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Comments: 140 +- Mobile: Windows Marketplace For Mobile Kill Switch Details on Sunday September 20, @12:41AM
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An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft recently gave more details on Windows Marketplace for Mobile during the Tech Ed New Zealand 2009 session titled 'Distributing and Monetizing Applications through Windows Marketplace Mobile,' led by Loke Uei Tan, Senior Product Manager on the Windows Mobile Team. Geekzone covered the event in good detail, but one of their points caused a lot of uproar in the blogosphere: 'If an application is approved but later removed from the marketplace it will then be automatically removed from all mobile devices.' That sounded a bit ominous to Ars Technica, so they checked in with Microsoft. 'In the vast majority of instances where an application is removed from Windows Marketplace for Mobile, users of this application will continue to be able to use these applications on their phones,' a Microsoft spokesperson told Ars. 'In the rare event an application from Marketplace exhibits harmful behavior or has unforeseen effects, Marketplace has the capability to remotely uninstall these applications. While we hope to avoid this scenario, we will make refunds available in such cases.'"
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Woah. That was me! (Score:3, Interesting)
Woot. I was the one that asked that question too! Well, I clarified the question anyway since the guy didn't get it the first time.
Re:Woah. That was me! (Score:5, Informative)
Troll? Nice. If that mod was actually present, they'd actually know that it actually was me. Well, if you knew who I was anyway.
Still, it seemed the presenter thought that he was asking if the app would be removed from sale, not remote nuked from devices. Anyway, pleased to hear that this isn't necessarily the case- the response seemed to indicate that the nuke would occur for any app Microsoft removed.
Bear in mind folks, that Apple can do, and have done, the same thing as well.
Parent
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Bear in mind folks, that Apple can do, and have done, the same thing as well.
[Citation needed]
Apple do not have the ability to remove an app from your iPhone, at least not currently (thankfully).
Re:Woah. That was me! (Score:5, Informative)
http://consumerist.com/5035528/jobs-confirms-iphone-kill-switch [consumerist.com]
Jobs himself confirmed the capability is in the iphone. I don't know if they've used it, but they can.
Parent
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and have done
Your citation does not say what you said it said. It does say they have the ability to remove them though, you're right. Have you got evidence that apple actually have removed an app, ever?
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No, I'm Spartacus! And my wife is too!
Thats kind of scarry (Score:4, Insightful)
What if the program encrypted your data and then it was remotley un-installed, what then?
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Or back up copies encrypted in another way. Lose one set? No problem, a different key, program, algorithm, or some combination of those unlocks another copy. If it's important enough to encrypt and important enough to backup, it's important enough to backup right.
Re:Thats kind of scarry (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't put a lot of faith in a platform in which I am not the all seeing, all powerful God of it's digital universe.
That's the problem. The platform that Microsoft (and others) provide is one in which they don't respect that cold hard fact. They refuse to respect it. In physical terms, it would be like renting a place and the landlord can come in and take out furniture and property at their whim. Sure, Microsoft is offering a refund. I don't care. I still had to come home to find my couches missing.
The poster you replied to mentioned encryption. That would be like finding the refrigerator missing and all your food on the kitchen floor. Will Microsoft be compensating you for the spoilage? The inconvenience? Most likely not, in fact, I am extremely shocked they even offered a refund.
This situation played out on the Kindle with 1984 (talk about a cosmic joke).
To bottom line it, people need to be educated about how all this "stuff" works. When they start to understand that they have zero control and are basically being treated like 4-year olds with their property, I expect change will come then.
Until that point, I guess we just have to hope these corporations are benevolent with our best interests in mind and would never, ever, compromise their ethics at our expense for a buck.
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To bottom line it, people need to be educated about how all this "stuff" works. When they start to understand that they have zero control and are basically being treated like 4-year olds with their property, I expect change will come then.
This depends on people caring to learn about the platforms they use every day. Unfortunately, most folks won't bother, and will complain at every turn when things don't work the way they want on platforms designed to allow them the luxury of "not worrying about managing them."
Finding some way of making learning about a platform an appealing idea, or at least making it profit
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They refuse to respect it.
this is perfectly right; There was a perfectly easy and right way to do this. Send a message to the user telling them to delete the application (with a click okay to do so) and then giving a message just before the application started up (with the same).
The reason that the feature doesn't work like that by default is exactly what you say. This is normal for mobile devices, however. Mostly the operator subsidises the device. Since this means that they are paying, they get to decide and at best they don'
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Rest assured, this scenario won't happen.
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What about the scenario where MS doesn't like a product for some reason other than being strictly insecure or malware?
We've seen Apple use that one quite liberally.
Kill switch (Score:2)
Apple have time and again rejected an App before it ever reaches an iPhone, just check out their Developer forum [apple.com] for gripes and confusion. However I don't know of any examples where an App has actually been nuked after acceptance and in fact Jobs' comment [macworld.com] about the hitherto mythical kill switch seems to suggest a policy almost exactly the same as Microsoft, i.e. if an App is accepted that steals user data or can otherwise be considered malware then Apple/Microsoft need a mechanism to disable it.
I guess this
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Apple pulled the Commodore 64 emulator from the app store after it was accepted. To be fair, this was after reports of how to get to a BASIC command prompt surfaced, which is why the app was originally rejected.
But Apple has removed previously accepted apps from the store. If they had a kill-switch mechanism on the iPhone, they most likely would have remotely remoted the C64 emulator from those phones that had purchased it as well.
see http://apple.slashdot.org/apple/09/09/08/1714205.shtml [slashdot.org]
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What about the scenario where MS doesn't like a product for some reason other than being strictly insecure or malware?
I guess it depends on the actual ToS once it's there. If it specifically says that Microsoft "reserves the right to remove malware", and nothing else, then both application developers and users could sue MS if it ever removes some application, arguing that it's not malware. On the other hand, if it's "it's our service, we do whatever the heck we want, any users have the right to bend over or walk out", that could be just as bad as Apple.
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Oh no if MS remotely deletes viruses it finds on my computer and the virus first encrypted everything then I could never get it back!
.... I really doubt that is the issue.
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Well. If the software used a known and documented cipher algorithm just decrypt it with another software that can decode that cipher.
If you "encrypted" your data with something that used some unknown and/or undocumented algorithm, then the data couldn't have been important anyway.
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dumbass (Score:3, Insightful)
Didn't you learn from the Kindle incident?
Re:dumbass (Score:4, Informative)
Since in all cases, Microsoft can only examine binaries, and can't see if such a Trojan horse exists, and even if they could see the source, it is still possible to obscure the behavior. If such a self-destruct feature is found, Microsoft can remotely delete the application, the Android Marketplace has the same sorta kill switch for the same reason.
If the program is just delisted, Microsoft won't remotely delete it (at least according to their press release). If you believe them is an entirely different problem.
Parent
Re:dumbass (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, this is different. Kind of.
A book, being a non-executable, isn't going to suddenly delete your data or leak personal information to a third party. As long as the kill switch is only used for actually dangerous applications, it should be fine, with one caveat:
It shouldn't be automatic. The user should be prompted with a severe warning, and then allowed to continue at their peril. Because there are always exceptions.
Actually, if Amazon had set up their system to do something similar, there wouldn't have been a firestorm. "Warning: The seller of this book has been discovered not to own the distribution rights to it. You may keep this copy, or click here to exchange it for a properly-licensed one." That's all they would have needed to do.
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Not a horrible idea (Score:2, Interesting)
If an application is doing some harmful (virus, worm, whatever) it should be removed. A mobile OS isnt like Windows where you have or should have an anti virus running.
Not saying Microsoft would be honest with that kind of power, I doubt it. Good idea though.
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A mobile OS isnt like Windows where you have or should have an anti virus running.
Are you so sure about that? As phones, etc. get more powerful, we're going to be able to do a lot more with them, and more viruses are going to turn up. It may be just as necessary in the future to run AV on your phone as on your desktop.
So what? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:So what? (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
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First Task (Score:5, Funny)
exhibits harmful behavior or has unforeseen effects
Doesn't sound like Windows Mobile and the Marketplace App are going to be with us for long.
Why not ask the owner 1st? (Score:5, Insightful)
I see the reasons for doing this, but I'm not sure I agree with the implementation. To me, a better way to handle this would be to not remove the application but to disable it instead and the next time the user tries to start it, give a short explanation on why it was disabled and maybe a link for more technical details with an option to enable/delete/stop. Sure, most users would probably immediately delete it, but it would be the users CHOICE too.
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Sure, most users would probably immediately delete it, but it would be the users CHOICE too.
You haven't really worked with many users, have you? Their program stops working and gives them an option to make it work again, do you really think they'll read/follow why they shouldn't make it work?
Re:Why not ask the owner 1st? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
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Yes, the user is wary of everything that is going on when they install something and browse the web. This is why antivirus software profits are dying, because the user wised up for once.
Re:Why not ask the owner 1st? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
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Because it was tried. And it was discovered that users don't read.
No. It was discovered that badly written dialogs using jargon and concepts that the average computer user has no hope of understanding were being ignored.
Software is soft, it can be anything we want it to be but many poor programmers (not to mention certain astroturfers) prefer to point the finger at users instead. Most of the time it's incompetent programmers guiding the user into making bad choices, not the user's fault at all. I've lost
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Two reasons. First, the vast majority of users don't *want* to deal with this - they just want their (computer|phone|car|whatever) to work. In this case, respecting their wishes involves making it so they don't have to see this. Second, computer users (and smartphones are computers, just small ones that happen to use ARM chips) are, by and large, idiots when it comes to computers. They're ignorant, but they don't even WANT to learn. Leaving something with the capability to spread malware or launch a DoS att
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It's the old "should I have the right to participate in a botnet?" question. Malware can and will affect more than just one person.
How does this compare to Maemo (Score:2)
If I want an app through http://maemo.org/ [maemo.org] for my soon to be N900 and some one doesn't like it, what then? See OSS and Linux doesn't have this protection that Microsoft and Apple offer.
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Maemo uses a fairly standard apt-based package management system. I'm pretty sure that if a package from one of the repositories had a serious problem, the repo maintainer could push a "critical update" that disabled a misbehaving program. Of course, if the user wasn't updating (I forget if it updates by default or not) then nothing would happen.
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Actually I was practicing sarcasm. I know it is rare, but I like the idea of being able to see how programs work, and have control over something I have bought. I know, it isn't the way most big companies like it, but hey I'm old.
I already have an N770, N800, and an N810 so i'm both hyped and familiar with the platform. I also have an N95 8GB (great) and an N97 (steaming pile of shit).
Well, my life is just on hold waiting for the N97. My only big decision is weather to stay with the evil AT&T, or switch
It's a matter of trust (Score:3, Insightful)
If any other company said "we are doing it this way because it's for the best... trust us" we might still have the same reaction to it. We see it everywhere we go. Amazon did it with their removal of eBooks. And in every case of internet censorship I have ever heard of, it went well beyond its stated purpose of "guarding against child porn."
It's bad enough that "we don't trust." It is worse when a company believes it can "impose a trust relationship... or else."
It's so simple (Score:5, Insightful)
Refunds as in "pre-installed MS Windows" refunds? (Score:4, Insightful)
I can't believe they are actually serious about this. Let's do the car analogy. I sell you a car, and find out later that a lot of those cars have been used as getaway cars in robberies etc. The police would like me to withdraw this car from the market.
So, doorbell rings on Sunday afternoon and a guy stands there with a box with has everything you left in the car, an envelope with the payments you have already made and a confirmation that the rest of your loan is cancelled, and he wants your remaining keys (because they kept a set when they sold you that car - think about that one for a moment). And he shows you the clause in your agreement in 6 point font in light grey on white where they make this legal. The car is about to be towed - they opened your garage already because they somehow gained access.
You need "car functionality": You have to bring the kids to school on Monday, you have a work appointment straight after, and you have to do some shopping because it got late on Saturday.
Would you:
(a) thank the guy, accept the box and figure out WTF to do next
(b) tell the guy to drop the box, hand over his copy of your car keys and tell him to be off your drive -minus your car- before you come back to the door with an appliance to assist in his removal which may or may not consider his health in the process.
Bonus question:
Would you EVER consider buying a car from that company again, even if it somehow got sorted out?
This gig has just closed the market for me for phones with an MS OS. I hope Apple doesn't try to pull this one either - they have no removal clause in their T&Cs (which is probably why they are rather retentive in their app checking to start with).
Where the hell have we got to over the last decade? Since when did it become acceptable for a company to become judge and jury about what you buy? /rant
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No, in my case it isn't. I paid the full price for my phone precisely because I don't want to depend on the carrier. Any time I want to, I can swap the sim card.
No, I don't, because the cell phone is fully mine, and the carrier had nothing to do with it.