Android 14's user-profile data bug seems indistinguishable from ransomware
Android 14's user-profile data bug seems indistinguishable from ransomware
Users with multiple profiles are getting locked out of local storage and losing data.
There is a discussion on Hacker News, but feel free to comment here as well.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The bug is languishing at only the medium "P2" priority (P0 is the highest) and remains "unassigned," meaning, assuming the tracker is up to date, no one is looking into it.
Some users have helpfully posted log files full of worrying messages, like, "Failed to open directory /data/media/0: Structure needs cleaning."
It sounds like the bug is only hitting users who take advantage of this rarely used feature, with lots of reports that the primary profile—that's usually the important one—gets locked out.
Even straight out of the box, Android has options for Google Photos automatic backups, Play Games storage of your game data, and a million other cloud-based data features (it would be nice if Android phones had a comprehensive whole-phone backup feature, though).
While it is totally reasonable to expect your OS to keep running after an update, phones are uniquely vulnerable to getting lost/stolen/damaged, so having everything get stored somewhere else is a great idea.
Surely, a bug where people are locked out of their phones and possibly lose data is worth halting a rollout, but it never happened.
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