Beware of ads that use inaudible sound to link your phone, TV, tablet, and PC

As a result of early privacy breaches, later releases of iOS added per-function permissions on demand, leap-frogging Android in terms of permissions functionality. Android has had some level of per-function permissions on demand in the works since Android 4.4 -- and you could use it in unofficial Android builds like CyanogenMod by turning off individual permissions for apps -- but the feature only finally made it into official builds in Android 6.0. It also got it properly in the API and manifest of apps as well so they can ask permissions as they need them... like the Facebook app needing access to your photos when you select to attach a photo to a post.

Older applications weren’t designed for this feature, and they generally just assume they have access to any permissions they request. Most of the time, applications should just continue working normally if you revoke their permissions. In some rare cases, the application may crash — if it does, you’ll need to give it permission again.

So yeah, if Facebook decides to stick to api level 22 for a while, you won't be able to un-privilege it.

The Brooklyn Museum did a nice writeup of why bluetooth beacons at scale didn't work for them.

https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/community/blogosphere/2015/02...

It is possible to hack the Android platform or OS to prevent or mitigate mischief like that, but ironically, it requires devices to be rooted.

Android architecture rewards the bad guys by obstructing the good guys!

I think mass migration of all devices to something like Cyanogenmod is the only solution.

Wasn't there one of the asian manufacturers the other month (I wanna say... Samsung maybe? please correct me if I'm wrong) that got caught building a SmartTV that recorded audio and sent those packets up through the network to who-knows-where? They eventually rolled that feature back, but not before they got enough press that they had to make a statement saying it was only for diagnostics or testing or something like that.

If you're, say, a multinational with a large mobile device division and a strong corporate mandate to make sure the mobile device ecosystem stays strong so profits keep flowing, is it too far fetched to think you would start looking for cross-division synergies that, lets say, grease the flow in this ecosystem? Perhaps you could introduce an extra component (or optimize an existing one for different parameters) that if, say, it saw a signal of a certain form, it might reproduce it in an invisible and obtrusive way. And if it helps major players in the device ecosystem, well, great, the ecosystem stays strong and mobile devices continue to roll off the shelf.

Complete speculation, but not an unreasonable line of thinking?

    void a(String s1, String s2, String s3, String s4)
    {
        i();
        p.setVisibility(8);
        w.setVisibility(8);
        s.setVisibility(0);
        s2 = Uri.decode(Uri.encode(s2));
        if ("video".equals(s4.toLowerCase()))
        {
            s2 = new StringBuilder();
            s2.append(s3);
            t.loadDataWithBaseURL("file:///android_asset/", s2.toString(), "text/html", "utf-8", null);
            q.setText("Demo : Audio Beacon Detected");
            r.setText(s1);
            q.setText("Found a match !!");
            return;
        } else
        {
            StringBuilder stringbuilder = new StringBuilder();
            stringbuilder.append("<html><body style='margin:0;padding:0;background-color:black;'><a href='").append(s2).append("' ><img src='").append(s3).append("' height=250 style='margin:0 auto;display:block;' /></a></body></html>");
            t.loadDataWithBaseURL("file:///android_asset/", stringbuilder.toString(), "text/html", "utf-8", null);
            s3 = new StringBuilder();
            s3.append("<html><body style='margin:0;padding:0;background-color:black;'><a href='").append(s2).append("' ><img src='").append(s4).append("' height=50 style='margin:0 auto;display:block;' /></a></body></html>");
            u.loadDataWithBaseURL("file:///android_asset/", s3.toString(), "text/html", "utf-8", null);
            q.setText("Demo : Audio Beacon Detected");
            r.setText(s1);
            q.setText("Found a match !!");
            return;
        }
    }

Anyways... Here's the (clean) link to com.silverpush.sdk: https://www.dropbox.com/s/i9uaoqp10k4lmaf/SilverPush%20Beaco...