The only issue here is that it was turned on by default.
It only records your use of the T-mobile app, and specifically tells you what it’s doing any why you’d use it. Off should be the default.
T-Mobile secretly records iPhone screens and claims it's being helpful.
Submitted 3 weeks ago by Pro@programming.dev to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.droid-life.com/2025/05/27/t-mobile-t-life-screen-recording-tool-turn-off/
Comments
FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au 3 weeks ago
libre@badatbeing.social 3 weeks ago
Well that app is getting yeeted pretty fast off mine, thank you!
macaw_dean_settle@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
*thrown, the word would be thrown. And even then, you would not throw an app off a phone. None of this makes any sense.
DBT@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Weird how it made no sense, yet you understood exactly what they were saying.
jjlinux@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
Threw yourself under the bus there, didn’t you? 🤣
libre@badatbeing.social 3 weeks ago
Alright so I connect back like two hours after that comment, somebody gets ruffled at my language and they were downvoted into oblivion in response, that’s actually pretty funny, 5/7 would do again
RickRussell_CA@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
with price increases a frequent occasion in recent times
Good grief this article was padded for length. Who speaks like that? How hard is it to write “with recent price increases”?
lefixxx@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I agree completely with what you’ve said. Your perspective is thoughtful, well-reasoned, and aligns with my own understanding. It’s refreshing to see such clarity, and I support your view without hesitation. You’ve made an excellent and persuasive point overall.
RickRussell_CA@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
No dialogue is ever static; every conversation offers an opportunity to reassess and refine one’s viewpoints in light of new insights. In coming to genuine agreements, we learn not only about others but also about ourselves, gaining awareness of how our internal values align with the broader spectrum of social beliefs.
pdxfed@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Your brevity is perfectly cromulent.
mtmtchy@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
Most likely written by AI
lmmarsano@lemmynsfw.com 3 weeks ago
Most likely written by AI
Are comments like this most likely written by AI? Am I AI?
philosoraptor
zephorah@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
AI. Probably.
southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Active vs passive voice. It’s a thing
RickRussell_CA@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The phrase in question has no verb.
FancyPantsFIRE@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
Man, that pendulum swing from “the uncarrier” to full blown horrible large corporation. That merger with Sprint sure has made things better for customers, right?
Clent@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
It’s only recording screens within the app. This sounds like an analytics tools. Any webpage can do this, common usage is click tracking.
AlecSadler@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Yup. Worked briefly for a company that would “snapshot” the browser view quite often, enough where if an issue arose we could somewhat replay the user’s interactions to try and repro the issue.
douglasg14b@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Pretty much any error tracking analytic software worth it’s salt does that these days!
InfiniteHench@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
This type of gross invasion should be illegal and land executives and developers in jail. Look at how Germany jailed VW executives and developers behind a massive emissions testing fraud incident. Enough is enough
deaddigger@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
The thing is the ceo wasnt jailed due to “hwalth problems”
InfiniteHench@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I am getting so cynical I think I’m just gonna choose to reject this reality and hang onto my own and believe he’s actually serving time
fwdbias@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
Yyeeeaaahh sorry no those are rich people you’re talking about we don’t jail them around here.
ReverendIrreverence@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Another reason to only buy unlocked, non-carrier subsidized phones with AOSP installed if possible
ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
They’re straight up screen recording customers? That’s crazy.
The crazier thing is, T-Mobile is USA which means they’re going to get away with it.
ayyy@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
No, they straight up aren’t.
ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
They aren’t what, they aren’t in USA? They do business in USA.
They aren’t going to get away with it? Yes they are, they are a large corporation in USA.
Echolynx@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
And yet it’s a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom AG.
orca@orcas.enjoying.yachts 3 weeks ago
Tons of corporate software out there will record user sessions in order to debug issues and replay a user’s interactions so an engineer can review it. Take a look at tools like Hotjar, Logrocket, and Fullstory.
Not making excuses for them and it’s probably less insidious than this makes it out to be, but people should be aware that this is not uncommon at all.
red@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
“Secretly”
bruhduh@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
To whom?
Guidy@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Ok that’ app is deleted.
paraphrand@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I suspect these recording tools cause perf issues on low end hardware.
Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Depends on the tool. A lot of them are only logging interactions. They then “play” those interactions over a cached version of the experience to show you a “recording.”
zephorah@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
I admit, my skepticism regarding these companies has me leaving a black sticker on my selfie cam for a couple years now.
RaptorBenn@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
If it was in the EULA, it wasnt a secret. Our ignorance of t&c’s doesnt excuse us.
We should all be advocating for limited T&C’s on just about everything, or atleast be concious of our own agreements.
Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It’s also android phones. All of the shots in the article are of android phones.
This is likely just recording sessions of the carrier’s app, not everything on your phone. Session recording for CS and UX is pretty common these days. It can be impossible to identify a problem unless you actually see what is happening in the app.
That said, you have to ask for consent for this shit. A lot of companies don’t alert customers when they release a new tool that requires privacy consent.
dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
This is so. At the bottom of the article it says:
So yes, it can only see itself, i.e. within the T-Mobile app. It’s still dumb.
I’m not well versed enough in Android app development to answer whether or not one userspace app can even access the screen contents of another app without root or special permissions, but it wouldn’t surprise me if there are several roadblocks in that path on the part of the OS for obvious reasons.
underline960@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
For quality assurance reasons, we’ve defined ‘within the app’ as ‘everything on the phone while our app is running in the background’.
AnAmericanPotato@programming.dev 3 weeks ago
This requires special permissions and explicit user approval every time an app starts screen recording, plus it shows a red notification whenever screen recording is active.
I think you could get by with a one-time user approval as a device administration or assistive app permission, which you’d need to manually grant in Settings. Unlikely anyone would do that by accident.
That might be different for system-level apps. I haven’t bought a carrier-branded phone in 10+ years so I’m not sure what that’s like these days.
Lyrl@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
It’s not possible on Android, which is incredibly disappointing because I play a card game exclusively on mobile, and would love to use a collection manager and stat tracking app. These exist for PC and Mac, but not for mobile because of the very hard no-record-other-apps wall.
dependencyinjection@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
Lemmy bring biased again?
OP literally changed the title to include iPhone when the actual title from the link says screen recording.
Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The article was updated. That may have been the original title since this was first discovered on an iPhone.
Buy yeah, OP should update this headline. Especially since it probably hits a lot more Lemmy users than originally reported.
Jordan117@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I wonder if this would include on-screen notifications.
bluemellophone@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
That would be a pretty big security hole in iOS if that was allowed, but it isn’t. Notification and other UI elements are rendered on top of the underlying app, which does not have access to or cannot see the full screen’s canvas. We can see practical implementations of this “snapshot” test feature in code:
github.com/uber/ios-snapshot-test-case
Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Not the tools I’ve used. A lot of them aren’t even actually recording video. They’re recording the user interactions in-app, then playing those back on a cached version of the experience that is hosted with the session recording company.
Vinstaal0@feddit.nl 3 weeks ago
Sorry to lazy to go through articles like this, do they mention if this is just in the US or something? Or do they also do this in the EU?
LilB0kChoy@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
Does T-Mobile operate in Europe? I thought they were a US carrier.