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Google has removed Conversations_im from the Play Store

gultsch.social

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Re: Google has removed Conversations_im from the Play Store

#121

Post by fauigerzigerk »

doubled112 wrote: post #111
Roark66 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Chrome constantly scans your harddrive in a way you can't easily turn off, and it's not for your safety: it's for the safety of their ad business to try to catch malware that engages in click fraud. If you have media or backup drives it just constantly adds wear to them. Is this true? Chrome is open source so someone should be able to point out the code that is doing that. What is the source of this info if not the…

https://blog.google/products/chrome/cleaner-safer-web-chrome... https://www.google.com/chrome/privacy/whitepaper.html#unwant... > Chrome periodically scans your device to detect potentially unwanted software. In addition, if you have opted in to automatically report details of possible security incidents to Google, Chrome will report information about unwanted software, including relevant file metadata and system set…

It no longer exists.

https://security.googleblog.com/2023/03/thank-you-and-goodby...

Re: Google has removed Conversations_im from the Play Store

#123

Post by lloeki »

madeofpalk wrote: post #38
carstenhag wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially tiktok is still live, and there it's super obvious they upload the contact list. First: they ask you. More importantly though: you don't even need to search for someone or someone's phone. You open the app and get 3 people suggested you never even knew had a tiktok account. Really really creepy when you just exchanged numbers with someone and you can see all their 50 tiktoks. Happened to me with a girl I m…

This happens the other way around as well (and is why, imho, both Android and iOS should flat out remove the capability from their platforms) - if TikTok knows your phone number for whatever reason, and the OTHER person uploads their contacts with you in it, that's enough to create the connection and start prompting you to friend them.

Right, I can deny contact uploading all day long, as long as a bunch of people that have my number upload theirs to foostter it quickly paints a social graph where I'm† precisely pinpointed even though I did not interact with foostter.

† Or a hash but that's barely pseudonymous. The social graph alone could constitute PII as it could easily identify me unequivocally, but here's no way for me nor anyone outside foostter to know what happens internally, let alone request erasure.

Re: Google has removed Conversations_im from the Play Store

#124

Post by doubled112 »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #121
doubled112 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://blog.google/products/chrome/cleaner-safer-web-chrome... https://www.google.com/chrome/privacy/whitepaper.html#unwant... > Chrome periodically scans your device to detect potentially unwanted software. In addition, if you have opted in to automatically report details of possible security incidents to Google, Chrome will report information about unwanted software, including relevant file metadata and system set…

It no longer exists. https://security.googleblog.com/2023/03/thank-you-and-goodby...

Glad to hear it. Interesting that the latest privacy whitepaper still includes the section on it.

Re: Google has removed Conversations_im from the Play Store

#125

Post by stavros »

ravenstine wrote: post #76
causi wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kind of bullshit is why I'm done buying devices I can't root.

I've found that as long as the bootloader can be unlocked and I can install a custom ROM, there's virtually no reason to obtain root. GrapheneOS is good enough on its own that I've had no desire to use root.

When people say "root", they usually mean "unlock the bootloader". "A device I can root" fundamentally means "a device whose bootloader can be unlocked".

Though, Google banning unlocked devices from using Google Pay was a really user-hostile decision.

Re: Google has removed Conversations_im from the Play Store

#126

Post by mrusme »

alwayslikethis wrote: post #57
knightoffaith wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty surprising that you can make money off of a free software app like this, I always thought almost nobody would actually pay for it on Google Play store. I hope he can work it out with Google. Conversations is the best Android XMPP client I know of.

I'm using a fork but it is the best XMPP client out there. Even the ones on Linux are riddled with bugs and usability issues.

Kindly allow me to reply with profanity [1] to that statement. :-)

[1] https://profanity-im.github.io

Re: Google has removed Conversations_im from the Play Store

#127

Post by echelon »

alias_neo wrote: post #72

They did the same thing to our messaging app where I work. Claimed we were uploading contacts and removed our app; we definitely don't upload contacts, that's a fact; the infra is also self-hosted so where would we be uploading them to? They only way we got them to allow it back was to add a privacy-policy notice to say that we upload contacts and why, despite the fact we actually don't...

Google and Apple need to be regulated and have their "oversight" of what software can be deployed to mobile devices removed.

Google and Apple's role is to defend users. This nanny state solution is not the only way to accomplish that, and in fact, they only do this to extract as much value as possible from the marketplace.

Re: Google has removed Conversations_im from the Play Store

#128

Post by alias_neo »

tazjin wrote: post #99
alias_neo wrote: post #72

They did the same thing to our messaging app where I work. Claimed we were uploading contacts and removed our app; we definitely don't upload contacts, that's a fact; the infra is also self-hosted so where would we be uploading them to? They only way we got them to allow it back was to add a privacy-policy notice to say that we upload contacts and why, despite the fact we actually don't...

Why didn't you just start distributing the APK yourself if it was a private thing at work?

It's not a private thing, it's our product.

Re: Google has removed Conversations_im from the Play Store

#129

Post by ryandrake »

ndr wrote: post #96
alias_neo wrote: post #72

They did the same thing to our messaging app where I work. Claimed we were uploading contacts and removed our app; we definitely don't upload contacts, that's a fact; the infra is also self-hosted so where would we be uploading them to? They only way we got them to allow it back was to add a privacy-policy notice to say that we upload contacts and why, despite the fact we actually don't...

How do you know none of your sdk/deps doesn't either?

Yours is a good question, and probably one of the places I'd look first. It doesn't deserve to be downvoted. Too many developers just yeet rando dependencies into their app without even remotely vetting/auditing them.

Re: Google has removed Conversations_im from the Play Store

#130

Post by ensignavenger »

clucas wrote: post #120
doubled112 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://blog.google/products/chrome/cleaner-safer-web-chrome... https://www.google.com/chrome/privacy/whitepaper.html#unwant... > Chrome periodically scans your device to detect potentially unwanted software. In addition, if you have opted in to automatically report details of possible security incidents to Google, Chrome will report information about unwanted software, including relevant file metadata and system set…

This is interesting, I didn't know Chrome did this. But it doesn't back up the claim that "[i]f you have media or backup drives [Chrome] just constantly adds wear to them." Does anyone have anything on that?

As pointed out above, Chrome no longer does this... but adding wear is a natural consequence of any hard drive scanning process. SSDs are rated for a certain number of read/write cycles, and every time a block is read, it adds wear.

Even spinning rust wears out eventually. Not knowing any details about how often Chrome did this, it is hard to say just how significant this wear would be compared to other normal uses of the media. But it is clear that wear would occur to some degree.

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