Discussion summary
Google's reCAPTCHA broke for de-googled Android users, sparking discussions about Android's Linux classification and privacy concerns.
What the discussion says
- Some argue Android is a Linux distro, others disagree.
- Concerns about Google's surveillance and privacy implications.
- Calls for regulatory action and accountability for engineers.
“Android is a Linux distro, though.”
“Google seems to be putting yet another brick in the garden wall.”
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- Hacker News
- I'm failing to see why they didn't just adopt Private Access Tokens (not that they're great either), where they could have at least:
- pretended that it wasn't all about invading peoples' privacy.
- done a good ol' fashioned "but Apple does it"
- pretended to be standards-oriented
- advertised it as something completely transparent to the end-user
Seems like that would've caused a lot less backlash while still achieving the goal of having some form of device attestation -- but I'm guessing that's not the real goal.
by thecatapps - I would love to see someone challenge this as an anti-trust violation. Google is using its market power (as the provider of reCAPTCHA) to actively prevent devices that don’t use Google Play Services from competing effectively.by amluto
- It's a move to block competitor AI agents while securing access for your own, classic ladder kick. The market for autonomous agents providing services and doing online work will be gigantic so, unless you want your own bots locked out from ie properties guarded by Amazon, CloudFlare, Microsoft etc., you will need a bargaining chip.by cornholio
- archive.is just asked me for a QRcode scan, I'm so ashame of that crap (it's behind Cloudflare), forcing website visitors to KYC? Are you guys insane!?
the web is ruined if you push for this, this is millions of websites that will suddenly force KYC? What...the...f
By KYC, obviously it's because there is very few non-criminal ways to have a SIM without KYC and get a Google account for Playstore without a number, so every website visits will be attached to a real ID.
I don't use a stock Android, right now I literally can't access many websites, this is genuinely crazy.
- > People running de-Googled phones chose those setups because they read the data practices, understood what Play Services phones home about, and decided they didn’t consent.
This is wrong. Many (most?) users of alternative Android OSes do use a variant of the Play Services (be it sandboxed Play Services like on GrapheneOS, or an open source, reverse engineered implementation like microG that phones home just the same).
Google seems to be leveraging Play Integrity here, which requires that the phone OS is signed by Google. This is clearly anticompetitive, I hope the DMA will do something about that.
by palata - Sites that use reCAPTCHA/Turnstile/etc. have already been broken for me for years now due to neverending captcha/refresh loops.
My ISP regularly changes everyone's IP, and I apparently share an ISP with people who suck, so I get flagged just trying to do all sorts of normal things. Some examples:
- I've never bought anything from Etsy but I'm somehow banned from even viewing their site at all.
- Discord immediately bans me any time I try to create an account.
- Can't buy flights from Delta, always gives a non-descript error.
- Can't buy concert tickets, it thinks I'm a fraudulent buyer.
- Most CF sites produce a "Sorry, you have been blocked" page, or just loop.
- Trying to buy products on a shopping cart will have my order silently flagged/canceled for "VPN usage" (I don't use one).
- Some sites/programs block me for being on the DroneBL or similar lists I did nothing to get onto, and have verified many times that it's not really coming from me.
I just take my business elsewhere... eventually I'll probably just stop using technology at all.
- I've kept a spare cheap android for too long and recently went with Graphene instead. I have one Google profile and only use it for Uber, work's Google Chat and maps. One bank refused to work (even with Google services) so I moved bank. I've moved most of my mobile use to self hosted (freshrss full text, password manager, calendar, tasks) with no direct internet connection.
It's a bit irritating but I'm glad I started down this journey because it looks more and more like I'm going to be avoiding the internet
by dwedge - My understanding is that this new reCAPTCHA is basically just remote attestation.
Remote attestation doesn't use blind signatures (as that would be 'farmable') so tying the device to the 'attestee' is technically possible with collusion of Google servers: EK (static burned-in private key) -> AIK (ephemeral identity key in secure enclave signed by a Google server) -> attestation (signed by AIK). As you can see if the Google server logs EK -> AIK conversions an attestation can be trivially traced to your device's EK. This is also why we don't really see and probably never will see online services which offer fake remote attestations, as it will be pretty obvious that the next step of running such a service is getting Google as a customer and having all your devices blacklisted. Private farms probably won't last long either as I'm sure Google logs everything and will correlate.
Unless something special is done with this new reCAPTCHA not only are you locking internet services behind TPM chips but you are also surrendering anonymity to Google. Unless you acquire untraceable burners for every service, the new reCAPTCHA will be technically capable to tying all your accounts across all these services together. Much like age verification. It may appear that the service would need to cooperate to link the reCAPTCHA session to your registration but the registration time alone will likely be sufficient (the anonymity set will be all but destroyed).
by coppsilgold