People who are not from these countries (Kenya etc.) might not know that the following are already true—
[1] Many people buy phones on loans, because even cheap phones are quite expensive for the average Kenyan.
[2] These phone companies _already_ use device policy based apps to control usage for those who have not paid. The difference is that these apps are actually predatory, they are free to siphon off data and what not, and have the usual shadiness that you expect from apps made by relatively random corps who care way less about user privacy than big cos.
What this solution seems to be doing is providing a way to enforce the device lock policy at the OS level that actually lessens the vice-grip that these companies have on the user's phones and limits the power of the company to only block the phone from use, as opposed to the earlier model where they could do whatever the fuck they wanted on the device using their installed software.
This whole mentality of getting credit to buy pretty much everything amazes me. Heck, half the time buying from American companies they don't take actual money, only credit.
And then this, of course. The entire system is designed so that people are ALWAYS in debt, and then the hammer falls hard if for any reason one can't pay.
There is no requirement to buy things on a loan. Many people do it because sometimes it is cheaper. Businesses tend to require it for ease of processing or because it's legitimate and secure. Like say a guy wants 6k car from your dealership and will pay in cash. For all you know it could've been stolen as part of a crime. That cashed he paid can be seized, potentially even with the vehicle. If it was done through a bank, the headache and loss is now on the bank instead.
In my experience as an american, to survive and have wealth, you need to be an accountant with your budget. Almost like treating your personal lifestyle as a business enterprise. Including all the wants and toys for yourself. It's a very simple thing to do even but many people forgo it it and just look at their bank account number, often forgetting the oncoming loan payment, things payed with a check, ach's, etc.
A good one people forget is student loans or cash out refinancing. That money in your bank account isn't equity. It is an asset offset by a liability. If you have 6k in cash but a 5k loan, your net worth is 1k. Most Americans just see the 6k, forget the 5k, and think that aforementioned 6k is free to be spent as they see fit.
Most Americans are just brained spendathon morons with money. Look at the money people donate to streamers! It still floors me people just make absurd donations...for what? Someone to play videogames on the internet? Not to mention juggling social status with finances, most Americans tend to opt for the status symbol as opposed to the cash in the bank. This is why you see college kids with escalades or camaros when they don't even have a reasonable job to afford a payment on them.
> Most Americans are just brained spendathon morons with money. Look at the money people donate to streamers!
I don't agree with this statement.
What you and I see are those with the means to do this. I knew quite a few techie types who used to spend fairly enormous amounts on strippers.
However, the system itself is rigged against those who are barely scraping by. Here's my anecdote from the system:
I had a car seized over a single $44 parking ticket (parked longer than 3 days at the commuter train station terminal--which you can exceed by being a couple hours late after the weekend). Once it was towed (instant $200 fee tacked on) and in storage for a couple days, the fees were worth more than the car!
And they auctioned the car before the time to contest the ticket had even expired. I would have had to cough up several hundred dollars that I would not get back just to contest the ticket. "Innocent until proven broke."
If your institutional superiors yank your slave chain and you have the temerity to not show up immediately and say "Yes, massah!"--you will get the whip.
As someone in tech, this was just stupidly annoying and I'm probably going to save money--my insurance went down by almost the value of the car.
However, they swept almost thirty cars with mine. And were laughing about it.
At least one (I would actually estimate probably about half) of those belongs to someone who can't afford to lose that car but can't afford to get it back now that its been towed.
I can absorb losing a 25 year old car. Most people driving one cannot.
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."
> Businesses tend to require it for ease of processing or because it's legitimate and secure.
No. The prevalence of cars being bought with stolen cash as a down payment is so small as to negligible.
That might be some of the reasons they claim to do it, but the reality is simple: because it makes them more money. Kickbacks (sorry, "commissions") from financing companies, or the interest earned on in-house financing is the motivator.
There is absolutely a requirement to use credit and loans. When I bought my house it was incredibly challenging because the mortgage folk required the I had had 3 lines of continuous credit for more than a year. My income was not relevant, because that was a hard rule that they would not change.
I had to get a new line of credit and wait a year.
That did the following:
* The first credit check for the mortgage decreased my credit score, so interest rate on the new CC - that I *had* to use - was probably higher
* Getting the CC required a full credit check, which lowered my credit score again
* The new CC also lowered the average length of credit, which lowered my credit score *again*
So when I finally went to get loan preapproval a year later my credit score was lower than it had been the first time round, and that impacted my interest rate, down payment, and available loan size more than the fact that I was being paid more.
Sure you don't have to get a loan or credit. But if you don't, you get utterly screwed.
That is partially because of federal law and regulations regarding the mortgage industry. They have to have a standard they apply to everybody so as to prove there was no bias against any particular race, gender, etc. So in a non-regulatory world, they might have looked at the income you've had over the period of time and what you've done with it. That being said, it does look weird to a lender why you possibly make more than enough for a mortgage yet only have 10% to put down. In the pre-fiat days, 20-30% was the standard minimum to put down which was also a reason why houses were so cheap.
IIRC I put down in the region of 20-25%. I didn't have a credit history precisely because I had a good income, and my student loan was first in another country, and also I paid it off as fast as I possibly could so it had been paid off for years when I was applying for a mortgage.
The US credit system isn't devised to be something where those with little debt are to be trusted most. It's 100% the contrary. Banks like to see how you handle debt. Every line of credit they monitor your payments and what you do with it. Also having large amounts of available credit but not using it shows you don't see debt/revolving credit as "free money" but something you have to pay back.
So many Americans associate debt as being a bad thing. Debt is just an asset offset by liability. People of all walks of life in all income brackets can successfully manage debt in a proper way that can give you a good credits score.
People who don't know how to handle debt fall into two camps: those who are up to their eyeballs in loans, and those who pay it off right away because they're afraid of interest. Credit cards and HELOC's are a bit different simply because they are devised to be continuously open and revolving. Credit cards being paid in full is a good thing purely because 30% apy is usury, flat out.
Your income means nothing to a bank when you lose your job but had no debt. Your debt means everything if you lost your job but still could make payments on time and in full. Banks like to see that. It means you're a trustworthy borrower and can make payments on time in any situation. That's exactly WHY they give these people better rates.
Also because of federal laws and equal opportunity for mortgage applications, they need to have a system that is unbiased for all. So while you think you got screwed, again, blame the 2008 USA government. They attributed somehow the mortgage crisis to racism and not enough minorities owning property and less so on the real problem: private mortgage brokers. These people are human filth that lie through their way in the process of lending, break federal laws CONSTANTLY, and maximize loan sizes without a care in the world so long as it gets approved. They make payday loans look like childs play. Yet the federal government hasn't touched these guys...
> There is no requirement to buy things on a loan. Many people do it because sometimes it is cheaper.
It is if so many companies only take credit cards. They just don't take money.
I do agree on you main point though: Americans are extremely uneducated financially. But I blame the system with is perfectly designed to work that way -- there's just no way to buy stuff online in the US with your actual money.
Credit cards have more safety precautions built in them than debit cards do. You can dispute charges and they take care of fraud, not you. That's the beauty of this system. I don't understand why we need to honestly care for the people not prudent to the system at hand. If they aren't wise enough to realize "there's always a catch" then they deserve to be taken advantage of. Plain and simple. These types of people that have never experienced loss in their lives like that clearly have not been out much in general and these types of people really do need to realize that this fabricated utopian way of living has never happened, will never happen, and cannot happen as long as human beings exist.
This app is only applicable in Kenya and was launched with the telecom there. And I'm not aware of any American company that doesn't let you pay with a check card and requires credit. It's just onerous to do bank transfers here because we have check cards. They are used like credit cards for online purchase but just deduct directly from your bank account.
Again, you're only mentioning American payment methods (well, bank transfers from outside the US are prohibitively expensive).
I guess this is why American companies behave the way they do: it doesn't even occur to you guys that other countries use different payment systems (generally, far safer than credit cards).
I'll give a single example here, but it's full of countries with their own systems:
Here in the Netherlands, all offline stores here accept EU debit (some don't take cash, and this is becoming more normal due to COVID. Most stores don't take credit).
Local credit cards, however, cannot be used online. They have no "card number". Online stores ubiquitously take Ideal. Ideal it tied to ones bank account, and money is moved from payer to recipient instantaneously. It's super safe, since you actually need to either scan a QR code with your phone, or use a tiny OTP device you get for free from the bank.
Aside from not qualifying for a credit card here, I'd never get one because I don't _want_ a credit. I only want to use money I have, period.
It's not just an American thing. Islam, Judaism, and Christianity prohibit lending money with interest for a reason. Otherwise, you'll end up with a society built on debt with severe consequences.
This is why you see the pendulum swing the complete opposite direction into dangerous territory (socialism, Marxism, etc.) in a deluded attempt to mend things (it won't). The real solution is to cut the issue at the root: ban lending money with interest, and things will naturally follow.
There was a movie that took these policies to their logical conclusion: Repo Men.
"In the near future, you can buy artificial organs on credit. But you had better make those payments..."
When so many people don't have a way of accessing the internet besides of their phones, and internet access is essential to meaningfully participate in our society and economy, these sorts of actions become less defensible. It's all about context.
On the bright side for Google/Apple/etc, they have wormed their way into our collective lives to the point where "phone culture" might start to drive legislative decisions in the same way that "car culture" did in the past decades.
> might start to drive legislative decisions in the same way that "car culture" did in the past decades.
...and that's been an unmitigated disaster on several levels.
I like the idea of the internet being a utility more than personal car transportation being a utility but I can still see lots of ways for it to fall apart. Aggressive content controls? Mandated DRM for everyone? Strong restrictions on what kind of devices and software you can use? Crackdowns on encryption? All for your own good, of course...
Looking at the way it's moving, it'd probably be the exact opposite. I would very much appreciate a ban on manufacturers having any technical means to control their devices after sale. You bought it, it's yours, period.
What about cases where it's unclear whether the device is broken by the modification, or whether it broke under the modification? EG, early on in jailbreaking you could "brick" your phone - should Apple have responsibility to fix the device after that?
When so many people don't have a way of accessing the internet besides of their phones, and internet access is essential to meaningfully participate in our society and economy...
Let's zoom out a little more. If a phone is so essential yet the only way people can afford it is credit, what's the real problem here? Is it the structure of the economy?
This worries me. Not because of the current usecase - this is already a common practice with cars from used-car dealers (at least in the US). It’s the “what’s next” usecase, where this is included by default, with other quasi-legal triggers.
Some potential triggers:
Attempts to root your phone. (For example, via a honeypot root mechanism released by the manufacturer)
Using an app store not approved by the manufacturer.
Visiting “blacklisted” websites.
etc.
We might not see these kinds of applications for months or years, but there’s no reason we wouldn’t see them, other than relying on Google’s good will.
Remote disable systems (and GPS tracking etc!) are mostly seen at/associated with “Buy Here Pay Here” type used car dealerships that target buyers with poor credit. It probably wasn’t much of a stretch for tracker manufacturers who already produced devices for fleet vehicles.
Play Services already calculates some kind of security score for the phone based on whether it is rooted etc. and banking apps have access to that API.
Fortunately, this is not a readily accessible "score" to all apps and is (currently) only used by select apps as a boolean "passing SafetyNet" check. But Google has been starting to take it seriously recently unlike before by using hardware attestation in TrustZone, so it's been a cat-and-mouse chase to find ways to fool it. It's gotten quite ugly, especially for older phones that are no longer supported by the manufacturer — I'm currently appending an invisible character to the phone model name and faking an old security patch level to pass it.
As soon as they decide to enforce hardware attestation for all devices, it's over.
One fact not mentioned yet here in the comments is that a very similar approach already exists in the United States: If you don't pay off your phone your IMEI is blacklisted and (as far as I know) those blacklists are shared between the major providers in the United States. Therefore the device lock discussed here won't make a large difference in the United States.
The primary use-cases are probably:
* If used in the United States prevent fraud where someone uses a stolen identity to obtain a phone and then sells it in another market (that doesn't use IMEI blacklists) once it arrives.
* If used in other countries that don't have IMEI blacklists to provide a similar functionality as those blacklists. One benefit of that is that it could reduce the credit requirements and make it easier for people with no or a poor credit to obtain a phone.
Devil’s advocate - why? Banks can take your home if you don’t make mortgage payments. With this technology, there might actually be more access to devices because lenders have recourse, reducing the risk overall.
But banks can't remotely lock your front door until you pay up.
If this is okay, then what's to stop the same logic being applied to other communication-assisting devices (e.g. those speaking boards)? Wheelchairs? Prosthetics? Where does it stop? Because believe me, they will keep pushing, if it makes them money; companies with shareholders are legally obliged to.
A TV is something which is nice to have, but not essential. A phone is needed for calls, which are essential. Try fixing a billing problem or banking problem without calling the company.
When I was a lad our phone initially was a pay phone. I think the landlord was able to set the rate. It was free to receive calls.
My grandparents had a phone which only allowed incoming calls (which my older cousins did a type of phone phreaking on to call out, or at least pretended to!)
If you just need to make simple phone calls, there are very inexpensive feature phones you can buy outright.
That doesn't necessarily mean it's a trivial purchase—far too much of the country (never mind the world) lives in poverty—but it's not something anyone in the US would pay in installments.
A smartphone is essential for life today, claiming otherwise means you live in fantasyland.
A smartphone is required for thousands of essential services, up to the point where EU citizens need one to claim their right to reside in UK after brexit.
I needed it to open a bank account.
During covid you have to leave details in every restaraunt using a smartphone for contact tracing.
With 'car as a platform' and automotive corps at least toying with the idea of subscription based features (think: chip tuning and such) it seems tempting to expand this scheme to cars.
> companies with shareholders are legally obliged to.
Can we please stop with this meme? No, they are not "legally responsible" to keep pushing. Saying this removes the moral responsibility from the people making these terrible decisions.
The moral responsibility falls onto whoever decided to set up such a share model in the first place. Yes, I am aware that that's (almost) the only way to start certain classes of company.
The system is broken; our job is to work around it, establish a de-facto “shadow system” and then (if necessary) usurp the original system.
>if it makes them money; companies with shareholders are legally obliged to.
There is no such thing. The reality is that companies that don't profit maximize are replaced by companies that do profit maximize. The effect does not have to be formalized in law.
FYI, while legally evictions are supposed to go through the courts, land lords regularly find illegal or quasi legal means to evict tenants quickly. This covers the range from negotiating with their tenants (which is fine), to finding process servers who are corrupt and make sure the tenants miss their court date, to simply removing the front door so that the tenants have no physical security and have to leave.
The practice described in TFA lacks even nominal protection of due process. The fact that where such protections do exist they are often still ignored ... does not make the original inequity any more fair.
If your argument is attempting some other point, you might consider restating it more clearly, as I'm utterly failing to find anything but an implicit justification of Google's practice here.
I'm glad you are playing the devil's advocate, everyone saying "boo" is not really constructive.
The high level argument I'm making is that there are few benefits and more drawbacks to this.
What's the happiest possible success story we can tell here? Someone without a phone, uses loans they can only get with this invention. They use the phone to access social networks and build friendships, access government services, apply for jobs, turn their life around.
How likely is this story? Not likely. Getting a shitty phone is cheap, and this loan wont be needed.
So what is a likelier way this will be used? Someone is unhappy with their current phone and wants an upgrade. Having a history of financial irresponsibility, it would be hard for them to get a loan, but now with this tech they can. They get their new phone and show it off to their friends a few months earlier than they otherwise could, and reduce their consumption in other areas to afford their payments. In a significant minority of cases they fail to pay on time and their phone is looked, leading to significant distress.
In addition, it makes other things possible down the line. I believe some states suspend drivers licenses if you fail to make alimony payments. With this technology such a policy could be extended to the phone. In less democratic countries it could be used to disable phones of activists.
A rhetorical question: Is a country with legal indentured servitude freer than one without?
So instead of borrowing $1000 for a remote-disableable phone, you borrow $1500 for a phone that comes with less efficient on-site repo service. Is that better?
I think ideally people should not borrow with the phone as collateral at all, since it is a necessity for modern life, rather only use their future income as security. Making repo more inefficient will disincentivize it. Are there any current phone-loans doing repo?
That pricegap is absolutely fictional, the extra I'd have to pay to finance a phone varies from 15% to 0%, probably because the operator is getting bulk/discounted pricing.
Customers who pay off their phone receive no benefit from this policy.
The business model is purely built around customers who can't pay the phone off and that you must lock the phone to get it back. The end result is that a lot people who shouldn't have gotten a financed phone in the first place will get their phones locked instead of simply getting a cheaper phone.
Making financing more accessible to risky customers means more repossession. The repossession rate is simply a matter of company policy and not a matter of personal responsibility.
The economic downsides of people having their phones locked will far exceed the benefits of being able to buy a slightly better phone.
This is in Kenya where Safaricom's M-Pesa is widely used for mobile money/payments. From the article:
> the app was developed by them in partnership with a Kenyan carrier, Safaricom. A spokesperson from Google told XDA that the app was developed to help Safaricom with their new “Lipa Mdogo Mdogo” (Pay Bit by Bit) financing plan which lets customers get an Android Go device with monthly financing. However, if the customer could not pay an installment after four days of its due date, Safaricom locks the device with this Google app.
Does the lock also prevent M-Pesa payments? That would effectively be a telco kill switch for digital money wallets.
In this particular case, the payment provider (Safaricom) is also the one imposing the device lock. They could permit their own payment while blocking other payments, giving themselves defacto priority.
Yeah, four days is ridiculously fast. It should be like 2 weeks or something so people can prepare for it (eg. get an old phone from a friend/relative, transfer their photos and other data).
I'm OK with the general concept, provided the consequences of missing a payment are stated clearly in clear language.
Question: Does inserting themselves as a henchman to enforce claims made by one party of a contract between third parties result in a legal risk for google (in your jurisdiction)?
Does google have to verify the claim triggering the feature reduction?
Yeah, that's the one. Though I didn't actually mean to include it, because Cloudflare hasn't ever done this; I was just trying to include both Microsoft and Netflix.
A friend elsewhere notes: this is literally how China controls its population - they turn off the payment apps in your phone if you have open traffic tickets or -say- they need everybody in a city off the streets.
It's very effective, since many services in China expect payment through those apps, so once your phone is blocked you will comply.
I am curious how it works with credit for a car or an LED TV perhaps?
I have a car and even after fully paying the bank loan many years back, the bank name still shows up in the car's registration. I just recently checked them.
I have heard banks will take back a car if not paid in full.
> I have heard banks will take back a car if not paid in full.
I can only speak anecdotally, several years ago, I was in a financial pinch, and I called up my car's finance people. I told them about my problem, and that I didn't expect to be able to continue paying for my car, and that I'd heard that they would take the car back, null the credit agreement (if car value > remaining amount owed), and sell on the car. The nice lady on the phone told me that no, that's not what they do. They'll just wait until I default on X number of payments and then take me to court. Here I was trying to be helpful, and they gave zero shits.
Pro tip: if the loan is paid off, go to your local dmv and get them removed from the title as a lienholder. I bought a 1971 motorcycle that still had the bank on the title as a lienholder, and it was a royal pain for both myself and the seller. If it wasn't an extremely rare bike, I would have backed out of the purchase.
A bank will repo a car if it isn't paid, but if the loan is paid off then their name can be removed from the title. This doesn't happen automatically in all states though, so you may need to do some legwork. However, when the time comes to sell the car having the bank's name on the title is almost worse than a salvage title. Most car dealers will absolutely refuse to take the vehicle in on trade, for example.
Probably violates the contract you had with your bank, meaning it's legally not your phone any more and you lose the money you've paid for it already. (Or something.)
Breaching a covenant entails that the entire sum of the loan becomes due immediately, not that the bank can confiscate the property _and_ keep what you paid.
That question can't be answered because there's a binary blob on every modern smartphone that runs on the LTE modem hardware and has access to the device's memory and CPU.
Google is probably able to do that and also your phone’s manufacturer. Your SIM provier and some three-letter-agencies may also be able to do that, by exploiting weaknesses in the firmware.
Anyone who can hold of your phone's IMEI (e.g. from the network, from the packaging, or by getting access to your phone for a few seconds) can call a network operator and get it blacklisted. This doesn't lock it but does prevent calls and cell network connection. Although malicious state actors apparently can do much worse with the IMEI: https://www.businessinsider.com/saudi-arabia-imei-track-runa...
Title is misleading. We are talking about an use case where a mobile phone bought from a bank/creditor on an installment plan can have it's features locked until payments are resumed.
Can you elaborate a little on what you originally thought the title meant?
Because I thought it meant that banks would be able to monitor/lock your phone, which they would presumably use as a prerequisite for installing their banking app. Basically millions of people who have no other way to remotely access banking services being forced to have their most personal details monitored by large financial institutions and allow those institutions to cut them off from their phones.
Then it seems that it means that if you buy something on an installment plan and stop paying, you lose the ability to use it to the full extent.
We can make an argument about a phone being necessary in the modern world, but the second scenario seems much less Orwellian than the first.
This implies to me, that you may have had a very different interpretation of the title, and I'm curious what it was.
I also interpreted as banking apps having the ability to lock your phone (for security reasons).
I don’t know how you think that this is fine - it is not how financing works. You borrow the money to purchase the device, and go into debt with the lender. They don’t own the phone and shouldn’t have any kind of access to it - it is purely a financial dispute the moment you stop paying.
Forgive me for not knowing this, I've never financed a phone (I used those $40-80 walmart smartphones until fairly recently).
Do phone loans of this sort not function as collateralized loans? In such a loan, ownership reverts to the lender when payments aren't made, or perhaps several payments (depending on the contract).
Unless they installed a gps tracker and remote kill switch. Which they might well have done. With self driving cars, eventually the car may be able to return itself.
No, it isn't because it limits the damage to devices purchased from a source you can avoid. That you would want to avoid anyway.
This device has complete access to your Google account, probably your photos, emails, maybe even credit cards. Smartphone has become such an important piece of personal computing that you want to buy one straight from the manufacturer or their authorized dealer and, since you're on HN, preferably with unlockable bootloader.
Honestly, how long until all kinds of shady actors come up with excuses to gain access to the api? My device, my choices. If it is not paid, sue me in a legal court. Everything else is private enforcement.
No, the phone is mine, it is a collateral for the loan. If I'm not paying, the court must acknowledge the fact before the lender has the right to private enforcement.
They are "changing the perspective" to a behavior which is predatory and stacked against one party. A company cannot just write anything they want into a contract and expect it to be enforceable; there are rules surrounding what is and isn't acceptable in contracts.
Yes, I must pay the sum because I've borrowed the money and what happens to the phone is my responsibility. It has nothing to do with the rights of the lender. Their rights are to repossess the phone if it is not paid because the phone is collateral, not because they own it.
if its not paid how is it your device? If the agreement does not surrender complete control and with regard to the subject mentioned they are not, it is not yet your device.
now if you complete the agreement then if becomes your device. however contracts which usually allow for remote control specify it very clearly.
So do you think it is wrong for a bank to send a repo man to take back a car that someone hasn't paid the note on?
What if they set it up as a "rent to own", where you can get to rent a phone for $x a month, and after N months you own it? Would it be ok to restrict functionality then?
The bank can repossess a collateral if the contract is broken. That's why it is collateral. However, this is a legal procedure and is not subject to their whims.
If they set it as a rent, I'll just go to the guys who give me the same money, but I'll own the device. Renting it means that I have no legal recourse against unreasonable search for example. This is not a house and I don't have any rights written anywhere.
on an installment plan can have it's features locked until payments are resumed
Plot twist: when you finish paying it off you still don’t really own it. You are just permitted to use it be the real owner all along, Google. Until they want paying in cash again, and they cut off your OS updates. “Nice phone you got, shame if it got a virus”.
Any time you're "buying" a phone on a plan then it'll involve a credit agreement and there'll be a bank involved somewhere. So when you walk into your local phone shop pick out a nice shiny handset and decide on a monthly plan (because you can't afford 800 quid plus to buy it outright) you'll be signing a credit agreement. It's the underlying finance company that this app is aimed at, not the retailer or the telco. Until that 24-48 month plan is paid up you don't own the phone, the finance company does.
This is why I buy my handsets outright, not locked to a carrier (and also because of recent financial bad luck my credit rating is a total dumpster fire).
We've changed the title (it used to be "Google Launches App That Lets Banks Remotely Lock Your Android Device") since we changed the URL (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25027134).
I'm not saying this solves every issue, but the article says:
"With the device locked, users will be able to access very limited functions in their smartphones. These include emergency calls, incoming and select outgoing calls, settings, and backup and restore service."
For Enterprise Android devices (i.e., the one owned by the employer), the employers always had the option to install device management policy and disable parts of the phone based on those policies (e.h., remotely disable phone of an employee that was terminated). The other evergreen use case is for the parents to remotely disable/control/set policies for the phone for kids.
In this case, the telcos are just using the same device management policy. They can do so because they own the phone (have physical access to it and their legal contacts allow them to do it). I don't think Google did something specific here to enable this feature for telcos.
Note that the iPhones also has similar feature. So, switching is not going to help.
Disgusting, although not surprising considering that Google distributes several predatory lending apps owned by Opera on Google Play.
Google's willingness to even entertain introducing this feature for banks points to lending apps being able to not only shame you in front of your contacts, as they currently do, but remotely lock your phone in the future.
People who are not from these countries (Kenya etc.) might not know that the following are already true—
[1] Many people buy phones on loans, because even cheap phones are quite expensive for the average Kenyan.
[2] These phone companies _already_ use device policy based apps to control usage for those who have not paid. The difference is that these apps are actually predatory, they are free to siphon off data and what not, and have the usual shadiness that you expect from apps made by relatively random corps who care way less about user privacy than big cos.
What this solution seems to be doing is providing a way to enforce the device lock policy at the OS level that actually lessens the vice-grip that these companies have on the user's phones and limits the power of the company to only block the phone from use, as opposed to the earlier model where they could do whatever the fuck they wanted on the device using their installed software.
Thanks for the context, I'd be curious to learn about any more insights you have to share about the Kenyan phone market.
This is SUCH an American thing.
This whole mentality of getting credit to buy pretty much everything amazes me. Heck, half the time buying from American companies they don't take actual money, only credit.
And then this, of course. The entire system is designed so that people are ALWAYS in debt, and then the hammer falls hard if for any reason one can't pay.
There is no requirement to buy things on a loan. Many people do it because sometimes it is cheaper. Businesses tend to require it for ease of processing or because it's legitimate and secure. Like say a guy wants 6k car from your dealership and will pay in cash. For all you know it could've been stolen as part of a crime. That cashed he paid can be seized, potentially even with the vehicle. If it was done through a bank, the headache and loss is now on the bank instead.
In my experience as an american, to survive and have wealth, you need to be an accountant with your budget. Almost like treating your personal lifestyle as a business enterprise. Including all the wants and toys for yourself. It's a very simple thing to do even but many people forgo it it and just look at their bank account number, often forgetting the oncoming loan payment, things payed with a check, ach's, etc.
A good one people forget is student loans or cash out refinancing. That money in your bank account isn't equity. It is an asset offset by a liability. If you have 6k in cash but a 5k loan, your net worth is 1k. Most Americans just see the 6k, forget the 5k, and think that aforementioned 6k is free to be spent as they see fit.
Most Americans are just brained spendathon morons with money. Look at the money people donate to streamers! It still floors me people just make absurd donations...for what? Someone to play videogames on the internet? Not to mention juggling social status with finances, most Americans tend to opt for the status symbol as opposed to the cash in the bank. This is why you see college kids with escalades or camaros when they don't even have a reasonable job to afford a payment on them.
> Most Americans are just brained spendathon morons with money. Look at the money people donate to streamers!
I don't agree with this statement.
What you and I see are those with the means to do this. I knew quite a few techie types who used to spend fairly enormous amounts on strippers.
However, the system itself is rigged against those who are barely scraping by. Here's my anecdote from the system:
I had a car seized over a single $44 parking ticket (parked longer than 3 days at the commuter train station terminal--which you can exceed by being a couple hours late after the weekend). Once it was towed (instant $200 fee tacked on) and in storage for a couple days, the fees were worth more than the car!
And they auctioned the car before the time to contest the ticket had even expired. I would have had to cough up several hundred dollars that I would not get back just to contest the ticket. "Innocent until proven broke."
If your institutional superiors yank your slave chain and you have the temerity to not show up immediately and say "Yes, massah!"--you will get the whip.
As someone in tech, this was just stupidly annoying and I'm probably going to save money--my insurance went down by almost the value of the car.
However, they swept almost thirty cars with mine. And were laughing about it.
At least one (I would actually estimate probably about half) of those belongs to someone who can't afford to lose that car but can't afford to get it back now that its been towed.
I can absorb losing a 25 year old car. Most people driving one cannot.
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."
> Businesses tend to require it for ease of processing or because it's legitimate and secure.
No. The prevalence of cars being bought with stolen cash as a down payment is so small as to negligible.
That might be some of the reasons they claim to do it, but the reality is simple: because it makes them more money. Kickbacks (sorry, "commissions") from financing companies, or the interest earned on in-house financing is the motivator.
There is absolutely a requirement to use credit and loans. When I bought my house it was incredibly challenging because the mortgage folk required the I had had 3 lines of continuous credit for more than a year. My income was not relevant, because that was a hard rule that they would not change.
I had to get a new line of credit and wait a year.
That did the following:
So when I finally went to get loan preapproval a year later my credit score was lower than it had been the first time round, and that impacted my interest rate, down payment, and available loan size more than the fact that I was being paid more.
Sure you don't have to get a loan or credit. But if you don't, you get utterly screwed.
That is partially because of federal law and regulations regarding the mortgage industry. They have to have a standard they apply to everybody so as to prove there was no bias against any particular race, gender, etc. So in a non-regulatory world, they might have looked at the income you've had over the period of time and what you've done with it. That being said, it does look weird to a lender why you possibly make more than enough for a mortgage yet only have 10% to put down. In the pre-fiat days, 20-30% was the standard minimum to put down which was also a reason why houses were so cheap.
IIRC I put down in the region of 20-25%. I didn't have a credit history precisely because I had a good income, and my student loan was first in another country, and also I paid it off as fast as I possibly could so it had been paid off for years when I was applying for a mortgage.
The US credit system isn't devised to be something where those with little debt are to be trusted most. It's 100% the contrary. Banks like to see how you handle debt. Every line of credit they monitor your payments and what you do with it. Also having large amounts of available credit but not using it shows you don't see debt/revolving credit as "free money" but something you have to pay back.
So many Americans associate debt as being a bad thing. Debt is just an asset offset by liability. People of all walks of life in all income brackets can successfully manage debt in a proper way that can give you a good credits score.
People who don't know how to handle debt fall into two camps: those who are up to their eyeballs in loans, and those who pay it off right away because they're afraid of interest. Credit cards and HELOC's are a bit different simply because they are devised to be continuously open and revolving. Credit cards being paid in full is a good thing purely because 30% apy is usury, flat out.
Your income means nothing to a bank when you lose your job but had no debt. Your debt means everything if you lost your job but still could make payments on time and in full. Banks like to see that. It means you're a trustworthy borrower and can make payments on time in any situation. That's exactly WHY they give these people better rates.
Also because of federal laws and equal opportunity for mortgage applications, they need to have a system that is unbiased for all. So while you think you got screwed, again, blame the 2008 USA government. They attributed somehow the mortgage crisis to racism and not enough minorities owning property and less so on the real problem: private mortgage brokers. These people are human filth that lie through their way in the process of lending, break federal laws CONSTANTLY, and maximize loan sizes without a care in the world so long as it gets approved. They make payday loans look like childs play. Yet the federal government hasn't touched these guys...
> There is no requirement to buy things on a loan. Many people do it because sometimes it is cheaper.
It is if so many companies only take credit cards. They just don't take money.
I do agree on you main point though: Americans are extremely uneducated financially. But I blame the system with is perfectly designed to work that way -- there's just no way to buy stuff online in the US with your actual money.
Credit cards have more safety precautions built in them than debit cards do. You can dispute charges and they take care of fraud, not you. That's the beauty of this system. I don't understand why we need to honestly care for the people not prudent to the system at hand. If they aren't wise enough to realize "there's always a catch" then they deserve to be taken advantage of. Plain and simple. These types of people that have never experienced loss in their lives like that clearly have not been out much in general and these types of people really do need to realize that this fabricated utopian way of living has never happened, will never happen, and cannot happen as long as human beings exist.
> Google says they launched this app in collaboration with a Kenyan carrier called Safaricom.
This app has nothing to do with America, instead it targets extremely poor countries where many people simply can’t afford phones.
I am very confused by your statement.
This app is only applicable in Kenya and was launched with the telecom there. And I'm not aware of any American company that doesn't let you pay with a check card and requires credit. It's just onerous to do bank transfers here because we have check cards. They are used like credit cards for online purchase but just deduct directly from your bank account.
Again, you're only mentioning American payment methods (well, bank transfers from outside the US are prohibitively expensive).
I guess this is why American companies behave the way they do: it doesn't even occur to you guys that other countries use different payment systems (generally, far safer than credit cards).
I'll give a single example here, but it's full of countries with their own systems:
Here in the Netherlands, all offline stores here accept EU debit (some don't take cash, and this is becoming more normal due to COVID. Most stores don't take credit).
Local credit cards, however, cannot be used online. They have no "card number". Online stores ubiquitously take Ideal. Ideal it tied to ones bank account, and money is moved from payer to recipient instantaneously. It's super safe, since you actually need to either scan a QR code with your phone, or use a tiny OTP device you get for free from the bank.
Aside from not qualifying for a credit card here, I'd never get one because I don't _want_ a credit. I only want to use money I have, period.
And that gets truly annoying when you need to travel outside the EU, or buy from non Dutch online stores.
It's not just an American thing. Islam, Judaism, and Christianity prohibit lending money with interest for a reason. Otherwise, you'll end up with a society built on debt with severe consequences.
This is why you see the pendulum swing the complete opposite direction into dangerous territory (socialism, Marxism, etc.) in a deluded attempt to mend things (it won't). The real solution is to cut the issue at the root: ban lending money with interest, and things will naturally follow.
There was a movie that took these policies to their logical conclusion: Repo Men.
"In the near future, you can buy artificial organs on credit. But you had better make those payments..."
When so many people don't have a way of accessing the internet besides of their phones, and internet access is essential to meaningfully participate in our society and economy, these sorts of actions become less defensible. It's all about context.
On the bright side for Google/Apple/etc, they have wormed their way into our collective lives to the point where "phone culture" might start to drive legislative decisions in the same way that "car culture" did in the past decades.
> might start to drive legislative decisions in the same way that "car culture" did in the past decades.
...and that's been an unmitigated disaster on several levels.
I like the idea of the internet being a utility more than personal car transportation being a utility but I can still see lots of ways for it to fall apart. Aggressive content controls? Mandated DRM for everyone? Strong restrictions on what kind of devices and software you can use? Crackdowns on encryption? All for your own good, of course...
Looking at the way it's moving, it'd probably be the exact opposite. I would very much appreciate a ban on manufacturers having any technical means to control their devices after sale. You bought it, it's yours, period.
Should manufacturers have to support the modifications that people make?
Of course not. If you modified your device, and if that broke it, you've voided your warranty, doesn't it already work this way?
What about cases where it's unclear whether the device is broken by the modification, or whether it broke under the modification? EG, early on in jailbreaking you could "brick" your phone - should Apple have responsibility to fix the device after that?
It does become clear at some point while diagnosing the problem, which is when they charge you money for the repair.
But as someone who has literally never used their warranties... I can't relate.
and that's been an unmitigated disaster on several levels.
Regulating Google as if it was the phone company (no pun intended), the postal service, or any utility however makes a lot of sense.
When so many people don't have a way of accessing the internet besides of their phones, and internet access is essential to meaningfully participate in our society and economy...
Let's zoom out a little more. If a phone is so essential yet the only way people can afford it is credit, what's the real problem here? Is it the structure of the economy?
I recommend the musical instead. It has that theatrical lensing you don't really get with an action thriller.
IMO, it suggests that the logical conclusion has already been met long ago, and it's not something to anticipate in some imagined dystopian future.
This worries me. Not because of the current usecase - this is already a common practice with cars from used-car dealers (at least in the US). It’s the “what’s next” usecase, where this is included by default, with other quasi-legal triggers.
Some potential triggers:
Attempts to root your phone. (For example, via a honeypot root mechanism released by the manufacturer)
Using an app store not approved by the manufacturer.
Visiting “blacklisted” websites.
etc.
We might not see these kinds of applications for months or years, but there’s no reason we wouldn’t see them, other than relying on Google’s good will.
Common practice? Car dealers in the US can disable used cars remotely?
Next step, pacemakers.
Remote disable systems (and GPS tracking etc!) are mostly seen at/associated with “Buy Here Pay Here” type used car dealerships that target buyers with poor credit. It probably wasn’t much of a stretch for tracker manufacturers who already produced devices for fleet vehicles.
https://passtimegps.com/industries/bhph/ and so on.
Google and Apple already have the power to remove apps from your phone, I don’t doubt they could do everything else, should they want to.
Additionally, what this app does has definitely been possible forever through device management certificates; this is just an application of it.
Play Services already calculates some kind of security score for the phone based on whether it is rooted etc. and banking apps have access to that API.
Fortunately, this is not a readily accessible "score" to all apps and is (currently) only used by select apps as a boolean "passing SafetyNet" check. But Google has been starting to take it seriously recently unlike before by using hardware attestation in TrustZone, so it's been a cat-and-mouse chase to find ways to fool it. It's gotten quite ugly, especially for older phones that are no longer supported by the manufacturer — I'm currently appending an invisible character to the phone model name and faking an old security patch level to pass it.
As soon as they decide to enforce hardware attestation for all devices, it's over.
One fact not mentioned yet here in the comments is that a very similar approach already exists in the United States: If you don't pay off your phone your IMEI is blacklisted and (as far as I know) those blacklists are shared between the major providers in the United States. Therefore the device lock discussed here won't make a large difference in the United States.
The primary use-cases are probably:
* If used in the United States prevent fraud where someone uses a stolen identity to obtain a phone and then sells it in another market (that doesn't use IMEI blacklists) once it arrives.
* If used in other countries that don't have IMEI blacklists to provide a similar functionality as those blacklists. One benefit of that is that it could reduce the credit requirements and make it easier for people with no or a poor credit to obtain a phone.
We changed the URL from https://beebom.com/google-launches-app-that-lets-banks-remot... to the article that it is copied from but (unless I missed something) does not link to.
Note that this clarification was posted after the original article appeared: https://www.xda-developers.com/google-device-lock-controller...
I remember reading on XDA devs that Google's excuse was that this would not be implemented in the USA.
''Oh great, so Google only supports predatory practices in countries poorer than the US. Well then, dust off the Nobel Prize.''
In USA your phone gets IMEI blacklisted and you can't even do the restricted things listed in this article. Even in iPhones.
It's kinda weird to criticize in this way when USA already has a worse system in place.
Do you consider microloans to be a predatory practice?
https://unherd.com/2020/10/how-corporations-can-delete-your-...
That's kinda like the plot of Repo Men, only they went for people's cybernetic organ transplants...
Yesterday, "The driver license will be an App on your phone".
Today, "Yeah, just let them lock your phone"
This is an absolutely terrible idea.
Devil’s advocate - why? Banks can take your home if you don’t make mortgage payments. With this technology, there might actually be more access to devices because lenders have recourse, reducing the risk overall.
But banks can't remotely lock your front door until you pay up.
If this is okay, then what's to stop the same logic being applied to other communication-assisting devices (e.g. those speaking boards)? Wheelchairs? Prosthetics? Where does it stop? Because believe me, they will keep pushing, if it makes them money; companies with shareholders are legally obliged to.
Rental TV sets with coin slots that required payment to turn on were common in the 70's. This isn't a new model.
A TV is something which is nice to have, but not essential. A phone is needed for calls, which are essential. Try fixing a billing problem or banking problem without calling the company.
When I was a lad our phone initially was a pay phone. I think the landlord was able to set the rate. It was free to receive calls.
My grandparents had a phone which only allowed incoming calls (which my older cousins did a type of phone phreaking on to call out, or at least pretended to!)
If you just need to make simple phone calls, there are very inexpensive feature phones you can buy outright.
That doesn't necessarily mean it's a trivial purchase—far too much of the country (never mind the world) lives in poverty—but it's not something anyone in the US would pay in installments.
"Phones" are also dirt cheap. High-end mobile camera-computers are expensive.
The government can give phones away if they want to (and they do), no need to ban other arrangements.
"no need to ban other arrangements."
No cost benefit analysis neede? By this logic we would still have endentured servitude and child labour, after all they are just "other arrangements"
A smartphone is essential for life today, claiming otherwise means you live in fantasyland.
A smartphone is required for thousands of essential services, up to the point where EU citizens need one to claim their right to reside in UK after brexit.
I needed it to open a bank account.
During covid you have to leave details in every restaraunt using a smartphone for contact tracing.
With 'car as a platform' and automotive corps at least toying with the idea of subscription based features (think: chip tuning and such) it seems tempting to expand this scheme to cars.
Starter interrupters on cars with subprime auto loans have been a thing for a quite a while.
Thx for the info, i was unaware of this.
> companies with shareholders are legally obliged to.
Can we please stop with this meme? No, they are not "legally responsible" to keep pushing. Saying this removes the moral responsibility from the people making these terrible decisions.
The moral responsibility falls onto whoever decided to set up such a share model in the first place. Yes, I am aware that that's (almost) the only way to start certain classes of company.
The system is broken; our job is to work around it, establish a de-facto “shadow system” and then (if necessary) usurp the original system.
This is still wrong. Shareholders are _not_ legally required to "maximise shareholder value".
>if it makes them money; companies with shareholders are legally obliged to.
There is no such thing. The reality is that companies that don't profit maximize are replaced by companies that do profit maximize. The effect does not have to be formalized in law.
Because even in this case there's usually a court involved.
The owner just doesn't show up on the 4th of the month and change the locks and take away your fridge and microwave...
FYI, while legally evictions are supposed to go through the courts, land lords regularly find illegal or quasi legal means to evict tenants quickly. This covers the range from negotiating with their tenants (which is fine), to finding process servers who are corrupt and make sure the tenants miss their court date, to simply removing the front door so that the tenants have no physical security and have to leave.
Which are ... illegal.
Yes, I did mention that.
The practice described in TFA lacks even nominal protection of due process. The fact that where such protections do exist they are often still ignored ... does not make the original inequity any more fair.
If your argument is attempting some other point, you might consider restating it more clearly, as I'm utterly failing to find anything but an implicit justification of Google's practice here.
I’m just stating what happens; all other arguments you’re mentioning are purely figments of your own imagination.
Figments guided by what you wrote and how it appears in context. Points you may wish to consider.
Because you may need your phone to work or look for jobs that would then enable you to pay off the debt.
The devil doesn’t need your advocacy. This is designed to help wealth accumulators punish the poor for being too poor.
I'm glad you are playing the devil's advocate, everyone saying "boo" is not really constructive.
The high level argument I'm making is that there are few benefits and more drawbacks to this.
What's the happiest possible success story we can tell here? Someone without a phone, uses loans they can only get with this invention. They use the phone to access social networks and build friendships, access government services, apply for jobs, turn their life around.
How likely is this story? Not likely. Getting a shitty phone is cheap, and this loan wont be needed.
So what is a likelier way this will be used? Someone is unhappy with their current phone and wants an upgrade. Having a history of financial irresponsibility, it would be hard for them to get a loan, but now with this tech they can. They get their new phone and show it off to their friends a few months earlier than they otherwise could, and reduce their consumption in other areas to afford their payments. In a significant minority of cases they fail to pay on time and their phone is looked, leading to significant distress.
In addition, it makes other things possible down the line. I believe some states suspend drivers licenses if you fail to make alimony payments. With this technology such a policy could be extended to the phone. In less democratic countries it could be used to disable phones of activists.
A rhetorical question: Is a country with legal indentured servitude freer than one without?
So instead of borrowing $1000 for a remote-disableable phone, you borrow $1500 for a phone that comes with less efficient on-site repo service. Is that better?
I think ideally people should not borrow with the phone as collateral at all, since it is a necessity for modern life, rather only use their future income as security. Making repo more inefficient will disincentivize it. Are there any current phone-loans doing repo?
That pricegap is absolutely fictional, the extra I'd have to pay to finance a phone varies from 15% to 0%, probably because the operator is getting bulk/discounted pricing.
Customers who pay off their phone receive no benefit from this policy.
The business model is purely built around customers who can't pay the phone off and that you must lock the phone to get it back. The end result is that a lot people who shouldn't have gotten a financed phone in the first place will get their phones locked instead of simply getting a cheaper phone.
Making financing more accessible to risky customers means more repossession. The repossession rate is simply a matter of company policy and not a matter of personal responsibility.
The economic downsides of people having their phones locked will far exceed the benefits of being able to buy a slightly better phone.
The difference is the court. At least where I live, a court is necessary before anybody has the right to repossess any property.
This is a highly regulated process. In practice people have a few months before they have to move out.
This is in Kenya where Safaricom's M-Pesa is widely used for mobile money/payments. From the article:
> the app was developed by them in partnership with a Kenyan carrier, Safaricom. A spokesperson from Google told XDA that the app was developed to help Safaricom with their new “Lipa Mdogo Mdogo” (Pay Bit by Bit) financing plan which lets customers get an Android Go device with monthly financing. However, if the customer could not pay an installment after four days of its due date, Safaricom locks the device with this Google app.
Does the lock also prevent M-Pesa payments? That would effectively be a telco kill switch for digital money wallets.
There has to be some kind of exception for payment apps or else it's pretty dumb, how else would you make the payment
In this particular case, the payment provider (Safaricom) is also the one imposing the device lock. They could permit their own payment while blocking other payments, giving themselves defacto priority.
Yeah, four days is ridiculously fast. It should be like 2 weeks or something so people can prepare for it (eg. get an old phone from a friend/relative, transfer their photos and other data).
I'm OK with the general concept, provided the consequences of missing a payment are stated clearly in clear language.
Question: Does inserting themselves as a henchman to enforce claims made by one party of a contract between third parties result in a legal risk for google (in your jurisdiction)?
Does google have to verify the claim triggering the feature reduction?
Cory Doctorow's books are still not instruction manuals, FAMANG.
Okay, that's a new initialism for me. I know all the rest, but I can't figure out the 'C' for the life of me. Coronavirus? Chevron?
Parent might have something against Cloudflare?
Yeah, that's the one. Though I didn't actually mean to include it, because Cloudflare hasn't ever done this; I was just trying to include both Microsoft and Netflix.
A friend elsewhere notes: this is literally how China controls its population - they turn off the payment apps in your phone if you have open traffic tickets or -say- they need everybody in a city off the streets.
It's very effective, since many services in China expect payment through those apps, so once your phone is blocked you will comply.
I am curious how it works with credit for a car or an LED TV perhaps?
I have a car and even after fully paying the bank loan many years back, the bank name still shows up in the car's registration. I just recently checked them.
I have heard banks will take back a car if not paid in full.
Remote kill switches for cars exist. They’re called “starter interrupt”…
> I have heard banks will take back a car if not paid in full.
I can only speak anecdotally, several years ago, I was in a financial pinch, and I called up my car's finance people. I told them about my problem, and that I didn't expect to be able to continue paying for my car, and that I'd heard that they would take the car back, null the credit agreement (if car value > remaining amount owed), and sell on the car. The nice lady on the phone told me that no, that's not what they do. They'll just wait until I default on X number of payments and then take me to court. Here I was trying to be helpful, and they gave zero shits.
Pro tip: if the loan is paid off, go to your local dmv and get them removed from the title as a lienholder. I bought a 1971 motorcycle that still had the bank on the title as a lienholder, and it was a royal pain for both myself and the seller. If it wasn't an extremely rare bike, I would have backed out of the purchase.
A bank will repo a car if it isn't paid, but if the loan is paid off then their name can be removed from the title. This doesn't happen automatically in all states though, so you may need to do some legwork. However, when the time comes to sell the car having the bank's name on the title is almost worse than a salvage title. Most car dealers will absolutely refuse to take the vehicle in on trade, for example.
So what happens if you disable the device admin service this app relies upon to function?
Probably violates the contract you had with your bank, meaning it's legally not your phone any more and you lose the money you've paid for it already. (Or something.)
Breaching a covenant entails that the entire sum of the loan becomes due immediately, not that the bank can confiscate the property _and_ keep what you paid.
They can assess fees that are likely more than what you paid.
I've purchased my phone and paid cash. My cell network is a SIM-only contract.
Is the number of ways for anyone to say "Lock billpg's phone." and for my phone to get locked as a result, exactly zero?
That question can't be answered because there's a binary blob on every modern smartphone that runs on the LTE modem hardware and has access to the device's memory and CPU.
Sooooo... Maybe?
Google is probably able to do that and also your phone’s manufacturer. Your SIM provier and some three-letter-agencies may also be able to do that, by exploiting weaknesses in the firmware.
Anyone who can hold of your phone's IMEI (e.g. from the network, from the packaging, or by getting access to your phone for a few seconds) can call a network operator and get it blacklisted. This doesn't lock it but does prevent calls and cell network connection. Although malicious state actors apparently can do much worse with the IMEI: https://www.businessinsider.com/saudi-arabia-imei-track-runa...
Apple sells iPhones financed by Apple Card, too. What happens to someone's phone if they don't pay?
It dings/tarnishes your credit. Enjoy the phone but lenders will think twice with such a 'minimal' purchase wasn't paid for.
My question was what would happen to their phone.
You're stating the obvious that there would be some impact on credit, but that's not relevant here?
Don't be evil guys!
Who the hell gets a loan to pay for a phone?
If you sign up for a carrier and they provide a phone with payments folded into your monthly bill, is that not a loan?
Yes, that's a loan. Who the hell would do that?
A person in Kenya who can’t afford to pay cash for a phone? Why is this even a question?
in their new iPhone marketing campaign, google announce....
I wouldn't be so sure. Apple wants to increase their market share, and reducing risk so they can extend more credit seems like a great way to do it.
Title is misleading. We are talking about an use case where a mobile phone bought from a bank/creditor on an installment plan can have it's features locked until payments are resumed.
Oh wow. That’s even worse than what the title implies.
Can you elaborate a little on what you originally thought the title meant?
Because I thought it meant that banks would be able to monitor/lock your phone, which they would presumably use as a prerequisite for installing their banking app. Basically millions of people who have no other way to remotely access banking services being forced to have their most personal details monitored by large financial institutions and allow those institutions to cut them off from their phones.
Then it seems that it means that if you buy something on an installment plan and stop paying, you lose the ability to use it to the full extent.
We can make an argument about a phone being necessary in the modern world, but the second scenario seems much less Orwellian than the first.
This implies to me, that you may have had a very different interpretation of the title, and I'm curious what it was.
I also interpreted as banking apps having the ability to lock your phone (for security reasons).
I don’t know how you think that this is fine - it is not how financing works. You borrow the money to purchase the device, and go into debt with the lender. They don’t own the phone and shouldn’t have any kind of access to it - it is purely a financial dispute the moment you stop paying.
Forgive me for not knowing this, I've never financed a phone (I used those $40-80 walmart smartphones until fairly recently).
Do phone loans of this sort not function as collateralized loans? In such a loan, ownership reverts to the lender when payments aren't made, or perhaps several payments (depending on the contract).
Even in that case. Think of a car lease, ownership can be reverted but the lessor has no access to the vehicle on their own.
Unless they installed a gps tracker and remote kill switch. Which they might well have done. With self driving cars, eventually the car may be able to return itself.
They send a repo-person after you instead.
Is that really the model you want here?
No, it isn't because it limits the damage to devices purchased from a source you can avoid. That you would want to avoid anyway.
This device has complete access to your Google account, probably your photos, emails, maybe even credit cards. Smartphone has become such an important piece of personal computing that you want to buy one straight from the manufacturer or their authorized dealer and, since you're on HN, preferably with unlockable bootloader.
Yes, but I couldn't post a title that long ...
Honestly, how long until all kinds of shady actors come up with excuses to gain access to the api? My device, my choices. If it is not paid, sue me in a legal court. Everything else is private enforcement.
If it's financed it.. isn't really your device until it's paid off. By your logic repo men should be illegal.
No, the phone is mine, it is a collateral for the loan. If I'm not paying, the court must acknowledge the fact before the lender has the right to private enforcement.
Well they are changing the perspective. The phone is theirs until the payment is complete.
Very likely that's how they write the contract too. They may still sell it like "auto pilot" but the paperwork defines the actual contract.
They are "changing the perspective" to a behavior which is predatory and stacked against one party. A company cannot just write anything they want into a contract and expect it to be enforceable; there are rules surrounding what is and isn't acceptable in contracts.
Rent-to-own has been a thing for ages.
While predatory, it's apparently acceptable in contracts.
Everything is legal in a sufficiently corrupt system. It doesn't make it moral.
Even if the phone were destroyed, you would still have to pay the debt.
When purchasing a phone on credit, you sign a contract which gives the lender certain rights they wouldn’t otherwise have. No “rights” are broken.
Yes, I must pay the sum because I've borrowed the money and what happens to the phone is my responsibility. It has nothing to do with the rights of the lender. Their rights are to repossess the phone if it is not paid because the phone is collateral, not because they own it.
Using repo men (self-repossession) is in fact illegal in much of the civilized world.
if its not paid how is it your device? If the agreement does not surrender complete control and with regard to the subject mentioned they are not, it is not yet your device.
now if you complete the agreement then if becomes your device. however contracts which usually allow for remote control specify it very clearly.
Because I'm borrowing from the lender to buy from the seller. The fact that they are the same entity is not significant.
So do you think it is wrong for a bank to send a repo man to take back a car that someone hasn't paid the note on?
What if they set it up as a "rent to own", where you can get to rent a phone for $x a month, and after N months you own it? Would it be ok to restrict functionality then?
The bank can repossess a collateral if the contract is broken. That's why it is collateral. However, this is a legal procedure and is not subject to their whims. If they set it as a rent, I'll just go to the guys who give me the same money, but I'll own the device. Renting it means that I have no legal recourse against unreasonable search for example. This is not a house and I don't have any rights written anywhere.
on an installment plan can have it's features locked until payments are resumed
Plot twist: when you finish paying it off you still don’t really own it. You are just permitted to use it be the real owner all along, Google. Until they want paying in cash again, and they cut off your OS updates. “Nice phone you got, shame if it got a virus”.
Who the flip would want to buy a phone from their bank?
I already avoid buying my phone hardware from my telco service provider, even if it means I have to pay more (for an unlocked product).
Any time you're "buying" a phone on a plan then it'll involve a credit agreement and there'll be a bank involved somewhere. So when you walk into your local phone shop pick out a nice shiny handset and decide on a monthly plan (because you can't afford 800 quid plus to buy it outright) you'll be signing a credit agreement. It's the underlying finance company that this app is aimed at, not the retailer or the telco. Until that 24-48 month plan is paid up you don't own the phone, the finance company does.
This is why I buy my handsets outright, not locked to a carrier (and also because of recent financial bad luck my credit rating is a total dumpster fire).
We've changed the title (it used to be "Google Launches App That Lets Banks Remotely Lock Your Android Device") since we changed the URL (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25027134).
Cant wait for iOS to copy this
Totally possible and expected. By the look of it, this is going to spread for Android in all jurisdiction soon.
iOS already has that - if you default on payments your IMEI gets blacklisted and your iPhone stops connecting to network.
With this, google is venturing into a dangerous territory ... what of a life threatening emergency occurred while the phone is locked?
I'm not saying this solves every issue, but the article says:
Yes and how will Goggle have every hospital, transplant centers number to white list.
I'm not saying it's right or "good", but the very same problem applies to people who have their phone line cut off because they've not paid the bill.
Emergency calls are allowed
Something tells me they would not block the ability to call 911.
For Enterprise Android devices (i.e., the one owned by the employer), the employers always had the option to install device management policy and disable parts of the phone based on those policies (e.h., remotely disable phone of an employee that was terminated). The other evergreen use case is for the parents to remotely disable/control/set policies for the phone for kids.
In this case, the telcos are just using the same device management policy. They can do so because they own the phone (have physical access to it and their legal contacts allow them to do it). I don't think Google did something specific here to enable this feature for telcos.
Note that the iPhones also has similar feature. So, switching is not going to help.
Disgusting, although not surprising considering that Google distributes several predatory lending apps owned by Opera on Google Play.
Google's willingness to even entertain introducing this feature for banks points to lending apps being able to not only shame you in front of your contacts, as they currently do, but remotely lock your phone in the future.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-24/google-ba...