I installed NetGuard about a month ago and blocked all internet to apps, unless they’re on a whitelist. No notifications from this particular system app (that can’t be disabled) until recently when it started making internet connection requests to google servers. Does anyone know when this became a thing?

Edit 2: I bought my Pixel 6 phone outright, directly from Google’s Australian store. I have no creditors.

Were the courts not enough control for creditors? Since when are they allowed to lock you out of your purchased property without a court order?

I don’t even live in the US, so what the actual fuck?

Edit 1: You can check it’s installed (stock Pixel 6 android 14) Settings > Apps > All Apps > three dot menu, Show system > search “DeviceLockController”.

I highly recommend getting NetGuard, you can enable pro features via their website if you have the APK for as low as 0.10€, but donate more, because it’s amazing. You can also purchase via Google Play store.

  • milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee
    0·
    8 months ago

    So, that looks like this is less insane than it sounded… This is for if you buy your phone on a payment plan? Not for creditors more generally to have a option to repossess/dispossess your phone?

    • Max-P@lemmy.max-p.me
      1·
      8 months ago

      That is both Google’s official version and what it looks like poking at it.

      I haven’t dug in the code, so I don’t know if this is theoretically possible for a shady carrier to enable after the fact. But it very much looks like a dormant feature nobody uses.

      I guess I could see that making sense in poorer countries where carriers might have issues of people signing up for phone plans and never paying. A carrier locked flip phone was pretty useless, but nowadays cutting your phone/data off is more of an inconvenience than a dealbreaker, you’ve still got WiFi and a nice phone.