A few years ago, the big version updates of Android and IOS were turbulent. Keywords such as flattening or material design can always lead to a long-lasting discussion. Now, the upgrade of mobile operating system is more like a still water. It's better to use it after upgrading, and it seems that it's OK not to upgrade.

As for the domestic android customized system, it has also entered the stage of fine decoration from the stage of building construction, focusing on solving the aesthetic and humanized details.

But different from building a house in reality, anti-theft is the premise of building a house, not the primary task of mobile phone operating system. Privacy and security protection have not been put in the primary position of system update for a long time. But the good news is that this issue has finally been taken seriously.

Flyme 9, which will be updated soon, will focus on the privacy and security protection of mobile phone system, and Meizu will also take privacy and security as one of the company's strategies at the company level. Before the launch of flyme 9 and Meizu 18 series mobile phones, Aifan also interviewed the person in charge of Meizu flyme in detail to discuss this quiet but influential update.

IOS is to tighten the permission first, then release it, Android is the opposite

For a long time, there has been a saying that Android is not as good as IOS in privacy and security protection, which has made some IOS users feel superior, and Android users seem to default.

Many people will discuss this from an open and closed point of view. Android brings convenience as well as privacy security because of its open and open source. He has been involved in the research and development of Meizu M8. Almost all his career time in Meizu can be said to be dealing with Android. He has a different view

I think this (openness and closeness) is part of the reason, but not the whole reason.

Looking at the past decade or so, I think Android and Apple may have different strategies, pace and routes.

Apple is more of a company that gives priority to user experience. Their strategy is that I tighten up first, and then when I'm ready, I open up my capabilities to the third party, so that the third party can use these things to enrich some functions to users.

For Android and Google, relatively speaking, it is a company that gives priority to technology. Their route is to let go first, and if they encounter problems, I will tighten up again. They may think about what users or developers will get after I let go?

Apple is not only thinking about this thing, I think Apple has more to think about: if I let go, what might Apple lose? Or what might users lose? The inconsistency of ideas will lead to differences in strategy, pace and route, but I think they always come to the same goal by different routes. Whether it's apple or Android, we will finally solve these problems at a certain stage and at a certain time.

Strong prompt for Android 12 new permission call

So this also explains why in recent IOS and Android versions, the attitudes of both sides towards privacy and security have become surprisingly consistent. For example, Android 12, which is still in the developer preview version, will have various prompts to feed back which applications are calling microphone, positioning and camera permissions, which is just an important new feature of IOS 14.

But it's not as simple as the difference between IOS and Android. In fact, the real crux should be "the difference between domestic application ecology and foreign application ecology", because both apple and Google, as platforms, can lead the application specification of the system and implement effective management. For example, Google removed more than 50 Chinese developers' applications from the shelves at one time last year. However, as the world's largest Smartphone Production and consumption market, there is no effective platform to regulate the application ecology. The market prosperity and fierce competition, as well as the lack of management, are bound to let the third-party application manufacturers seize the rights and user data in the case of weak binding force.

Concerning the domestic discussion, on the issue of who cares more about privacy and who is more secure between IOS and Android, he gives a detailed view:

It is not only a technical problem, but also an ecological problem. If we have to talk about the root cause, we have to talk about openness and open source. You can think it's a double-edged sword, but in fact Google and Android have made due efforts.

The founder of Facebook, who has the most user data, has covered his computer camera with adhesive tape

Many people have not really realized the harm of divulging privacy

On the issue of privacy protection, in fact, aifaner has discussed a lot in the past, but we have observed a phenomenon that users are not so active in protecting their privacy. In other words, many people have not realized the importance of privacy before the real problems caused by privacy leakage.

Some privacy protection features of flyme in the past

This is a situation worthy of careful consideration with the flyme team, because once it is recognized that mobile privacy security is an ecological issue rather than a technical issue, then all participants in the ecology are related. So flyme not only needs to make changes in its own products, but also needs to work hard to change the concept of users.

In fact, I am also a user who does not have a clear understanding of the harm of privacy leakage. In this interview, I spent a lot of time telling me about the harm cases brought by privacy leakage

After the personal information is leaked, the cheater will call you, and then he will throw out some details that are consistent with your current real identity information, so as to cheat the trust. After obtaining these trust, in fact, the ease of fraud is greatly improved. It's easier to be recruited by calling your parents in your hometown, making up the illusion of losing contact in a car accident, and then blocking the direct contact of your mobile phone by means of "calling you to death". In this way, the success rate of fraud is very high.

This one above is called fraud. Another is harassment. What is harassment? I know your phone number. I know your hobbies. For example, home address, which city you live in, in fact, I can use SMS to promote sales, such as real estate, intermediary, insurance, loans, a lot of right? What does it have to do with privacy? Theoretically, if I don't get your privacy, I can still harass you. What is it actually? When he has some labels on you, he can become more precise in his speech skills, and can directly hit your pain points. Every label you have is a weakness in the face of a salesman. He can be targeted words to your marketing, disguised to improve the efficiency of sales.

Improving efficiency is not the end. Since this move is efficient and easy to use, I will use it more intensively. In fact, the more accurate your portrait is, the more harassment you will be. Those who don't have a picture with a label are obviously less harassed. So when we talk about the leakage of personal information, many people will think that the leakage means the leakage. In fact, you may know why you receive harassment calls, but you don't know that you answer more than others.

In addition to fraud and harassment, there is also addiction induction.

For a child, his self-control, recognition ability is actually relatively poor. So in the case of accurate portraits, the platform will actually push content to him as it likes. Well, when he finishes one brush, he thinks that he can brush the next one to something he is interested in. In fact, he will brush it all the time, and he will feel addicted. Because every time he refreshes, it's like getting a reward, which is addiction.

But frankly speaking, children should experience more innocent and happy things, rather than spend all their time to refresh these contents. This is the first point. Second, children should be exposed to more diverse and fresh things that are more conducive to their growth, instead of being trapped in the information cocoon room.

So the harm of privacy and personal information leakage is tens of millions. I just gave three typical examples, but this is just the tip of the iceberg. Liars are always smarter than you, and stakeholders always have more ways than you. Just because you don't understand or don't meet these threats doesn't mean they don't exist. To arouse the awareness of privacy protection is not only to protect oneself, but also to protect family and friends.

From a comprehensive point of view, privacy protection is not only a matter of ability, but also a matter of consciousness. Flyme can make up for it by means of product technology. However, in consciousness, it needs users' awareness, as well as media like flyme and Aifan to remind them.

Before the launch of flyme 9, Meizu also made an app called "privacy risk self testing tool". It is not a function, but it can demonstrate which privacy may be obtained? How they are obtained, and the possible harm of privacy after being obtained.

Group photo of top students

If Apple and Google are top students in privacy protection, flyme wants to catch up

As for the difference between domestic and foreign applied ecology, this paper makes a detailed analogy

Here I still want to make a comparison between apple and Android, or between foreign application ecology and domestic application ecology. I think apple and Google are the top students in the class. They have good academic performance, respect others, abide by rules and have principles. In the past, they have been able to implement good privacy protection. In fact, it's not only privacy protection, there are many things they can do well. In China, it's a bit like other students in the class. There may be some good students and some bad students, but we all have a goal. If we want to study well, we all want to be the best students.

For flyme, this update of flyme 9 is like a big test. If you do well, flyme 9 can become a top student in privacy protection.

Although more information will be displayed at the press conference in a few days' time, the detailed information still shows some thoughts and practices about privacy protection of flyme 9 to aifaner.

The first is to let users have the right to know. In the past, users did not have the right to know, but it was very troublesome to exercise the right to know, and the right to know was incomplete. On flyme 9, users' right to know will be greatly strengthened

Users need to know not only whether the application has permission or not, but also when the application invokes the permission, how much information or data it obtains through the permission, and how often it invokes the permission.

In the past, Android may simply say yes or no. in terms of knowledge, it is not enough. Now we can make up for this.

We talked about a lot about the harm of personal information leakage in detail, but sometimes privacy information and convenience are contradictory. If a person completely wants to hide personal information on the Internet, he or she needs to pay a high cost of money and technology, or he or she can't do anything on the Internet, which is what many users feel powerless, because the vast majority of users feel powerless We can't solve this contradiction.

System providers with more technical resources can do a lot of work for users. It is introduced in detail that flyme 9 has a privacy protection principle called data minimization. Specifically, it is as follows:

For example, as long as the frequency of the application calling the mobile phone's permissions can meet the requirements of the application function, the lower the better, including the range of data and information it knows, and the accuracy, these aspects are not the problem of taking or not taking, but the problem of the degree of taking. Before that, we did some privacy related protection roughly and generally. Now, we hope to strengthen the protection in a more detailed dimension based on the principles of user awareness and data minimization.

Of course, all of these changes affect the whole body. For example, data minimization inevitably involves application compatibility and user convenience.

For flyme, these problems either require a lot of energy or a decisive choice.

At the end of the interview, I asked carefully: if I'm a person who doesn't care about privacy and I want more convenient experience, can flyme give me an option that doesn't care about privacy?

So far, in the whole interview, he was very gentle, modest and thorough, and answered me with a rare decisive tone

No, this is a question of attitude. Why should we provide an unsafe system to users? As for convenience, you have to trust flyme.