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What technique is the Costco app using to wake itself up?

domoarigato

domoarigato

Member
I've noticed that when the firewall alerts me to unauthorized traffic, it is often the Costco app.

What technique is the Costco app using to wake itself up and start accessing the internet? What's the best way to disable this behavior?
 
uninstall the app, it is useless anyway.
I tried out some of those store apps, some of them claim they can direct you to the isle and row that the product is on.
I found that it takes 10 times longer to mess with the app, than it does to just yell "hey you!!! where is the ABS Cement?"

add to that, the locations mentioned in the app are useless also, the clerks don't listen to apps, they just put stuff on the shelves.
 
sorry, I can't tell you how the app works.

Never installed it, Costco is horribly too expensive for a family to use.
They trust that you will NOT do comparison shopping. You just cannot "save enough" if at all, to even break even on the price of their "Privilege to shop here card"... that is a joke, they do NOT understand the free market system.

My daughter used to work for them and their management team is such a klustermucked up mess, that she quit.

Her card just expired.... she is a very savvy coupon shopper, memory like an elephant, only buys when things are on sale...

Costco very rarely can provide any cost savings at the end of the year.... in fact, our Costco is only 1/2 mile from Walmart.
Walmart has the same brand deli meats for a cheaper price than Costco.... go figure...
 
We have a pretty different view of Costco. Since they sell things in bulk quantities it's usually a really good savings compared to frequent shopping trips. Plus when we do the math, it's cheaper to buy as much as we can at one place like Costco than drive around to different places just to catch certain sale items. As far as our annual shopping budget, it works out better to go to one place like Costco. Once we took into consideration the costs for gas and traffic, from an overall perspective we weren't saving anything by going to multiple places just to save a dollar or two.
The Costco store in our area has some pretty good staff. In comparison to the local Walmarts, they're paid more plus better health coverage and benefits. And from what we remembered, there's a lot less turnover.
 
your Costco store is hugely different than what my daughter observed.
the managers in that store are barely above minimum wage...
and the store floor shows their total lack of marketing.

for us, we will never return to them again.... I have tried to work with them for over ten years, and it has never, ever, worked out for a single family... after my trial period of 2 or 3 years, ( I was deeply involved with my work, not watching the budget ).... I sat down one night and turned on Quicken Checkbook.... the results were pretty plain... I let my card expire back 5 years ago.
 
Okay... now back on topic... ;-)

I've noticed that when the firewall alerts me to unauthorized traffic, it is often the Costco app.

What technique is the Costco app using to wake itself up and start accessing the internet? What's the best way to disable this behavior?
 
Unless you are able to decompile the app and modify it then the techniques are irrelevant, since your options to stop it will be limited to using the firewall to block it or uninstalling the app (assuming there is no setting in the app that can control this) . It's probably nothing very sophisticated anyway - quite likely it's just set to wake up periodically and sign in for an update (or report your usage, or whatever it is actually doing) or something equally simple-minded.
 
Hadron said:
Unless you are able to decompile the app and modify it then the techniques are irrelevant, since your options to stop it will be limited to using the firewall to block it or uninstalling the app (assuming there is no setting in the app that can control this) . It's probably nothing very sophisticated anyway - quite likely it's just set to wake up periodically and sign in for an update (or report your usage, or whatever it is actually doing) or something equally simple-minded.
Click to expand...

That information is not accurate. There are many things a user do. You can disable specific services, broadcast receivers, activities, content providers, and more. You can also use Xposed tools to make many changes. Furthermore, you can use XPrivacy to block scores of different functions.

You mention "just set to wake up periodically". Without running a service or responding to a broadcast receiver, how is this possible?
 
domoarigato said:
I've noticed that when the firewall alerts me to unauthorized traffic, it is often the Costco app.
What technique is the Costco app using to wake itself up and start accessing the internet? What's the best way to disable this behavior?
Click to expand...

I can't imagine the Costco app is working any differently as a background process than anything else already on your phone. As a temporary test for example, if you use Gmail for your mail, contacts, and calendar than block those in your firewall and see what happens. They're continuously pinging Google's servers for your account info trying to keep things in sync. Same thing with Dropbox, or Facebook, or Twitter, they're all checking online to stay updated, just because your phone's screen is in sleep mode that doesn't mean your phone itself is too -- there background processes going on all the time, including entries being made into your firewall's log by various apps that you've blocked.
Uninstall the app if it really annoys you, or just ignore those particular firewall alerts and whenever you are out shopping enable it access through your firewall to check out the current coupons or whatever.
 
I just checked the CostCo app and it's got some pretty broad and questionable permissions.

Version 2.5.0 can access:
Identity
  • find accounts on the device
  • add or remove accounts
Contacts
  • find accounts on the device
Location
  • approximate location (network-based)
  • precise location (GPS and network-based)
Photos/Media/Files
  • modify or delete the contents of your USB storage
  • read the contents of your USB storage
Storage
  • modify or delete the contents of your USB storage
  • read the contents of your USB storage
Camera
  • take pictures and videos
Wi-Fi connection information
  • view Wi-Fi connections
Other
  • receive data from Internet
  • full network access
  • view network connections
  • run at startup
  • read Google service configuration
  • change network connectivity
  • connect and disconnect from Wi-Fi
  • prevent device from sleeping
  • set an alarm
  • control vibration
  • use accounts on the device
Click to expand...

I've highlighted those I felt are unnecessary for a shopping app. If your phone is upgradeable to Marshmallow (Android 6) you'll be able to revoke specific permissions and that could solve your problem, but it could also make the app itself misbehave or crash.
 
I think perhaps my initial wording was misleading. I'm trying to learn what techniques they are using. If an Android app is *not* running a service, and has no broadcast receivers being triggered, can it awake itself by a timer?
 
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