Top all-time · #3963
Pea Bee
Personal blog · peabee.substack.comcultureweb
Pea Bee is a personal blog at peabee.substack.com about culture and web. Since 2022, 19 different Hacker News readers have linked it 22 times, most often “Everyone knows all the apps on your phone”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-12-29, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (8) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN commenters cite Pea Bee's investigative posts on Android and app privacy, especially 'Everyone knows what apps you use,' which covers apps reading the list of installed apps. Also linked: a post on fake IMDB credits.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 8 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
tales from indian web rabbit holes.
Most-linked posts?
- Everyone knows all the apps on your phone10 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2025-03-28
- Mafatlal and the Early Indian Internet3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-07-21
- What's inside the QR code menu at this cafe?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-09-22
What Hacker News says?
Agreed. I thought the article was really interesting. I don’t know much about how the author got their data, it seems like it’s a Kaggle dataset and I’m not familiar with how that was procured, but the analysis was really fascinating to me. So was the tweet by the person who asked Zomato about the repeated separate instances using the same FSSAI license, which I looked up and here is the link: https://mobile.twitter…
Comment linking /p/15-mafatlal-and-the-early-indian
on “One kitchen, hundreds of internet restaurants”Submitted Everyone knows all the apps on your phone as a story · 1195 points
HN discussionI don’t often log in to HN to comment, but when I do it’s usually when I see this type of comment. You can always spot them by the first word being “No” or “False” followed by a confidently asserted yet hilariously incorrect statement. I suggest reading this [0] and approaching these discussions with more humility in the future. As you yourself stated, you’re an SRE, not a security expert, yet this forum is full of…
Comment linking /p/everyone-knows-what-apps-you-use
on “EU age verification app not planning desktop support”Submitted One kitchen, hundreds of internet restaurants as a story · 685 points
HN discussionAnother similar tracking vector that lets any app detect all installed apps by using android.intent.action.MAIN Query: https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/thre... without the QUERY_ALL_PACKAGES permission. No response from Google. Being used by dozens of apps in the wild. Edit: Original Research link: https://peabee.substack.com/p/everyone-knows-what-apps-you-u... (HN: https://news.ycombinator.co…
Comment linking /p/everyone-knows-what-apps-you-use
on “Covert web-to-app tracking via localhost on Android”Submitted Fake IMDB credits as a story · 552 points
HN discussionThe comments at the end of the article are funny https://peabee.substack.com/p/16-the-case-of-fake-imdb-credi... (apparently commenting has been turned off :-))
Comment linking /p/16-the-case-of-fake-imdb-credits/comment/8238009
on “Fake IMDB credits”Submitted What's inside the QR code menu at this cafe? as a story · 464 points
HN discussionhttps://peabee.substack.com/p/everyone-knows-what-apps-you-u... This has been going on for years, Google knows about it, and intentionally leaves it unfixed. > Out of 47 Indian apps I randomly analyzed, 31 of them used the "ACTION_MAIN" filter - giving them access to see all the apps on your phone without any disclosure. That's 2 out of 3 apps. Of course there's hundreds of other variants of malware, this is just on…
Comment linking /p/everyone-knows-what-apps-you-use
on “Open Letter to Google on Mandatory Developer Registration for App Distribution”Submitted Everyone knows what apps you use as a story · 10 points
HN discussionGoogle certainly hasn't done a great job on privacy. Android devices leak so much information. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/10/phone... https://peabee.substack.com/p/everyone-knows-what-apps-you-u... About Apple I just don't know enough because I haven't seriously used them for years
Comment linking /p/everyone-knows-what-apps-you-use
on “OnePlus update blocks downgrades and custom ROMs by blowing a fuse”Submitted What's inside the QR code menu at this cafe? as a story · 7 points
HN discussionEveryone knows all the apps on your phone https://peabee.substack.com/p/everyone-knows-what-apps-you-u... Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43518866
Comment linking /p/everyone-knows-what-apps-you-use
on “HSBC blocks its app due to F-Droid-installed Bitwarden”Submitted Everyone knows what apps you use.How Indian apps are spying on your Android apps as a story · 5 points
HN discussionDid you know about this workaround? Afaik it's still active https://peabee.substack.com/p/everyone-knows-what-apps-you-u...
Comment linking /p/everyone-knows-what-apps-you-use
on “The Vietnam government has banned rooted phones from using any banking app”Submitted Everyone knows all the apps on your phone as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted The little Indian internet corner of database sellers as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Not Young People Anymore as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted #13: GoogleWhacking as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Mafatlal and the Early Indian Internet as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Early Indian Internet as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted This is a clone of Nykaa's website as a story · 1 points
HN discussion