this post was submitted on 01 May 2026
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Google is "only" locking you out of using your phone for 24 hours...
For extra security, let's make it a week. Let's make it a month. Let's make it a year.
It's a holding period so a phone scammer can't be on the phone with you or over a live chat having you enable and install what they want right away. You're kind of an idiot if you can't see that it would work. Cry me a river if you have to wait a day before installing some of your shit.
Of course it wouldn't work.
Do you think putting a 24 h lock on your grandma's front door will prevent scammers from coming in?
No. No it won't. Any good scammer will be organized enough to start the scam and release the lock, then return after the timeout to finosh the job.
Do you think people vulnerable to scams will magically notice the scam in 24 hours?
Also, do you think most scams use sideloaded apps? Amazon gift cards are an easier vector. There's also premium SMS.
Modern scams have nothing to do with security. They prey on people who fall for them. No security measure, save for a trusted friend telling them it's a scam will work.
What this is is a thinly-veiled attempt to lock users out of using their own devices and to strenghten a slowly-crumbling ecosystem.
Yes, I know it will help prevent it. I've seen it happen in real time. You have time to think if it sounds suspicious after you get off a phone. You have time to decide to call your bank and ask. A lot of times scammers will pretend it's to help a family member in trouble and they need the money immediately, but now the person has time to call others in the family and discover it was all a lie.
You obviously don't know how easy it is to pressure people in the moment, and how much harder it is to do after they aren't under an instant time constraint. Hell, I used to work in sales and I've done it. People do illogical things when they're caught up in the moment. I know 100% this will prevent some people from being scammed.
Well, I was thinking along the lines of, if you fall for a crypto scam, 24 h does nothing about it.
If someone calls as a Nigerian Prince and you want to buy in, a cooldown won't help either.
If someone impersonates your close family, it just might. But I imagine scammers are smart enough to dissuade the victim from calling the known number with a reasonable excuse. Then the cooldown wouldn't help in this situation either. Something something scammers being good and all that.
And even if we disregard all that, there's always the option of having the switch have no cooldown if set during initial device setup. Afterwards - sure. Give a 24 or 48 hour cooldown.
If someone wants it immediately - they can do a factory reset.
But the problem is - this is not what's being done. What is being done is the start of a 72 hour cooldown, then 1 week, then 3 months, then no option to switch off at all. This is what I'm against, and what most other Lemmings are.
And to top it off - acting like this to "protect users" is a slippery slope of ignorance in and of itself.
You see, putting users under a glass dome (what all these "security" measures are) takes away their knowledge. With enough hand-holding ("security" or otherwise), they end up dumb, ignorant and incompetent.
"With great power comes great responsibility". Well, the opposite is also true: "With no power comes no responsibility".
And such powerless users are the ones who will, ironically, fall for ALL the scams.
The ones who are so "protected" that they have no common sense idea of how and what their phone does.
Once "logic" turns to "magic", you're in for a wild ride.
Because, even if they do know (which most won't), they won't be able to prevent the scam.
Why?
Because they're mostly locked out of and don't have posession of their phone.
They may be the owners, but Google is the one who can do what it wants with the phone. Not the user.
I got news for you, buddy. 90% of people already don't know shit about their phones. Half the population couldn't even tell you how much ram is in their phones or what os version it's on. People are lazy and ignorant. Just look at what they allowed the government to become. You overestimate the common man.
wtf