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Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

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Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#151
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On iOS it's kinda worse in some ways. If you enroll into a company MDM they can see all your apps. On Android if they use the work profile (which is the standard method these days) they can only see the apps inside there.

get a separate device for work ?

ask a separate device for work.

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the worst case, in your opinion?

The US Customs & Border Control apps ("CBP Home" and "Mobile Passport Control") could check for blacklisted apps and flag you to be deported to an El Salvadorean gulag without due process.

Does El Salvador do gulags? I thought that was more of a Russian approach to imprisonment.

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the worst case, in your opinion?

Targeting and profiling. Reselling the data.

Maybe I'm wrong, but that feels pretty similar to fingerprinting. Usually that's why online services try to fingerprint you, for advertising and data revenue.

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#155

Anyone know if GrapheneOS has protection against this?

It doesn't afaik. Only indirectly through multiple profiles

I was kind of surprised

https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/13302-query-all-packages-pe...

https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/7800-how-to-mitigate-identi...

Later

For the wider audience: though don't take this as GrapheneOS doesn't care about privacy. I'm sure there are reasons (I didn't read all of the linked threads) and it gives you plenty of other protections and tools - eg profiles, ability to disable all network access by app etc

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#156

I still, will never understand the need for native "Apps". To this day, I have never seen an "App" that couldn't simply have been a website/webapp. Most of them would likely be improved by being a webapp. The only benefits I can see of "Apps", are the developer get's access to private information they really don't need. Yeah, they get to be on the "App Store". But the "App Store" is a totally unnecessary concept intr…

During earthquake in Bangkok in Friday Grab (local superior version of Uber) helped me to order taxi and get my kids home. Needless to say that cell phones network collapsed for most of the day. All people want to know what happens and is their family and friends are safe. They definitely have very optimized network layer for poor connections. I bet they can switch to udp or something. I'm glad that it wasn't web app…

99% likely they're using a REST API, which is... HTTP.

Even if it's gRPC or something more exotic, it'll be over TLS (you best hope it is).

You can have a webapp cached locally on your device. PWAs allow developers to create an SPA you can open from your homescreen, and to do that API interaction the same way as a native app.

I hope you and your family are well, and it's great that tech helped. But please, don't think that because this tech worked in this instance it can't be made safer and securer.

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#157

I still, will never understand the need for native "Apps". To this day, I have never seen an "App" that couldn't simply have been a website/webapp. Most of them would likely be improved by being a webapp. The only benefits I can see of "Apps", are the developer get's access to private information they really don't need. Yeah, they get to be on the "App Store". But the "App Store" is a totally unnecessary concept intr…

How would you make a video app in a browser? ie taking videos and then editing them afterwards

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#158
post #146

I still, will never understand the need for native "Apps". To this day, I have never seen an "App" that couldn't simply have been a website/webapp. Most of them would likely be improved by being a webapp. The only benefits I can see of "Apps", are the developer get's access to private information they really don't need. Yeah, they get to be on the "App Store". But the "App Store" is a totally unnecessary concept intr…

For me, there are a lot of applications that I want to be able to load regardless of whether I have a connection to the Internet or not: calendar, notes, mail etc. They can sync/send/whatever whenever I am next online.

PWAs can do this.

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#159
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, there are a lot of applications that I want to be able to load regardless of whether I have a connection to the Internet or not: calendar, notes, mail etc. They can sync/send/whatever whenever I am next online.

Ah yeah. While this is mostly implemented terrible, a web app can absolutely do this for you using service workers. So you can install a webapp to your homescreen and use it without an internet connection at all.

Emulate a network layer to serve a pre-packaged bundle. Neat "platform", but as a developer no thanks.

While apps are spying etc, making them is usually a no-brainer compared to churning and leaky web stacks. And probably not a single time a webapp loaded for me when I tried it outside standing in the wind trying to figure something out. It was always an app that started and helped and didn't ever scroll horizontally while doing so.

Re: Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

#160
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, there are a lot of applications that I want to be able to load regardless of whether I have a connection to the Internet or not: calendar, notes, mail etc. They can sync/send/whatever whenever I am next online.

Ah yeah. While this is mostly implemented terrible, a web app can absolutely do this for you using service workers. So you can install a webapp to your homescreen and use it without an internet connection at all.

In that case the only difference between a webapp and a normal app would be the permissions, wouldn't it?
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