Hi,
just to be sure I got it right, does WP7 puts every contact on my phone to Live as soon as I add my Live account details to my phone? And there is no way preventing my phone from uploading every of my contact to a Microsoft cloud? Do I get it right, or am I missing something?
Regards,
m00h
Under People, Settings, Filter My Contacts you can choose to hide contacts from a certain account or all of them. I believe you have to have at least one selected or you can't save contacts.
Sent from my HTC Arrive using XDA Windows Phone 7 App
Filtering contacts does not stop them from being saved to Live. Contacts must have a source, be it Windows Live, Exchange, Google, etc but they can't just reside on the phone.
Entegy is (mostly) correct. However, the important point here is that contacts which are already *from* another source - such as Facebook friends or Gmail contacts - will not get copied to Windows Live. However, if you import SIM contacts, those will get synced to your primary Windows Live account (assuming you've set one up, since it's necessary for much of the phone's functionality).
Yeah, that's a good distinction to make. While contacts require a source, they won't get merged into one account (say, everything auto-copied to your Windows Live account)
GoodDayToDie said:
However, if you import SIM contacts, those will get synced to your primary Windows Live account (assuming you've set one up, since it's necessary for much of the phone's functionality).
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That's the answer I needed, in that case, my Omnia 7 is as good as sold. That's a horrifying thing if your phone forces you to sync all the sensitive, confidential data with an american cloud. How can you people be ok with that?
Before I bought a WP7 phone, I read a lot of stuff about it, either on forums or on reviews, and not a single review mentioned that I will be forced to give my data away, that's even more horrifying.
Either way, thanks for the answers.
Regards,
m00h
Well, an awfully large number of millions of people use Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo mail, or any of a handful of other webmail providers, many of which are hosted in America (or <other place you dislike goes here>) and all of which contain far more private info than just contacts.
For that matter, a truly stupendous number of people use Facebook, which not only stores vastly more "private" info than simply contacts, it also has somewhat poor security and a terrible privacy record. Oh, it's based in the USA too.
Next to all that, a list of contacts names and email addresses being stored in a Microsoft-controlled server that generally has quite good security and is not accessible to anybody except yourself, not even MS employees, unless those employees want to face immediate loss of their jobs, truly massive lawsuits, and quite possibly criminal charges... this is "a horrifying thing"?? I mean I don't care for this "cloud" BS either, but contact info is way, way down on the list of things I'm worried about getting out - I'm pretty sure I'd be more annoyed to lose access to my contacts than to have them leak.
You're welcome to your own opinion, of course. If you either run your own mail server or use a different mail account for each contact (so no corporation can build a contact list for you by checking their email logs), and have no information on any social networks, it's even consistent with the way you live your life. Or is it just the "American" aspect that is so uncomfortable to you? If so, I must in good conscience warn you that XDA-Developers is registered through a US company and WHOIS gives a registrant address in Arizona.
m00h said:
That's the answer I needed, in that case, my Omnia 7 is as good as sold. That's a horrifying thing if your phone forces you to sync all the sensitive, confidential data with an american cloud. How can you people be ok with that?
Before I bought a WP7 phone, I read a lot of stuff about it, either on forums or on reviews, and not a single review mentioned that I will be forced to give my data away, that's even more horrifying.
Either way, thanks for the answers.
Regards,
m00h
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Click to collapse
Most modern smartphones sync your contacts now......
GoodDayToDie said:
Well, an awfully large number of millions of people use Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo mail, or any of a handful of other webmail providers, many of which are hosted in America (or <other place you dislike goes here>) and all of which contain far more private info than just contacts.
For that matter, a truly stupendous number of people use Facebook, which not only stores vastly more "private" info than simply contacts, it also has somewhat poor security and a terrible privacy record. Oh, it's based in the USA too.
Next to all that, a list of contacts names and email addresses being stored in a Microsoft-controlled server that generally has quite good security and is not accessible to anybody except yourself, not even MS employees, unless those employees want to face immediate loss of their jobs, truly massive lawsuits, and quite possibly criminal charges... this is "a horrifying thing"?? I mean I don't care for this "cloud" BS either, but contact info is way, way down on the list of things I'm worried about getting out - I'm pretty sure I'd be more annoyed to lose access to my contacts than to have them leak.
You're welcome to your own opinion, of course. If you either run your own mail server or use a different mail account for each contact (so no corporation can build a contact list for you by checking their email logs), and have no information on any social networks, it's even consistent with the way you live your life. Or is it just the "American" aspect that is so uncomfortable to you? If so, I must in good conscience warn you that XDA-Developers is registered through a US company and WHOIS gives a registrant address in Arizona.
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Don't get me wrong, it's in no way about the USA or any other country, I'm just not comfortable with the idea, that one big corporation, in one big country is to decide for me how to store my data.
It's like Microsoft would say, that every document on my PC has to be stored on their Live cloud, and you, as a functional member of the tech-society are dependant on their OS. Even Apple is not that barefaced to force me to store my mothers cell phone number on their sync service. It's all about the choise, you know?
Btw., for those who use Android, is it the same way there? Am I forced to sync my contacts with something? I want to go safe this time
Regards,
m00h
m00h said:
Don't get me wrong, it's in no way about the USA or any other country, I'm just not comfortable with the idea, that one big corporation, in one big country is to decide for me how to store my data.
It's like Microsoft would say, that every document on my PC has to be stored on their Live cloud, and you, as a functional member of the tech-society are dependant on their OS. Even Apple is not that barefaced to force me to store my mothers cell phone number on their sync service. It's all about the choise, you know?
Btw., for those who use Android, is it the same way there? Am I forced to sync my contacts with something? I want to go safe this time
Regards,
m00h
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android syncs your contacts with your google account, unless you turn off auto sync.
I don't see the issue though, you're just being overly paranoid now. If you have an email account I'm sure there is much more personal things in it
scoobysnacks said:
android syncs your contacts with your google account, unless you turn off auto sync.
I don't see the issue though, you're just being overly paranoid now. If you have an email account I'm sure there is much more personal things in it
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Click to collapse
I don't think I'm paranoid, I'm just not in common with the idea. But thanks for the answer with the Android, good to know that I can turn the auto-sync off.
Regards
Eh, all of my contacts from all of my accounts put together still constitute less private info than some single documents on my PC (tax returns come to mind, or letters to certain people). That said, so long as I can keep local copies of my docs too, I *am* generally OK with storing them on SkyDrive. If there was anything particularly sensitive I'd encrypt it first, but short of the aforementioned tax records I can't think of any such thing.
Of course, I'm still not sure how your attitude works with email. I mean, you obviously ahve an email account, or you couldn't be on this site. That account goes to a server somewhere. 99% chance that server is owned by a corporation. That corporation is possibly logging the server's Internet traffic. They're almost certainly making backups of your mailbox automatically all the time, so that if something goes wrong they can restore your mail. They have admins who can access your mailbox whenever they feel like it, with nothing stopping them except employment contracts and/or local laws.
That mailbox is a treasure trove of personal info. It hs your contacts (in the form of people who you've exchanged mail with), it has your purchase history (at least, for things bought online or shipped by freight services that send email), it probably has a list of every site that you visit which requires an email address to log in, it has the full transcriptions of any privte conversations you've had with friends or loved ones via email, it quite possibly has pictures of you and/or your family, it probably has your home address and phone number (because you sent them to somebody at least once), it even contains informtion on the hours you keep from the timestamps. If it's Gmail, they (Google) probably also have your IM conversations and possibly your calendar too.
Next to all that, you're worried about a huge corproration, one which is under constant surveillance and would be subject to immense lawsuits if it ever misused customer data, posessing a copy of your contacts list. Honestly, I'm just confused.
GoodDayToDie said:
Eh, all of my contacts from all of my accounts put together still constitute less private info than some single documents on my PC (tax returns come to mind, or letters to certain people). That said, so long as I can keep local copies of my docs too, I *am* generally OK with storing them on SkyDrive. If there was anything particularly sensitive I'd encrypt it first, but short of the aforementioned tax records I can't think of any such thing.
Of course, I'm still not sure how your attitude works with email. I mean, you obviously ahve an email account, or you couldn't be on this site. That account goes to a server somewhere. 99% chance that server is owned by a corporation. That corporation is possibly logging the server's Internet traffic. They're almost certainly making backups of your mailbox automatically all the time, so that if something goes wrong they can restore your mail. They have admins who can access your mailbox whenever they feel like it, with nothing stopping them except employment contracts and/or local laws.
That mailbox is a treasure trove of personal info. It hs your contacts (in the form of people who you've exchanged mail with), it has your purchase history (at least, for things bought online or shipped by freight services that send email), it probably has a list of every site that you visit which requires an email address to log in, it has the full transcriptions of any privte conversations you've had with friends or loved ones via email, it quite possibly has pictures of you and/or your family, it probably has your home address and phone number (because you sent them to somebody at least once), it even contains informtion on the hours you keep from the timestamps. If it's Gmail, they (Google) probably also have your IM conversations and possibly your calendar too.
Next to all that, you're worried about a huge corproration, one which is under constant surveillance and would be subject to immense lawsuits if it ever misused customer data, posessing a copy of your contacts list. Honestly, I'm just confused.
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Yea, confused is the right word, I'm very confused about your attitude having your privat stuff somewhere, on someones server without even having a choise not to store it there.
As for the part with the mail-server, no, I host my own mail-server because I take privacy a little bit more serious, and I surely wouldn't like to be on the list of your contacts if you deal so careless with your privacy. I'm in high dudgeon because I'm not given the choise here, that's what it is all about.
If you mention that you would encrypt your documents first, in case they would include some sensitive information, then you are talking about the choise even to encypt them, or not. The choise which I as a WP7 user obviously don't have, that's the point.
Maybe I'm a little bit old-fashioned, but for me it's very frightening that everyone around seems to be OK with that.
Anyway, since my question is answered, the is no point to continue this discussion, so, thanks for the answer.
Best regards,
m00h
http://www.askmen.com/entertainment/tech-news/google-drive-licence-agreement.html
Gets u thinking actually. :-\
Sent from my epic touch with plenty of ICS treats to go around!
Wow that's crazy, will uninstall it now !
Thanks for the link !
You should probably read this. http://www.theverge.com/2012/4/25/2973849/google-drive-terms-privacy-data-skydrive-dropbox-icloud
Don't believe the hype. They need to have permission to use your content to provide services that process, index, copy to servers, translate, display, etc...anything they do to provide the service needs to be covered in legalese.
The part they gloss over in the "be very afraid" blog posts and articles is that "The rights that you grant in this licence are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting and improving our Services, and to develop new ones."
They also don't mention that the associated privacy policy that also governs how your information is used explicitly states that your personal information is not used for purposes outside that policy without your consent.
http://www.google.com/policies/privacy/
But if anyone is worried at all about keeping their data in the "cloud," they should honestly trust no one. Unless they are encrypting your data before storing it, all the services need the same permissions...Dropbox, iCloud, etc...
http://www.theverge.com/2012/4/25/2973849/google-drive-terms-privacy-data-skydrive-dropbox-icloud
Everyone can make their own choice, but I'm not concerned. I wouldn't keep truly sensitive materials in ANY unencrypted repository. For everything else, these solutions are mighty convenient and secure enough for me.
Unprompted install, exfiltration route
So Drive is now on my device although I never asked to install and never even heard of it until I saw it as an active task. com.google.android.apps.docs
Now we have an unprompted install that provides a direct connection to Google docs without prompting for login credentials. (It is apparently using the login for gmail as a universal login).
So without any action on their part or any notice, a user's entire Google Docs can exfiltrated by compromising their phone. Nice.
It is so easy for a user to get taken by accident. Many don't know that when they preview attachments in gmail they can go to Google Docs and they certainly won't know about Google Drive on their Android as it doesn't even drop an icon during an unprompted install.
Drama much in here?
You're already using an Android device, which is linked with your Google account. Google recently updated their Privacy Policies so that it is now the same across the board. Your Gmail account has the same Policy as your Google+ account, your Youtube account, your Google Voice account, your Google Reader account, and (wait for it....) your Google Drive account. If you're okay with the policy as it applies to the content stored in your email, why is the policy as it relates to file and document storage an issue?
And, as has been mentioned in posts referencing the Verge article, the file storage policies are pretty much the same with the other major cloud storage providers - iCloud, Windows SkyDrive, Dropbox, etc. Your data remains your data, and nothing will be done to disclose it.
As for an "unprompted install", I'm going to guess that you previously had Google Docs installed. When Drive went public, it was also announced that it was essentially a continuation of Docs - an update, if you will. When you installed the Docs update from the Play Store, you automatically got Drive. Congratulations.
If your phone gets compromised, the bad guy would have access to a lot of juicy data in addition to just your Google Docs. Your Dropbox, for instance, would be unprotected. As would your Gmail, Calendar, Contacts, work email, Latitude history, Google+ posts, stored passwords in your Browser, etc. Let's look at this realistically and not just panic over a sensationalized story.
Hi, i'm in Italy and i speak quite well english, i have to say I'm using google drive from 6 days ago and I've never had any problem with my files so i Trust and if u saw the last internet privacy policy of google in the begin of 2012 we should have saw they don't computing or manipulate our file, simple check the integrity of the sequence of bit stored in the cloud... sorry for my totaly bad english, I hope I was helpful... thanks for consider my post...
Lets face it. A lot of people have multiple Facebook accounts.
Either 1 serious, 1 for games, 1 for dating, and that list goes on...
I can't seem to find a single app that lets you manage multiple Facebook accounts.
Neither is there an app that lets you manage multiple Facebook messengers.
Could someone please create a single app that would let you have 2+ Facebook accounts open at once.
Same way you would have 2+ separate accounts open on different browsers at the same time on the same computer.
Ex.
Account 1 - Chrome
Account 2 - Opera
Account 3 - IE
etc etc etc
There should be 1 app... that lets you manage all accounts..
There should also be a secondary app that lets you manage strictly for messengers of separate accounts
the menu button would bring up a list of the connected accounts and at the bottom a link to the settings options.. and so on..
Please stay on topic. Thank you.
IGisSir_Josh said:
Lets face it. A lot of people have multiple Facebook accounts.
Either 1 serious, 1 for games, 1 for dating, and that list goes on...
I can't seem to find a single app that lets you manage multiple Facebook accounts.
Neither is there an app that lets you manage multiple Facebook messengers.
Could someone please create a single app that would let you have 2+ Facebook accounts open at once.
Same way you would have 2+ separate accounts open on different browsers at the same time on the same computer.
Ex.
Account 1 - Chrome
Account 2 - Opera
Account 3 - IE
etc etc etc
There should be 1 app... that lets you manage all accounts..
There should also be a secondary app that lets you manage strictly for messengers of separate accounts
the menu button would bring up a list of the connected accounts and at the bottom a link to the settings options.. and so on..
Please stay on topic. Thank you.
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"Facebook does NOT allow one person to have multiple accounts under multiple emails.
Having multiple accounts does not refer to having several pages and/or groups. It refers to owning two or more Facebook accounts under two or more emails.
If Facebook discovers you have two or more accounts under different email addresses, you’ll be asked to close one. If you don’t, they have the option of banning you from Facebook. Here is the link to the Facebook information about this"
"Manage Your Account » Confirm Your Identity
You're only allowed to have one Facebook account. This account must list your real name. This way, everyone everyone on Facebook knows who they're interacting with. For more details, please review our Community Standards."
You will find these in the facebook help section.
By having multiple facebook accounts you have defeated the purpose of it. The fact that facebook has been really restricting in terms of information sharing is to avoid users doing that; my point is that you could set up rules to show posts, pictures, comments only to certain groups, and thus you can have one account and manage the eavesdroppers.
With Android 11, Google seems to have taken yet another step in the "making Android increasingly painful to use" direction by disabling the ability for device-only contacts to be available via the standard Contacts Provider. Because of this, I have to use Google-stored contacts on my Android 11 device in order for these contacts to be available to my apps. Otherwise, my apps don't see any contacts.
I have a rooted Android 11 device, and I'm hoping that there is some way that I could disable the standard Contacts Provider service and that I could then install an alternate, custom Contacts Provider service which knows how to access device-only contacts, and which knows how to make these contacts available to all apps that need contacts ... and which never will try to store my contacts on any of Google's servers nor anywhere else in the cloud.
Is it possible to disable Android's standard Contacts Provider service? And does such a 3rd-party Contacts Provider service exist?
Thank you in advance for any thoughts and suggestions.
Well, I think I found a solution to the issue that I'm trying to solve. And it doesn't require any new Contacts Provider service to be installed, after all.
First of all, I made sure that contacts syncing is turned off.
Next, I installed the "True Phone" contacts and phone manager app from the play store and made it my default phone app.
Then, I used that program to make a local backup of my contacts, which is one of its capabilities.
Following that, I froze the Contacts app, but I kept the Contacts Storage app active. I checked the permissions for the Contacts Storage app, and I see now that it has no network-related permssions. So apparently, it just looks at the local contacts database, and some other piece of software is what actually syncs Google's cloud-based contacts data with the local database. And by turning off contacts sync-ing, it seems like I have indeed disabled that process.
Then, I went from my desktop computer to http://contacts.google.com with the same login credentials that are associated with my Android device. I then permanently deleted all of the contacts there.
(I rebooted my Android device between each of these steps and also after the final step.)
Now, my SMS and phone apps still see the contacts info in my local database. And I can manage the local contacts backup and restore via that True Phone app.
There are probably other phone/contacts apps which also could be used for this. But True Phone works well enough for me.
So ... it turns out that no OS surgery is needed to mess with the contacts nor to install an alternate Contacts Provider service.
PS: And I now have learned something. I was asking about a "Contacts Provider service", but I now realize that the standard Contacts Storage app itself seems to be the "Contacts Provider".
And because I found out that this app does not even have network permissions, it seems clear that this app simply gets contacts from the locally stored sqlite contacts database, and therefore, I don't need to replace this app with anything else.
And so all I needed to do was disable contacts sync-ing, because that is what would sync contacts between Google's cloud and the local contacts database.
How long were you playing with it to get to this point? Fun times...
Cloud apps can be little terrors, the only one I use is Gmail. It's never been breached by malware in over 15 years. Lol, Outlook not so much so.
blackhawk said:
How long were you playing with it to get to this point? Fun times...
Cloud apps can be little terrors, the only one I use is Gmail. It's never been breached by malware in over 15 years. Lol, Outlook not so much so.
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It took me around a day of on-and-off playing around sessions to figure this all out ... with some input from a few other helpful souls.
I agree about cloud-based services. I don't even use gmail. I run my own email server, so I use that to manage all my email accounts. I manage my own web servers and my own DNS servers, as well.
It's more work for me to manage those things, but I don't mind, and I actually enjoy that work, most of the time.