Comment on Google’s ‘Secret’ Update Scans All Your Photos

teohhanhui@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

• kattfisk@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  To quote the most salient post

  The app doesn’t provide client-side scanning used to report things to Google or anyone else. It provides on-device machine learning models usable by applications to classify content as being spam, scams, malware, etc. This allows apps to check content locally without sharing it with a service and mark it with warnings for users.

  Which is a sorely needed feature to tackle problems like SMS scams

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  • throwback3090@lemmy.nz ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Why do you need machine learning for detecting scams?

    Is someone in 2025 trying to help you out of the goodness of their heart? No. Move on.

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    • Aermis@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      If you want to talk money then it is in businesses best interest that money from their users is being used on their products, not being scammed through the use of their products.

      Secondly machine learning or algorithms can detect patterns in ways a human can’t. In some circles I’ve read that the programmers themselves can’t decipher in the code how the end result is spat out, just that the inputs will guide it. Besides the fact that scammers can circumvent any carefully laid down antispam, antiscam, anti-virus through traditional software, a learning algorithm will be magnitudes harder to bypass. Or easier. Depends on the algorithm

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      • throwback3090@lemmy.nz ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        I don’t know the point of the first paragraph…scams are bad? Yes? Does anyone not agree? (I guess scammers)

        For the second we are talking in the wild abstract, so I feel comfortable pointing out that every automated system humanity has come up with so far has pulled in our own biases and since ai models are trained by us, this should be no different. Second, if the models are fallible, you cannot talk about success without talking false positives. I don’t care if it blocks every scammer out there if it also blocks a message from my doctor. Until we have data on consensus between these new algorithms and desired outcomes, it’s pointless to claim they are better at X.

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    • kattfisk@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Blaming the victim solves nothing.

      Scamming is a rapidly growing industry that is becoming more professional and specialized all the time. Anyone can be scammed.

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  • desktop_user@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    if the cellular carriers were forced to verify that caller-ID (or SMS equivalent) was accurate SMS scams would disappear (or at least be weaker). Google shouldn’t have to do the job of the carriers, and if they wanted to implement this anyway they should let the user choose what service they want to perform the task similar to how they let the user choose which “Android system WebView” should be used.

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    • Aermis@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Carriers don’t care. They are selling you data. They don’t care how it’s used. Google is selling you a phone. Apple held down the market for a long time for being the phone that has some of the best security. As an android user that makes me want to switch phones. Not carriers.

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    • kattfisk@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      No, that wouldn’t make much difference. I don’t think I’ve seen a real world attack via SMS that even bothered to “forge” the from-field. People are used to getting texts from unknown numbers.

      And how would you possibly implement this supposed “caller-id” for a field that doesn’t even have to be set to a number?

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      • desktop_user@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        caller id is the thing that tells you the number. it isn’t cheap to forge, but it’s the only way a scan could reasonably effect anyone with more than half a brain. there is never a reason to send information to an unknown SMS number, or click on a link from a text message from an unknown number.

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  • cley_faye@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    You don’t need advanced scanning technology running on every device with access to every single bit of data you ever seen to detect scam. You need telco operator to stop forwarding forged messages headers and… that’s it. Cheap, efficient, zero risk related to invasion of privacy through a piece of software you did not need but was put there “for your own good”.

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    • zlatko@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      I will perhaps be nitpicking, but… not exactly, not always. People get their shit hacked all the time due to poor practices. And then those hacked things can send emails and texts and other spam all they want, and it’ll not be forged headers, so you still need spam filtering.

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• Spaniard@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  If the app did what op is claiming then the EU would have a field day fining google.

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• throwback3090@lemmy.nz ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  graphene folks have a real love for the word misinformation. That’s not you under there👻, Daniel, is it?

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• dan@upvote.au ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  So is this really just a local AI model? Or is it something bigger? My S25 Ultra has the app but it hasn’t used any battery or data.

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  • Auli@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    I mean the grapheneos devs say it is. Are they going to lie.

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    • throwback3090@lemmy.nz ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Yes, absolutely, and regularly, and without shame.

      But not usually about technical stuff.

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• ad_on_is@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  And what exactly does that have to do with GrapheneOS?

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  • teohhanhui@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Please, read the links. They are the security and privacy experts when it comes to Android. That’s their explanation of what this Android System SafetyCore actually is.

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  • loics2@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Have you even read the article you posted? It mentions these posts by GrapheneOS

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