Discussion: Is Android Doing Enough to Protect Your Privacy?
Discussion: Is Android Doing Enough to Protect Your Privacy?
Google claims that privacy is a priority, and perhaps it is, but we can't deny there's an essential conflict of interest between protecting your privacy and Google being an advertising company.
Recent events in this space include Google's new Ad Topics framework, which purports to offer users more control. I feel it's an improvement over cookies, but having my device participate in tracking me is backwards. After all, my device should be protecting my privacy first, not implementing features to track my behavior.
Data "nutrition labels" in the Play Store are a step forward by encouraging proactively a discussion about how user data is processed and used. On the other hand, recent attempts at DRM for the web in Chrome remind us that the main vendor behind Android doesn't always have user interests at heart.
Is Android doing enough to keep your data safe? If not, what steps could reasonably improve the situation?
In sharing your opinion, please take care to distinguish between Google the company and Android the product. While related, given Google may have privacy issues in one line of business doesn't necessarily define privacy practices on the Android platform. Also, another interesting angle includes what's best for you versus what's best for users as a whole. For example, a privacy feature, to be successful, needs to be reasonably understandable by most users and offer a net benefit without complicating the platform for casual users.
Any proclaimed prioritization of privacy or privacy improvements in stock Android serve only to bring your data more directly under the control of Google at the expense of other entities, so that those other entities must pay Google as a middleman to your data. On stock Android, there is no privacy - Google has access to everything, always.
In my opinion, one step that could reasonably be taken to improve the situation is for Google to go fuck itself, lose every anti-trust suit brought against it, and die.
Would you say it's kind of like privacy controls on Facebook?
I.e: We're happy to help you manage your privacy, as long as you're not limiting our access to your data.
Whenever a company claims "Your privacy is a priority", they just left out the word "Violating" at the beginning of the statement.
Some years ago, when Google introduced the permission system with Android Marshmallow, I watched this developer conference presentation. At the end of it, a visitor asked whether there's also a permission to prevent internet access.
The Google guy who had presented it, responded that there was not, because with the other permissions in place, no app would have access to data that shouldn't be on the internet.
I'd wager every single person in that room was techy enough to know that this was complete horseshit, including the presenter, but that did not stop him from pressing it out his grinning teeth.
To this day, when you install a third-party keyboard app, you either trust it with all your passwords and everything you type + internet access, or you don't use one, even though 99% of third-party keyboards don't need internet.
Similarly, you could allow camera apps etc. to not need to ask for permission, if they don't use the internet, thereby reducing user fatigue.Instead, Google decided to compromise security of the Android platform, I imagine, because they want apps to ship with (their) ads and trackers.
This is really insightful. I've always questioned the lack of an Internet permission. Keyboard applications are a really good example of apps that don't need internet access.
But without internet, no telemetry, no advertising. I think that's a compromise Google cannot make.
Internet access should absolutely be a user controlled permission.
While not disagreeing with you, Android does have an Internet permission in the manifest. For an application to use network access, it must define both:
uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET" uses-permission android:name="android.permission.ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE"Sauce: https://developer.android.com/develop/connectivity/network-ops/connecting
So if a keyboard is open source, one could quickly validate if the keyboard app actually is requesting to have Internet access or not, and one could choose a keyboard based on it not using these permissions.
(Edit: Formatting.)
Yeah, I was actually aware of that, while writing the above. The AndroidManifest.xml is zipped into the APK-file, so even for closed-source apps, you should be able to check it.
Problem is, of course, that it doesn't help less techy folks, but also that you can't prevent app updates from suddenly adding internet access.
And that you can't take it away from apps that do claim to need it. At some point, I had some sort of root/XPosed/whatever setup, where I could take this permission away from apps, but because this was a thing that couldn't happen normally, they all just flopped over sideways, saying things like "Please connect to WiFi 🥺".
(on pixels at least) if you go into your google settings from the settings app, manage your google account, data and privacy, web and app activity, google is tracking literally EVERYTHING you do on your phone if you have this on. this was the most egregious invasions of privacy I've ever seen, baked into android and hidden away for users to disable, and it's even harder to disable if you dont have a pixel. google does not give a fuck about "privacy" on android, they could start by just tearing all that stuff out but thats how the money is made so we're left with alternatives like grapheneos.
They ostensibly care about privacy between you and third parties. It makes the data Google collects about you more valuable
Google claims that privacy is a priority
lmfao
You can somewhat protect your own privacy via VPNs, adblockers... I personally use TrackerControl, which for the most part can identify and block unnecessary trackers and URL connections on an app-by-app basis to better protect your privacy
Permanently Deleted
It's pretty clear though that they don't do all that because they care about privacy, but because they want to be the only real player in datamining town.
@henfredemars I think Android is doing enough to keep my data safe. Google on the other hand...
So yea, if you really care about privacy, disable every Google service that you can (without affecting the normal functioning of your device) and use F-Droid to install all your apps. Also, use open source alternatives wherever possible.
If any tracking or advertisment is ever opt out rather then opt in, then no.
I don't know about privacy but Android's security is good enough. If really care about privacy anyway, you should be using microG or GrapheneOS where Google's spying is limited on the device.
Neither microg or grapheneos solves all problems. I don't think the question here is mainly about google's tracking components, I think it is instead about system design to avoid leaking data.
That being said, as far as I know accelerometer and compass is still available to apps in an unrestricted manner even in the background, similarly with the speaker through which apps are still allowed to produce sounds that your can't hear, but tracking systems in the mall or even in smart devices at home listen to it.
The same can really be said about any other sensor with the exception of the mic and the cams because of permissions, but the impact of permissions really get nullified when your smartphone comes from the factory with 3 facebook apps installed, where 2 of them is an unremovable system app with all permissions granted. You still can't limit whether an app should have access to devices on the LAN when connected to WiFi, which means your phone (through a malicious app) can act as a gateway for tracking data if let's say you have blocked your smart tv from internet access (either directly, or by just the facebook app scraping all information of all devices on your network, that may also include data in how you use it (screen on time hours), or collected data that was expected accidentally or not).There are several other points here too that I haven't mentioned.
MicroG & GrapheneOS projects specialize in blocking non-essential tracking related connections to Google. They are effective at that too.
accelerometer and compass is still available to apps in an unrestricted manner even in the background, similarly with the speaker through which apps are still allowed to produce sounds that your can’t hear, but tracking systems in the mall or even in smart devices at home listen to it
Doesn't sound like an Android problem as any device with a speaker can be abused if I understand what you are saying.
Can't speak for compass & accelerometer permissions but how do you expect auto-rotation to work in apps?
Do you really expect people to push a consent toggle every time they visit pornhub.com. Be serious.
I think you are overthinking this. The concern here should be can Google or any other party exfiltrate this offline data and if so, what can you do to stop it?
Popping up a Wireshark equivalent and monitoring the chatter on your device is a good place to start. Otherwise you would be making cases for where there is no argument to be made.
Privacy is one discipline of security...
Any system that creates an advertisement tracking ID for you, is not created for your privacy