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Google sued: Idle Android eats mobile data to send telemetry and preload ads

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Re: Google sued: Idle Android eats mobile data to send telemetry and preload ads

#211

Post by mackrevinack »

wongarsu wrote: post #172
smt88 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about LineageOS with a non-Google app store?

If you have a supported device, LineageOS is great. But so far the ecosystem for non-Google apps stores is tiny. They exist in certain niches (most notably F-Droid for open source), but not using Google's Play store at all is a major downgrade of your experience.

if you have an old phone sitting around you could have the download apps on that and extract the apk's, then install them on your main phone. there are certain apps you can get in the fdroid store that will download apps from the play store, I can't remember the name of it.

Re: Google sued: Idle Android eats mobile data to send telemetry and preload ads

#212

Post by gvurrdon »

scottwernervt wrote: post #35
hereme888 wrote: post #10

Ever heard of NetGuard? With it I block all relevant outgoing and incoming connections to doubleclick, google analytics, my carrier (t-mobile), app-measurements, facebook, etc... The phone attempts connection to one of these just about every second, and I block them all. Hopefully the Librem phones will continue to mature and become my future phone.

Also recommend https://nextdns.io/ which supports common ad block lists, etc. I have my home router and phone set to it and is crazy how many trackers and ads are blocked.

Seems to be a good service to me. There seem to have been some complaints recently, though: https://www.reddit.com/r/nextdns/comments/ju2hfw/nextdns_pri...

Re: Google sued: Idle Android eats mobile data to send telemetry and preload ads

#214

Post by mackrevinack »

generalizations wrote: post #120
qz2 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m working on the same thing and the phone at the moment. I doubt I’ll be able to go cold turkey so I’m blowing one app away every two weeks until I don’t need it any more. It’s not as hard as it felt like it was going to be.

Maps with live traffic is going to be the tough one; at least it is for me.

could you scrap the need for live traffic by just leaving 10 minutes earlier than you need to? or do you live somewhere that has really complicated traffic?

Re: Google sued: Idle Android eats mobile data to send telemetry and preload ads

#215

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

wongarsu wrote: post #172
smt88 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about LineageOS with a non-Google app store?

If you have a supported device, LineageOS is great. But so far the ecosystem for non-Google apps stores is tiny. They exist in certain niches (most notably F-Droid for open source), but not using Google's Play store at all is a major downgrade of your experience.

The lack of the Google Play store isn't actually a problem on LineageOS, because you can use Aurora Store from F-Droid to download any desired apps from the Google Play store. The issue rather is that even if you get those apps indirectly from the Google Play store, many of them will refuse to run on a device that lacks Google Play Services.

Re: Google sued: Idle Android eats mobile data to send telemetry and preload ads

#216

Post by as-j »

izacus wrote: post #15

> Under active use, Android devices transfer about 11.6MB of data to Google servers daily, or 350MB per month, it's claimed, which is about half the amount transferred by an iPhone. Interesting, so 350MB of data per month is abuse, iPhones 175MB per month isn't. I guess Google now has to half their data use for it to be at parity with Apple and we're all fine?

Before everyone grabs their pitch forks....as someone who does telemetry tracking devices, 350megs/mo is pretty easy to do and send nearly 0 data, if you do it wrong....let me explain:

TLS connection setup is ~10k so if do an 1 HTTPS call/telemetry that's 48 calls home/hour. (11,600/10k = 1,160 https connections/day. There's 1440 minutes/day) Of basically calling home every minute and sending not much.

Ok calling home every minute...but maybe when idle that's not bad for notification updates?

We run long do running TLS connections using MQTT, this works for 5-6 figure of units. And our actual usage when we have good cell coverage is around 25megs/mo, including data. But when you have the qty Google and iOS have....maybe that's prohibitive?

Re: Google sued: Idle Android eats mobile data to send telemetry and preload ads

#217

Post by gentleman11 »

izacus wrote: post #15

> Under active use, Android devices transfer about 11.6MB of data to Google servers daily, or 350MB per month, it's claimed, which is about half the amount transferred by an iPhone. Interesting, so 350MB of data per month is abuse, iPhones 175MB per month isn't. I guess Google now has to half their data use for it to be at parity with Apple and we're all fine?

I didn’t know about the 175MB from Apple. That’s quite a lot

Re: Google sued: Idle Android eats mobile data to send telemetry and preload ads

#218

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

nitrogen wrote: post #149
dogma1138 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux high end phones will never be a reality, at least not what people here would consider Linux at best you’ll get is Android or Android like OS. Other than that you’ll get low volume low end devices at high end or higher prices due to lack of economy of scale. What most consumers actually want and I’ll put in that list also many many people that say they want a “Linux Phone” but in reality will go back to their iP…

What I want is a Maemo-based phone, with at least 20% marketshare and an Android compat layer so there is an ecosystem to support it, and the same camera as any other flagship level phone.

> What I want is a Maemo-based phone.

I liked my Nokia N900 and kept up for a while with attempts to keep its Maemo going after Nokia abandoned it. However, a decade later Maemo has bitrotted and its dev community has dwindled away. Nowadays the Phosh interface (i.e. the Librem phone, or Mobian running on the PinePhone) is seen as the most promising Free Software choice in the long term. Sailfish OS is also actively maintained, but its UI layer is closed source.

Re: Google sued: Idle Android eats mobile data to send telemetry and preload ads

#219

Post by mappu »

mdpm wrote: post #154
smt88 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about LineageOS with a non-Google app store?

I've been trying to execute on this approach, as I'm very interested in checking out of the tracking-by-default ecosystems. We're using some Xiaomi devices we purchased, and I'm currently seething. I can't root without 'unlocking', which is a process that requires me to activate a Mi Account, which then requires my email and a SIM (?!), and 'find my device' (location) to even allow installation of apps via USB. To un…

There was a massive wave of phones being sold with unlocked bootloaders with preinstalled malware. How do you stop this? Unscrupulous retailers would buy thousands of your latest phone, root it and sell it for $1 less than MSRP, and make much more than that from injecting extra ads and stealing data. Not to mention, all the bad press "you" get for "shipping a phone with ads in it".

Mere tamper-evidence - having a "bootloader unlocked" warning on boot - isn't obvious enough for a new user who has just bought the phone for the first time. So all manufacturers have added time locks and anti-fraud detection for bootloader unlocking. The time lock in particular is the best way to cut down this effect during the early sales process after which time it's hard to catch up in review score. But a time lock can only be implemented securely via a remote server out of the user's hands.

Xiaomi getting the telemetry is a cherry on top, but it's not originally nefarious - or at least - it's less nefarious than the problem it's intending to solve

Re: Google sued: Idle Android eats mobile data to send telemetry and preload ads

#220

Post by Tor3 »

dogma1138 wrote: post #155
nitrogen wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I want is a Maemo-based phone, with at least 20% marketshare and an Android compat layer so there is an ecosystem to support it, and the same camera as any other flagship level phone.

Well you can buy an Xperia 10 which whilst isn’t a super high end phone is still pretty decent and it runs SailFishOS... but then again you can probably count the number of people that did that on your fingers. The issue is that whilst people want it there is never a good enough “reason” for that other than I want it, Maemo doesn’t give you more freedom than what AOSP does already at least not on the software level,…

Been using a Sailfish phone as my personal phone for years - it runs the particular Android apps I'm interested in, and works nicely as a phone for the rest. If the battery finally wear out on this one I'll go for an Xperia I think.
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