131–140 of 377 posts
I use GraphineOS and LineageOS without Google Play Services. They are great and are suitable replacements for Apple and Google. - Osmand(FOSS) for maps (supports being fully offline!) - Signal and Discord for messaging (Discord is sandboxed) - Newpipe(FOSS) for Youtube - F-droid(FOSS) for my FOSS appstore - APKmirror for the few non-free apps I need - Libretorrent(FOSS) and VLC(FOSS) for watching movies - Firefox(FOS…
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Do banking applications work? I mean as in "I buy X online. It requires me to login to my bank application and press 'confirm'. I perform this sequence, and online purchase is completed. "?
What kind of purchase/checkout system works like this? I have never seen one, but if I had, I would not complete the transaction.
Your opt-out is to buy an iPhone.
Now I feel stuck.
I use GraphineOS and LineageOS without Google Play Services. They are great and are suitable replacements for Apple and Google. - Osmand(FOSS) for maps (supports being fully offline!) - Signal and Discord for messaging (Discord is sandboxed) - Newpipe(FOSS) for Youtube - F-droid(FOSS) for my FOSS appstore - APKmirror for the few non-free apps I need - Libretorrent(FOSS) and VLC(FOSS) for watching movies - Firefox(FOS…
> ...and have a better experience in every category than iOS, hardware and software. Really? I tried GrapheneOS on a Pixel 4A, and without exaggerating or trying to come off sensationalist the experience was really tepid compared to iOS, and even "normal" Android. Stuttering and jerky UI (which often also wanted to take a brief nap), very poor GPU hardware acceleration support, notably worse battery life, loads of th…
I agree the default camera app of Graphine isn't great, but it's picture quality better than the iPhone I came from (iPhone SE gen1)
What is the actual value of all this privacy invasion? Is the data even useful to anyone? Or is it just getting collected endlessly for no reason?
To the people collecting the data that can sell it, it is useful only in that someone will buy it. Once it is sold, they don't care one bit about how/where/why it is used.
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amazon paysend many others do too. bank is Boursorama
Is this something more popular outside of the US where credit/debit cards are not as ubiquitous?
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To the people collecting the data that can sell it, it is useful only in that someone will buy it. Once it is sold, they don't care one bit about how/where/why it is used.
But are the third parties buying the data actually getting anything useful out of it?
Game devs see how much time you play games, what type of games, if you purchase IAPs, etc. News feed apps sell what kind of news stories you read/follow/subscribe. Commerce apps sell what kind of things you buy, the prices you pay, the items you look at but don't buy etc.
From all of that "metadata", one can build up a profile about you that's pretty accurate. If you can't imagine why that is useful to someone, then I'd posit you're not trying hard enough.
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Do banking applications work? I mean as in "I buy X online. It requires me to login to my bank application and press 'confirm'. I perform this sequence, and online purchase is completed. "?
Some will, however I have heard some of these apps have janky hooks into Android's trust system which will break them on non-google distros. Personally I wouldn't suggest having banking apps on a phone. You can always use the web browser if you absolutely must access those accounts.
I use GraphineOS and LineageOS without Google Play Services. They are great and are suitable replacements for Apple and Google. - Osmand(FOSS) for maps (supports being fully offline!) - Signal and Discord for messaging (Discord is sandboxed) - Newpipe(FOSS) for Youtube - F-droid(FOSS) for my FOSS appstore - APKmirror for the few non-free apps I need - Libretorrent(FOSS) and VLC(FOSS) for watching movies - Firefox(FOS…
1. set up a brand new phone (Pixel, OnePlus or else)
2. do not connect to a Google account at first or if it is required, log out and remove the account as soon as possible
3. create a contact on your phone with any Contact application (with a name, email address and phone number). Do no enable sync for this application.
4. open the Play Store to download any application (e.g one from your government). You'll be asked to connect to a Google account at this stage, of course
5. now, try to log into your Google account to download the application but *not have Google automatically collect all your contacts' details* (stored locally).
You can't!
This is not possible because:
1. by default, adding the Google account will enable the automatic synchronization for all Google-related apps and services (incl. Contacts). You can disable this before login.
2. You cannot stop the sync of these Contacts while connecting Google Play to your account. It is done in the background and by the time you switch from Google Play (or the login page) to the Settings menu of your device, the sync will have started (if not completed already).
3. You cannot do all this in airplane mode obviously, as it it's impossible to log into a Google account without an Internet connection.
This is illegal per GDPR, because at no point you consent to have your data collected by Google. Also, Android does not inform you of this collection so it's up to you to discover this by browsing your device's settings, down a a sub-levels.
It is a massive collection (and fraud) because most people have probably a hundreds contacts or more on their mobile device. Most mobile devices run Android. Google Play is almost impossible to avoid nowadays (Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Whatsapp, Signal, Firefox, your bank's app, your employers' apps... they all require Google Play and Services to work correctly). Worst, your contacts' information isn't yours, but your contacts' too. Google simply helps themselves.
With 73% of mobile OS market share, around 99% of Android users being probably logged in just to access the Play Store, Google probably has collected the names, email addresses, phone numbers and lots of private information (birthday dates, home and work addresses, employers' names, job titles, digicodes, etc) of every person on Earth, and probably more than once. Without asking for permission.
This is easy to reproduce, 100% illegal (at least per GDPR), everyone is affected and yet, _crickets_.
If you're in the US and believe this is illegal there too, please contact a privacy organization or any entity that might do something about it, at least if you don't like having all your contact details collected by Google without consent.