According to the posted link, the network can be turned off entirely if you wish, and you could just not use Google Play Services on your device, and that should also stop this.
While I like those options, they are definitely not for everyone.
Those problems are collective, protecting the privacy of 1% of the population is as good as protecting nobody.
It appears to require a Google account to do the tracking. So yeah, without Google services, you should be perfectly safe. Since you have no Google account registered on device and no services that run rogue in the background,
The article did not say specifically how it was getting added to Android 15, because if it's in AOSP, then yeah, there's definitely a problem. But if it's in Google Play Services, which seems likely, then it would not be as big of an issue.
Moreover, Graphene dev is a religious believer of Google and its vision. He specifically recommends the purchase and use of Google Pixels, and rules out any non-Google brand.
I am aware that there are highly opinionated people in the graphineOS team. we had a scandal a while back that shook up the company (and I to the best of my understanding, kicked off/demoted some members, if its didn't I'm getting another phone) a little while back. for being so important for my life and the lives of many others, the tightrope of maintaining trust that the OS is safe is unacceptably wobbly.
Out of the 5 years I have spent investigating these security morons in FOSS/privacy communities, I have looked at Graphene for roughly over 4 years, looking at their chatrooms, GitHub discussions, reddit comments and so on. Big Tech security is one thing these people push a lot for some reason.
If you search and look hard enough, he pushes Chromium, calls Firefox insecure, even though it is debunked time and time again. See "they killed Firefox security" section in first link. madaidan and former GOS community mod cn3m were the main faux agenda pushers.
Micay also believes a lot in microkernel vision of Google, but Fuchsia has been cancelled recently. He also solely recommends Google Pixels, and refuses GOS support for other models since 6ish years or more, since Copperhead split happened. His minions/mods also love the idea of encouraging to use Google services.
I have a lot of stuff documented if you go through it.
Also, for some mysterious reason, Micay has an embargo beta patching partnership with Google, something LineageOS refuses to have. It is very fishy as well.
interesting.can you explain what you mean by embargo beta patching partnership?
I've been following your comments and posts over lemmy and reddit actually, for a couple years. i dont agree with everything but it's absolutely important to be researching beyond the popular/mainstream privacy community narrative, which I appreciate.
Custom Android build developers, LineageOS team, CalyxOS team and others do not affiliate with Google. This is something exclusive to Graphene, and is very fishy, yet goes unquestioned. Even their compliance with a law/norm exclusive to Japan - mandatory shutter sound - is extremely weird.
I have no clue why Graphene gets these beta patches so fast, that LineageOS and other project teams avoid. And it has been a very silent topic for years, outside of a couple mentions/hints by Micay.
could it simply be all the security research and code review they do? i mean, Graphene does have tons of upstream contributions. Two zero days just the other day for example.
You should see those zero days being actively patched onto Pixels officially by Google and brands with high patching frequency, since they are similarly affiliated with Google and their embargo patches. Android has a colossal community with lots of security developers, and Micay/Graphene one man project is not what it really is like. There is a lot of optics gaming going on.
Unddit and all those are dead. You will not believe this, but I am having a bad time IRL, with a spinal injury, a blade cut on hand and a dead phone with lost data all within a couple weeks, which also had high quality screenshots. Make the best of these images, they should be readable. Sorry for that. Or maybe open on desktop monitor or in landscape on phone.