White House app auto-downloads to government phones, can't be uninstalled

pseudolus 39 points 34 comments June 24, 2026
www.wired.com · View on Hacker News

Discussion Highlights (7 comments)

mmmlinux

People are only now concerned because they see the control that was always there, Now being exerted over their government work issued phones.

Rygian

"Google app auto-downloads to Google phones, can't be uninstalled" has been the norm since day 1 and before. What is newsworthy here? The fact that yet one more third-party (the White House) does it too?

fsflover

Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42991887 Android devices have started installing hidden app that scans your images (mastodon.sdf.org)

orsorna

Feds use profile management? Is that news? The weirdness of the WH app is notable enough but standard organization practices aren't.

rose-knuckle17

another data heist brewing. The usual long period between elections and inauguration is going to create a massive window for data exfiltration and the only people empowered to police it and any evidence that it occurrred are the people most likely to be stealing the data.

CM30

This just feels like the weirdest part to me: > A button within the app allows users to “text President Trump,” which autofills a text bubble reading “Greatest President Ever.” It feels like something you might see from the government in a banana republic/authoritarian dictatorship.

ck2

any android now can get pseudo-root via Shizuku and I am betting Shizuku can disable that however I am sure that will trigger firing so probably not worth it 1000 days, hang in there, this is nothing, imagine what's going down winter holidays 2028

Semantic search powered by Rivestack pgvector
11,536 stories · 108,606 chunks indexed