There’s an ominous new movement that could spell bad news for anyone who likes to root their phones.
As long as there are electronic devices, there will always be hacking. But the hacking community within Android has a deep following and history that make it a way of life for many Android customers. And unlike most malicious hackers, a lot of people who root their Android phone don’t have any criminal ideas in mind. They just want to tweak the device to make it more flexible and add custom software.
But none of that is illegal. It’s part of the reason why it has become such a widespread phenomenon among Android users. In fact, some manufacturers have even turned a blind eye to customers who want to root the device.
Nevertheless, carriers don’t like it because users can perform actions like tethering mobile data to other devices for free, or bypassing the mobile network to make calls that don’t use plan minutes.
So there’s an increasing push to bring these users to “justice.” According to a report on Phandroid, some carriers and manufacturers will begin installing tracking software on the phone, which will notify the carrier if and when a user roots the device.
According to carrier contracts, tampering with a phone in such a way is grounds for termination of service. This means there’s a very scary possibility for those who buy a phone in the future, that if they root it they might find themselves without a mobile connection.
For now, this just appears to be murmurs circulating around the Android community. We’ll keep you posted.
