Thanks emil, I'll try those things. I already set the perms to 000, and that didn't work, but I've never heard of the 'immutable bit' before - have to check that one out. Can I do it from Root File Explorer, or do I need to get to a terminal?

I'll try the folder idea first, as it's easy and I've previously used it on my Linux boxen to get rid of the 'Recently Used' file.

Even root access won't save my HTC Desire 510. Whenever I mount the system as read-write and remove files, (such as Facebook and Twitter .apk and .odex files), or even change files, (such as that stupid MP3 the phone plays while the screen says 'Quietly Brilliant'), HTC oh-so-helpfully restores them for me at the next cold boot, whether or not there's any network access. I'd love to install Cyanogenmod, but there's no fully functional ROM available for my phone.

Add a zero to the dollar amount of the fine, and you're finally out of the 'Cost of Doing Business' category and into bottom-line devastation that will command the attention of both C-levels and shareholders. The government needs to grow a pair and serve notice to industry that business-as-usual just won't cut it.

Posting to cancel a 'Troll' mod that I posted to the wrong comment by mistake. And may the AC who posted shit about gay black people, die very slowly in a fire

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The possibility of a well-rounded education for middle- and lower-class citizens is dead - long live job training for the masses! Henceforth public schools will be mass-producing pliant and compliant workers-to-order for a private sector that is clearly salivating at the prospect of a cheap and almost limitless local pool of labour. After all, why go to the expense of bringing H1-B workers into the country when they can simply whore the existing US labour market? Making use of desperate people with few options who are within easy reach, are in tune with the local culture, and speak English natively, is just good business sense. And if there aren't enough such people to fill our needs, the government and its agencies will be only too happy to create more of them!

I really didn't write this with the intention of flamebaiting or trolling - I'm just thoroughly pissed off at corporate greed, arrogance, and callousness.

On the one hand, fraudsters who steal phone users' bandwidth in order to reap revenue from advertisers, are scum.

On the other hand, so many advertisers are scum as well, and the enemy of my enemy might be my friend. I might be willing to lose a bite out of my data cap in order to stick it to advertisers. Oops, did I say that out loud?

Yet another way of lulling drivers into a false sense of security while further disconnecting them from actually driving their vehicles. Also, yet another potentially hackable 'feature'. Yay!

Thanks - those are all good points. Except the 'underestimating the lengths' part. We have more than a decade's worth of news stories about people who have gone to great lengths to hack hardware and software - sometimes because they want additional features, sometimes out of malice, and sometimes just to prove a point. I figure by this time there's no excuse for underestimating what people will do. I think you hit the nail on the head when you suggested cost as the reason.

Never mind that, why is it so hard to find fucking automotive engineers who have enough sense to keep the critical control buses and the frivolous entertainment/external communication buses separate and not connected to each other?

I don't know whether this is the result of bean counters doing the shit they do, or the hubris of engineers who think, "they won't hack MY system!", but whatever, auto makers need to give their heads a shake and get their shit together. The fact that the exploit outlined in the article is even possible, at all, is just criminal.

Age has nothing to do with it. I'm older than Torvalds, and I refuse to use Gmail.

That wouldn't bother me much, although it would be annoying. My real concern is that these companies keep trying to turn us into technology's pets.

but this makes it abundantly clear that we average cirtizens are well on our way to becoming serfs, with corporations as the feudal lords.

I'd offer Timothy my seat on the craft!! ;-)

So what are the chances that they'll collect the data anyway, store it, and retrieve it during the next scheduled maintenance? 'Live data' is a pretty small subset of 'useful data'.

If you really have the wherewithal to reduce corporations to 'bankrupt rubble', for Christ's sake what are you waiting for? Tell the rest of us how to do it, then get your ass in gear and start destroying! After you're done with Apple/Google/BigAuto, you might have a look at Monsanto. Then after that, there are many others whose smoking ruins I'd love to toast marshmallows over.