Something that is catching my attention as i mess with roms, is whenever I first sign into google services the google talk app is immediatly alerting me i have invite requests etc. meaning that app seems to be sitting in the background running and probing for network access. Clearly a battery drain, but I cant find a way to disable this behaviour short of freezing the app in titanium backup.
Have google really been this silly and put an social chat app on the OS that is forcefully always running unless removed?
On GB roms there is an option to not auto sign in, on ICS/JB roms (and also on GB if you update it to hangout app) there is no way to avoid auto signing in.
So am I right the app cannot be turned off, and is there any known ill affects to freezing the app?
Freeze it. It's always the first thing I freeze when I do a clean install.
I've been ignoring google updates notification and I have my auto update settings turn-off and yet, google was able to force their update. Very shady. I've been using an old chrome version and the notification keeps popping up to remind me to update chrome but I just ignore it because I don't want to update.Then a few days later, chrome started to auto download their update everytime I restart my phone so I always force close my download manager to stop it. Then this day, chrome suddenly hang up while I was browsing and my phone was unresponsive. Home and volume button doesn't respond so I pressed the on/off button to lock it then screen went off. Then when I press it again to show the lockscreen, no response. So I removed the battery and put it back then turn my phone on. Then chrome started to auto download again and as usual, I force close download manager again before it finish the download. Then a few minutes later, a notification showed and say chrome was succesfully updated. Feels like google have complete control of our phone. .
Heh! Feels like google compromised my phone... Told my phone not to update any app then google steps in and overrides my phone's setting and silently did what they wanna do. Shame on you google! Very shady company. I wonder what else they're doing on my phone without my consent. This should be put on the news to warn people. Stop fooling people that this is an accident because you don't accidentally override other people's gadgets and install whatever you want.
See how many people complaining about google's action.
productforums.google.com/forum/m/#!topic/chrome/gLlJazwMkFs
Some very weird things started happening on my phone earlier today. It's a Nexus 5X, running 8.0 Oreo, with the October security patch. I'm not rooted and I'm careful about what I install. The phone is fairly new, from this summer.
I will begin with describing what I did in the hours before this started. I can think of two things that possibly could have started it:
1) Two of my Facebook contacts sent malicious links to me an hour before. It looked like Youtube videos but was not. I did NOT open any of these links, knowing directly they were harmful (not sure if you can be affected by just receiving them, not clicking on them?). I received them in the Messenger Lite application (an official app from Facebook with scaled-down functionality).
2) A few hours before the Facebook links, I sideloaded an APK containing the new Pixel Launcher. I got the APK from Android Police/APK Mirror.
Can't attach links, but Google for: Hands-on with the updated Pixel Launcher, including the new Pixel 2 features [APK Download]
The APK was working fine and nothing seemed odd with it (I used the launcher for a few hours). As long as Android Police know what they uploaded, this shouldn't be the cause for my problems. I bet on Facebook Messenger instead. (People that click such malware links typically get their Facebook accounts hacked, however my account seems fine and my account didn't spam others with the same link. I did not change password or did anything else to "recover" my account yet).
So what happened after this on my phone?
Here is the first thing I noticed. I open Play Store to install updates. It turns out I have one update pending, it's called BankID. This is a major Swedish app used by nearly every smartphone user in the country, and it's for signing into government websites, bank websites, insurance company websites, and much more. When I click update in Play Store two things happen almost instantly:
1) Six pictures are downloaded from Messenger Lite to my phone. That makes no sense, how could clicking a button in Google Play trigger something to happen in Messenger Lite? In fact I tried it three times, with the same behavior every time. (Well, actually opening the Messenger Lite photo album, there are only photos there I already downloaded, so nothing new seems to be added there - but the photos were probably re-downloaded I believe).
2) The BankID update downloads to 100 % (the downloading takes a little longer than expected), then it halts and does nothing, i.e. it's not installing. No error message, it just stops there. I can choose to abort and try again, which I do three times or more, with exactly the same behavior.
Also, I now notice Play Protect hasn't run for two days, but when I try to run it, it seems to be down. After ~30 seconds of scanning it says "App verification temporarily down". "App verification temporarily down" could very well be connected with the halted update I just described? It still says it hasn't run for two days after this.
When I experiment, I notice other things that are very weird indeed.
1) Notifications in Gmail, Snapchat and possibly other apps aren't coming through. By opening the apps, I can sync manually.
2) When I move a file to a new folder using the Downloads app (Files app, stock one) I get a error message saying the move operation failed. This also triggered the photo notifications from Messenger Lite (same behavior as described above, with six photos). However, after a while the moved pictures are indeed in the right folder, even though the error message saying otherwise.
3) After some time I remove "app data" for the Google Play app. When I open it after that, there are now three app updates pending (e.g. Google Wifi also). But the same behavior occurs, when I try to download one or all of them, I get the Messenger photo notifications and the updates halt at 100 % without installing. So the BankID app - which could be targeted by attackers for obvious reasons - could just be a coincidence. It could have happened with any app I suppose, this was the only one pending right then. But still, why couldn't Play Store detect other pending app updates until I refreshed it the way I did? Was Play Store blocked from connecting to Google (or forced to connect to some other server, perhaps?).
What did I do after all of this?
I uninstalled three apps:
-Facebook Lite
-Facebook Messenger Lite
-Pixel Launcher APK
However the uninstall process was very odd. A process called "Package Installer" had a notification saying "Uninstalling Lite" and "Uninstalling Messenger Lite". It didn't seem to be working, it was stuck after some time. I restarted my phone and the apps seem to be gone now, at least they aren't listed in Settings --> Apps. So the uninstall process was successful I suppose, even though it didn't seem to work.
After I restarted my phone I also noticed:
-When I install Messenger Lite from Play Store now, it's easy to uninstall it the way it should be - in mere seconds.
-When I open Play Store, updates are now installing fine. Play Protect is also scanning fine now.
Everything looks back to normal now. But I'm not trusting my device. I'm gonna factory reset it. Before I do, I wonder:
-Can I feel safe the wipe would erase whatever malware I might have had on the phone?
-Is there something I could do to let us know what caused this? Upload a log here somehow?
The only piece of advice I have received as of now is: "Try restarting in safe mode, installing some AV software, and generally looking for suspicious processes." I haven't done that yet, would it still be a good thing to do? Must I install AV software before rebooting into safe mode, or could I install it directly from safe mode? (App suggestions, AV software?).
Usually I'm very careful and security-minded. I haven't had something like this happen before. So I'm very intrigued and mad about this. I'm gonna change my Google account and Facebook account passwords later on I think (I already have 2-factor authentication enabled).
One last thing: When I install Pixel Launcher on my non-rooted phone, it's not running as a system app if my understanding is correct. (At least it shouldn't be). But none the less, when I wanted to uninstall it I had to go into Settings --> Apps and tap "Show system apps" to find it in the list. Is that normal? Perhaps it doesn't mean anything, I just want to know.
Thanks for your advice in advance. Anything else to add? What should I do know? All you might have to say is appreciated.
Come on now guys, someone must be able to help?
If I factory reset the device, will it be clean? I didn't mess with custom ROMs, root, the bootloader or something else. (I suppose the bootloader is locked).
I googled this topic extensively and got nowhere, maybe because I "googled" it, LOL.
Chrome for Android discontinued bottom navigation bar, the best feature on tall phones and on mobile browsers imo. I uninstalled update on my Note 8 and got back to Chrome 64, put nav bar back on the bottom in flags.
This only seems to last for couple of hours, after which Chrome updates itself again without my permission. First it will show red update arrow for some time, then the arrow is gone and Chrome is updated.
I have auto-updates switched off. I pressed 3 dots in Playstore - Chrome, no auto-updates are selected. The last one was stupid advise from internet, as pressing that enables/disables all updates, not for specific app. It is the same as disabling it in settings.
On google forums in 2017 users complained about it, moderator was pretending to help and in the end he said "this is now resolved". Maybe it was for a little while.
I don't want to use other browser, this has all my auto-fill and bookmarks and it's much better on the phone than on the mac.
I don't want to disable Play Store either.
Is there Chrome mod apk that has auto-updates disabled or is there a way to really completely disable Chrome auto updates without root?
I'm surprised users aren't complaining. I'm surprised this isn't talked about on social media and in the press. Even if that was in their T&C and Privacy, I feel like they just showed us middle finger and I don't trust google at this stage more than facebook.
Please advise.
Hey guys,
For me the Google Assistant is deteriorating in experience. In the early days of the phone it worked awesome, so well that I could actually use it with screen turned off with all of its functionality. But later more on MiUi 10 and pie updates it has gone to gutters.
1. Forget screen turned off or lock screen, now it doesn't even respond to 'ok Google' from home screen.
2. It doesn't respond even on the Google feed page.
3. I need to use GA from headphone as I ride bike sometimes. Everything used to work. Now when I tell it 'navigate to XYZ', it says I don't know how to help with that.
4. When I say 'send WhatsApp message to XYZ', it says I don't know how to help with that.
5. I ask 'play music' it says 'you need to unlock your device in order to do that.' but if I say 'play coldplay', it'll actually start playing songs on Google music
6. When I say 'what's this song' which is the feature we use to identify the song playing in the background, it says 'it's not capable of doing so yet.
7. Sometimes while saving reminders, it still keeps asking me what to save or when to remind even though I mentioned everything already.
Everything above used to work absolutely fine. It seems to me either Xiaomi or Google is restricting GA. And no I don't have any weird stereotypical accent. Have you guys observing what I'm observing?