewhere to be ripped apart and resold under a new brand name and half the cost.

Then on top of that lets say you are a nice company giving the thing out. That means you will need some sort of training for your support guys. Documentation on how to do it. And so on. Those things cost money for a EoL product you no longer make anything on.

Like I said there is a list of things as to why not to do it. There is also an interesting list of why to do it. But the upside is low for the company to allow it. I wish more companies would do it. But it is rare.

If people want companies to do this, the company has to be incentivized to want to spend any time/money on it. If people can make this an upside to companies doing this and not 'shame' and 'you broke the law' the companies will help.

It's an old anecdote, but years ago Samsung refused a warranty claim for a _failed USB port_ that would no longer charge the phone _because I had rooted it_ and the fuses were burnt. I think this was unreasonable of them, but it's not like I had any recourse. If vendors were really worried about this aspect, they would/could implement such draconian policies.

I guess you want the equivalent of asking an adult friend to buy booze for a party.