this post was submitted on 28 May 2025
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T-Mobile secretly records iPhone screens and claims it's being helpful. (www.droid-life.com)
submitted 1 month ago by Pro@programming.dev to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 228 points 1 month ago (23 children)

  1. It’s also android phones. All of the shots in the article are of android phones.

  2. This is likely just recording sessions of the carrier’s app, not everything on your phone. Session recording for CS and UX is pretty common these days. It can be impossible to identify a problem unless you actually see what is happening in the app.

That said, you have to ask for consent for this shit. A lot of companies don’t alert customers when they release a new tool that requires privacy consent.

[–] dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 53 points 1 month ago (12 children)

This is so. At the bottom of the article it says:

To help us give customers who use T-Life a smoother experience, we are rolling out a new tool in the app that will help us quickly troubleshoot reported or detected issues. This tool records activities within the app only and does not see or access any personal information. If a customer’s T-Life app currently supports the new functionality, it can be turned off in the settings under preferences.

So yes, it can only see itself, i.e. within the T-Mobile app. It's still dumb.

I'm not well versed enough in Android app development to answer whether or not one userspace app can even access the screen contents of another app without root or special permissions, but it wouldn't surprise me if there are several roadblocks in that path on the part of the OS for obvious reasons.

[–] Lyrl@lemm.ee 1 points 1 month ago (2 children)

It's not possible on Android, which is incredibly disappointing because I play a card game exclusively on mobile, and would love to use a collection manager and stat tracking app. These exist for PC and Mac, but not for mobile because of the very hard no-record-other-apps wall.

[–] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 month ago

several ways

  • screen recording
  • accessibility services
  • ADB
[–] lennivelkant@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 month ago

You'd need something to hook into the memory or storage of the app I guess?

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