
Google as Benevolent Dictator Yanks Smartphone Apps With Kill Switch - J3L2404
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-15/google-as-benevolent-dictator-yanks-smartphone-apps-with-kill-switch-tech.html
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viraptor
Not related to the article itself, but:

> and is considering reinstalling her operating software, the nuclear option
> of virus cleanups.

I'm a bit surprised this still gets framed as the last thing you'd do. If you
get one virus, that means you could have any number of them using the same
mechanism. You've been compromised and can't really be sure what else is
affected. Why is it the final option, rather than the default action to
rollback to known state (and I mean rolling back everything, not reinstalling
just your OS on a disk with executables which are already affected...)

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sskates
Most users don't have an automated process that regularly performs full
backups of their hard drive, so reinstalling the OS is painful. Hopefully
software will solve this problem permanently for us in the near future. Until
then it will be too much of a bother for most users to set up an automated
full backup process.

Even as a software developer who's familiar with technology, I don't do full
hard disk backups for my personal machines. It's just too much of a pain, and
I've decided to take it as an acceptable risk.

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mike-cardwell
It's not as much of a pain as you think. I just drop a couple of lines in a
cron job and that gives me full disk, incremental, encrypted backups:

[https://grepular.com/Secure_Free_Incremental_and_Instant_Bac...](https://grepular.com/Secure_Free_Incremental_and_Instant_Backups_for_Linux)

~~~
cryptoz
Oh come on. You're _clearly_ not "most users" if you can just set up cron
jobs. It's important for us to remember who most users are and that they are
not us.

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mike-cardwell
Obviously. I was addressing his second paragraph; offering personal advice to
him and anyone else here who might be interested.

------
Father
Pleonasm and power terms make it sound like there's something terrible
happening. The option is there to purge malicious content; which appears
useful to me. If "they" would purge random items/apps the hue and cry of the
masses would create damage to the brand and it's continuity; which in turn is
a self regulating property that such events should not occur for the sake of
the companies involved.

~~~
ry0ohki
I think the main problem with this type of technology is it's very easy to
imagine the RIAA/AT&T/US Gov/whoever suing or pressuring Google to remove
(Insert Non Malware App Name Here) for whatever reason.

~~~
gcp
One word: Grooveshark.

~~~
terinjokes
But they didn't kill the app from users phones, they removed it from the
marketplace.

