Junk Offender: Android bloatware
Junk offender: Android bloatware
Jonathan Parkyn puts the boot into tech villains, jargon-spouting companies and software stuffed with junk
It’s no secret that Android devices often come with pre-installed tools. Most are a complete waste of storage space, and many you can’t remove. When I bought my latest phone, I specifically opted for a Google-made Nexus device in order to avoid this junk, and yet it still came loaded with tons of pointless Google apps and tools that I’ll never use (see screenshot).
What you may not know, however, is that much of this so-called ‘bloatware’ on Android devices is completely unregulated by Google. This gives manufacturers, developers, and their dodgy advertising partners a whopping great privacy loophole, effectively letting them bypass Android’s security rules. They can then access data and device functions, such as microphone, camera and location, without your consent.
This scandal (and that’s not too strong a word) was recently highlighted in an open letter ( www.snipca.com/33917) sent to Google by campaign group Privacy International, and co-signed by 53 civil-liberties organisations and well-known privacy-focused initiatives, such as the Tor Project.
The letter cites a report from 2019 that analysed the behaviour of pre-installed software on phones from more than 200 manufacturers across 130 countries. It revealed that a shocking 91 per cent of the software hadn’t been certified as safe by Google Play Protect, which is Google’s system for checking that apps don’t contain malware.
Privacy International suggests that the problem is more prevalent on cheaper phones, which wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest. Whether or not Google takes any action remains to be seen, but it’s clear we need more transparency from manufacturers and providers about what the bloatware on our phones is up to. Even better, we should have an easy option to uninstall the whole lot.