How to stay private when using Android | Hacker News Reader

How to stay private when using Android

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244 pointsamorfati170 comments

Honestly, Android is hopelessly so much worse than that. You need to disable/adb uninstall tens of apps because, you have no way to actually remove them. Some of them cannot be disabled (Google Play Services for instance).

Additionally, you cannot have a secured up-to-date WebView (rendering library for Android apps showing web pages) without signing in with a Google account and updating Google Chrome. I found out while trying to remove as much spyware as possible from my Xiaomi A3 Android One phone. As suggested in the blog post, I didn't sign in with a Google Account.

But the WebView [0] is updated via the Play Store which requires an account. So I said I'll just compile Chromium and provide my own WebView. But the system has a whitelist [1] of WebView implementations that excludes everyone but Google to render webviews.

So I'll root my phone and find my way into the whitelist? Well it seems (at that point I'm discouraged to look) that will break future OTA updates because the diffs they send assume the system partition is bit-for-bit unchanged.

So I'll compile Android (AOSP) and flash it? Well, I should have bought another phone, because although my Xiaomi Mi A3 has its kernel on Github, binaries such as the radio firmware aren't available [2].

So I'll just install a precompiled ROM from XDA forums? Well, I'm still reluctant honestly, I'm sure the devs are great but they're still anonymous people on the Internet.

Maybe I should have bought a Sony, AOSP support is better [3], maybe I should have bought something supported by Lineage but then I'd depend on the branch developers.

I should say, it looks like there is some progress (more granular permissions, Android One, Treble, Mainline...) but it's regressing at the same time (removal of the Internet permission, Google Assistant, Play Store distributed system updates in Android 10...).

I remember Larry Page ranting about MS Windows a few years after he started Google. Well, my phone spies on me, is full of uninstallable Google-made bloatware, is locking aftermarket alternatives out with some gotchas and is nowhere close to the freedom I get from a commodity computer (which is far from perfect still). I remember the early Android team promising you can replace every app but a decade later and there are these whitelisting shenanigans.

By the way, I'm open to suggestions if anyone can help.

[0]: Technically, for Android 9, the fallback WebView is updated over the air but Google Chrome is updated with the Play Store

[1]: https://github.com/bromite/bromite/wiki/Installing-SystemWeb...

[2]: Technically, they're already on my phone but I wouldn't get updates anyway.

[3]: https://developer.sony.com/develop/open-devices/#overview-co...

And you know what? I guess Google Fuchsia won't have a major change at this situation. And if it did (since every clean restart should bring something positive), some years later the situation will be the same.

I think the best practical solution these days is to buy a Pixel or some Sony Xperia, and install your own AOSP. Then run a F-Droid userland. If you have a Pixel, you also have access to things like https://grapheneos.org/, which is the successor to CopperheadOS, and perfect AOSP support. Sonys tend to loose some features.

A good alternative if you want a cheaper phone is to run LineageOS on a popular device in the Lineage community.

Something that is becoming a really good alternative is to run a device-independent ROM on an unlockable Treble device: https://github.com/phhusson/treble_experimentations

As you said, stock Android is pretty hopeless in terms of privacy.

phh-treble looks pretty good, thanks for bringing it up! Any idea how one gets authentic updates to the radio after flashing a GSI though? Anyone here has tried it with a Xiaomi A3? Looks like most phones have partial support still.

Pixel phones are out of my budget so GrapheneOS isn't an option.

Stock Android has long been dead to me but I wasn't aware Android One is just as bad because most reviews focus on the UI.

check out e.foundation. /e/ is a linageOS based android distribution that does all the work of getting rid of stuff that affects your privacy.

Unfortunately all of these things are bandages on a sinking ship. They're technically better than nothing, but in reality they simply do not fix the problem. Even worse, it's possible (even probably) that some privacy controls simply do not do the think they say they do. You are essentially trusting a company with a rubbish track record in privacy violations to pinky swear they stop tracking you when you toggle a switch.

Exactly. Scottiestech's YouTube has some good info on how your smartphone is tracking you more than you think. Sometimes I think about building my own phone with a Raspberry Pi or use LineageOS.

AFAIK one of the best solutions for smartphone privacy is using a custom Android ROM without Google apps installed. Of course that means basically no 3rd party apps, but you can still get a surprising amount of functionality with just a web browser. You’ll still get tracked by your mobile provider, but I think that would happen even with a dumbphone.

You can use microg. It's a Free reimplementation of google play framework, so that apps which depend on it can still function in a de-googled phone. It's imperfect, I admit it, and breaks some apps, but it's still a massive help.

I'll second (third?) LineageOS + microG! Full ROMs combining both are available [1] (OS updates often seem to have to be installed manually, but are supported on popular phones for years). In addition to using everything from the F-Droid repository, I can run Slack/Discord/Messenger/WhatsApp/GroupMe (though notifications are hit-or-miss) and a good few other apps (Duolingo, bank mobile apps, Uber but not Lyft). Many of these apps can be installed via Yalp Store [2], which is a frontend for the Google Play store with a built-in account to provide some anonymity. It'll do until I get a Librem5 [3].

TL;DR: no Google, most things work, but not necessarily smoothly. I've used it for a few years now.

[1] https://lineage.microg.org/ [2] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.github.yeriomin.yalpstor... [3] https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/

F-Droid is a pretty cool foss app "store" as an alternative to the playstore.

> Of course that means basically no 3rd party apps

I'm using LineageOS without Play Store/Services and would like to dispel this myth. Here are just some of the third party applications I can install directly from the developer using adb, without going through a third party store: Signal, Firefox, NetGuard, NewPipe, Orgzly, OsmAnd, Tor Browser. Those pretty much cover all of my smartphone needs and more.

Three kinds of apps that are very important to me, that I cannot get without play store:

The national 2fa app. The app people use to send money to their friends, sometimes street vendors. Rideshare app.

What do you mean by, "no 3rd party apps"?

You can use F-Droid (https://f-droid.org/) in place of the Play Store.

Certainly if you want to build your own Pi phone don't let anyone stop you, but if you want something very much like that but prefabricated, the pinephone is a good option.

You shouldn't have to find a half dozen toggles somewhere. there should be a master toggle somewhere that turns that crap off. Location, sync, listening, all that stuff. They could provide that if they were serious about privacy, but they don't

I do use LineageOS+microg without play store installed, to avoid any Google software on my phone (yet still being able to use some apps which depend on the google framework)

I've been doing this for about a year and half now. Not only does my phone's battery last longer without Play store but I'm missing very few features.

Can you please list a few privacy violations that create the track record? Comparable to e.g. Apple giving Siri voice recordings to 3rd party contractors without the ability to disable it?

I'm sure it'll be easy, easier than downvotes.

For example, turning off "location history" didn't prevent Google from tracking your location history. You had to also disable "web and app activity".

More to the point, none of this matters when you’re continuously polling Google’s API endpoints for your email.

How is that different than Apple iPhones polling iCloud backends for your email? Or visiting websites?

Depends on what criteria you care about. In the example of polling, and the data that can leak from said polling, it's only different in the sense that we _know_ Google is evil in this equation.

So if this is a concern of yours you should definitely not use Google, and you should probably not use Apple.

What the heck does "we _know_ Google is evil" actually mean?

This isn't a Marvell movie, how does doing the same thing by two different corporations make a difference beyond you buying into brand marketing?

Simply a meme about exploiting your user data as extremely as Google can. Ie, I am their sole business model on the advertising front.

A good example is many of the things outlined in this post. People _trying_ to use Android privately, but after an update Google switches all of their privacy settings back to giving Google everything - and it syncs all old stuff to boot.

That behavior is what I consider actively combatant towards the consumer. It's like how Comcast just keeps finding ways to make incremental fees, "accidentally" charge people, etc.

These are under what I consider "evil" for corporations.

I presume this false equivalence is trolling, since only one of the two firms mentioned derives ~90% of its revenue from targeting ads, and the implications should be self-evident.

There are things that aren't as obvious and may seem counterintuitive. Because company A derives 95% of their profits from ads it puts pressure on product design to not endanger that and also branch out in other areas. It would be extremely risky for such a business to have a cavalier attitude to how they manage user's trust and the information that the ads depend on because, like you said, they depend on that ad income. That is why, if you have to give your private information and the choice is between a company that depends on (safeguarding) it (like Google) vs a company that doesn't care (like mom&pop store), I would be very afraid of the latter's management of your private information, the security of their systems, etc.

If you have a choice to not give your private information (or limit what you give) to anyone then that's obviously better.

> I presume this false equivalence is trolling, since only one of the two firms mentioned derives ~90% of its revenue from targeting ads, and the implications should be self-evident.

No, it's not trolling and nothing about what you wrote is self-evident. Especially when you take into account that one company is the world leader in datacenter security practices and the other is struggling with quality service development.

1. Google tracked user location even when location history was turned off.

2. Most people don't understand the full extent of Web and App Activity permissions -- they don't understand that this will allow Google to do things like parse search queries out of DuckDuckGo searches on Chrome.

3. Similarly (until recently) most people didn't realize that Google was using email info for advertising, including purchases made at competitors. This is the reason why none of your Amazon purchase confirmations list the items you purchased any more. They didn't want Google to be able to read them. Also no way to opt out until enterprise pressure forced Google to eventually promise to stop using the data... for ads.

4. On the subject of Siri, Google's voice assistant was also responsible for giving recordings to 3rd party contractors without the ability to disable it, and most users weren't aware this was happening.

5. Until consumer backlash forced them to stop, Google Maps also aggregated user wifi network names. This would open the door to determine location information based purely on what Wifi networks were stored on your device.

> I'm sure it'll be easy, easier than downvotes.

The reason you're getting downvotes is because this stuff is really easy to research[0], and other commenters don't believe you're engaging in good faith -- they think you're just trying to waste their time by asking them to list out examples that are common knowledge. A downvote is much easier and faster for them.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy_concerns_regarding_Goo...

I did not know #3. That’s messed up.

Email privacy should be sacrosanct.

See news articles about it from the time, and a petition telling Google to stop:

https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/news/2004-03-31-google_...

https://web.archive.org/web/20040604175545/https://www.priva...

And a Microsoft ad criticizing Google for it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9x4_dozWkq0

> 1. Google tracked user location even when location history was turned off.

This is disingenuous. If the user uses a Google app that needs location data, of course that location will be sent to Google. This also happens on iOS.

> 3. Similarly (until recently) most people didn't realize that Google was using email info for advertising

That's how Gmail was marketed when it launched. Ads were shown based on the contents of emails. Everybody knew this.

> 5. Until consumer backlash forced them to stop, Google Maps also aggregated user wifi network names

No, Location Services collects WiFi names. Unlike on iOS [1], this is disable-able on Android, and the checkbox to do so is even shown during device setup. If you mean the Street View vans collect WiFi SSIDs, Apple does exactly the same but worse because nobody has any idea if they respect "_nomap" in the SSID (obeyed by both Mozilla and Google), and Apple won't say.

I find Apple to be far more deceptive on privacy. In addition to the location data that, unlike with Android, you cannot stop Apple from collecting, you also have the problem of having to send banking details to Apple to develop apps for your own devices. For an even bigger deception, look at Tim Cook's weasel words in interviews when asked about China's access to iCloud data. He talks about who has the keys for iMessage communications, which has absolutely nothing to do with the problem. [2]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21725216

[2] https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/43eqpw/tim-cook-insists-c...

Edit for MarioMan: Wifi Services is not the system that collects this data but a user of Location Services. Turning it off won't stop Apple from collecting location data off your device.

> that needs location data, of course that location will be sent to Google

It's surprising enough that articles were written about it, and Google had to clarify its privacy policy to explain it.[0] It is not intuitive or natural to a normal user to believe that location data will be stored when they have a permission entitled "location" turned off. That's deceptive on Google's part, plain and simple.

On that note, I don't really care what Apple does, why would bad privacy policies on iPhone make me feel better about Google spying on me?

> That's how Gmail was marketed when it launched. Ads were shown based on the contents of emails. Everybody knew this.

Literally the next comment alongside yours is someone who didn't know this.

> If you mean the Street View vans collect WiFi SSIDs, Apple does exactly the same.

Yes, that's what I mean[1], and, again, who cares whether or not Apple does the same? We're supposed to believe this was totally expected behavior that was entirely fine, which is why Google was forced to respond and change their policies after public backlash.

Why do people do this? Why do people look at public, documented controversies and say, "there wasn't a controversy, everyone was OK with it"? This stuff isn't public knowledge, or else it wouldn't be newsworthy.

I've written about this pattern in the past[2], but I'm not going to rehash it in detail here. The short version is that every privacy accusation is denied vigorously until the story breaks that it's actually real. And then suddenly the conversation shifts and those privacy violations were all public knowledge and the controversy was overblown and nobody smart was ever surprised by them. People are paranoid until it's proven they're not, and then they're accused of over-reacting.

[0]: https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/21/16684818/google-location...

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/may/15/google-ad...

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21778234

> Google had to clarify its privacy policy to explain it.[0]

Google didn't update any privacy policies in this article. It is about background collection of location data when location services was disabled that has since stopped. Meanwhile, Apple continues to collect your location data in the background with no way to disable it.

> why would bad privacy policies on iPhone make me feel better about Google spying on me?

Because you're saying that Google is uniquely deceptive on privacy when the main competitor is provably worse.

> Google was forced to respond and change their policies after public backlash.

As I showed, Apple still hasn't changed its policies on WiFi collection. Responding to privacy concerns is better than not responding to privacy concerns by any definition.

Google isn't uniquely deceptive on privacy. It's just deceptive on privacy. Google isn't uniquely bad on privacy. It's just bad on privacy.

It is possible for multiple companies to be bad at the same things.

This I agree with. There are also degrees of deception and badness on privacy, and Apple is by far the worst among the major tech companies, even beyond Facebook, which has not given the Chinese government wholesale access to a subset of its users' data and then lied about it.

If you’re referring to the crowd-sourced collection and contribution of Wi-Fi SSIDs, iOS has the “Wi-Fi Networking” toggle in location services that turns this on or off. If you’re referring to the use of that data, it is one of several components in the locations API that cannot be separated out.

So if I don't want Google telling the world where I live, I can no longer tell Windows users to not upload my WiFi passwords to Microsoft (_optout)... what a world we live in!

Google and Mozilla. Apple will continue to tell the world where you live.

Microsoft no longer uploads WiFi passwords, but when it did, you could opt out by putting _optout anywhere in the SSID.

>This is the reason why none of your Amazon purchase confirmations list the items you purchased any more

Just checked a recent email from Amazon I received on a Gmail account and that is false.

I just checked the emails I received from Amazon from Christmas purchases, and it is not false. I don't doubt you, but I'm curious what the difference is. I'm looking at order confirmation emails and package ship/delivery emails. They only list order numbers for me, and I need to click through to the Amazon account to see the actual items.

Is there a different category of purchase that you're looking at, or is there something I'm missing?

Edit: I am looking online and I'm not seeing any articles that reference Amazon hiding orders specifically to thwart Gmail tracking, so it's very possible I'm wrong and that's just anecdote. But that being said, they definitely aren't showing individual items in my email confirmations. Is there a preference for this that I forgot I toggled?

I have no clue.

https://i.imgur.com/qiKBJQf.png

Do both of you use gmail?

I'm on Fastmail. I looked back at some of my old Gmail emails and they do list items. The Fastmail emails do not. This strikes me as really weird, if anything I would expect it to be the opposite.

Regardless, it's pretty clear that Amazon doesn't universally hide order information, so my assertion that they're doing it to avoid Gmail tracking seems to be pretty objectively wrong. If they were, they would do a better job.

Note that Gmail is still tracking your purchases, that's pretty widely established, and until recently, they were using your purchase history for ads. But I'm definitely wrong about Amazon's response, and I can't track down whatever source gave me that idea.

In my experience, I’ve noticed that order confirmation includes order details: shipping confirmation not. Took me a while to notice the pattern, and I still find it frustrating.

My confirmation emails contain zero product information.

Not being troll-y but...A simple search of NH will give you plenty of examples. It seems that at least twice p/month some Google snafu related to privacy or other dark patterns bubbles to the top.

There's a reason they stopped using "don't be evil."

This is why I have a serious aversion to using any kind of Google Product. They're an advertising company first and foremost - why would anyone expect their products to do anything BUT maximize ad revenue?

But maximizing ad revenue (long term) does also imply not losing user's trust and information.

Not necessarily. You can run a very effective misinformation campaign.

Yes, totally inadequate.

The problem, though, is that ~nobody would bother doing what it would take. And so there's the argument that recommending bandages is the most effective strategy.

It would be cool to see this acknowledged. Even if in tiny print somewhere.

Starting with Android Pie, backups are encrypted with a key not known to Google[1]. Doesn't cover all of sync, but that is encouraging.

[1] https://security.googleblog.com/2018/10/google-and-android-h...

This has been the case for chrome sync 10+ years now.

You need to enter a second password thought.

If you want to stay private, give up the idea of a smartphone altogether. If you (quite understandably) do not want to do that, you're pretty much just kidding yourself.

Privacy is a continuum, and you most certainly can improve over the default state while still using a smartphone.

Perhaps, but I think once I'm broadcasting my location at all times to one party the rest feels a bit like window dressing.

It's not all or nothing privacy. If you give up Android/Google Play (and Facebook etc.) you have a much smaller exposure.

Buy an iPhone or a Jolla (or, maybe in future, PinePhone or Librem). Then use Firefox with uBO, DuckDuckGo and Fastmail. And you have a much better privacy in 2020.

IIRC, you can't use uBO on Firefox on iOS, only on Android.

This is correct. Per App Store rules, all web browsers are basically just skins on top of WebKit. Not only can they not make extensions work like they can on other OSs, they also can't make their own HTML/CSS or JS engines.

See 2.5.6 here - https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/

Android has Firefox with many extensions, and Firefox variants such as Tor browser. iOS essentially has Safari or skinned Safari. (This may all change when they're forced via anti-trust rulings to allow 3rd party apps & stores on their devices, but those legal rulings may be years off).

uBlock Origin is not on iOS.

There is FF Focus, but not sure how much more secure that is.

Like every browser on iOS, it's basically a skin of Safari.

> Buy...a Jolla

I would absolutely love to do this, but I live in the US. Recently I visited Jolla's website and was excited to see that they offer an officially supported installation for Sony Xperia 10 and XA2 phones. I found several listings for those devices on eBay, got really excited, and almost pulled the trigger on one. I went back and read the fine print on the Jolla site and discovered that they won't sell the OS to you or allow you to download the free version if you live outside the EU, Switzerland, and Norway.

It's so frustrating that there is a total lockout in the US when it comes to smartphone OSes; I have a Lumia 830 sitting in a drawer I'd be fine with using but since Microsoft officially dropped support it has developed issues that prevent it from being a daily driver. Besides, Microsoft's track record on privacy is hardly better than Google's.

For now I can either carry a dumbphone and a separate smart device like the Gemini PDA running Linux, or just continue using my increasingly slow and glitchy iPhone 7 (I don't want face recognition or a notched display, so I refuse to upgrade to the X and beyond, and the 8 is still too expensive to justify such a minor upgrade).

I am eagerly awaiting the opportunity to buy a PinePhone (fuck Librem and their constant deception around their products), and if it works out as a daily driver I'm all in.

Maybe ask on 'together.jolla.com' about buying from the States? IIRC I read about people buying Sailfish from not officially supported countries. Make sure that the provided bands match what you have available.

Edit: didn't find much about US: https://together.jolla.com/questions/scope:all/sort:age-desc...

May as well give up a mobile phone all together, never mind smart phone. Your location is constantly tracked by the telco.

This article is surprisingly and disappointingly simple-minded to appear on a place called Hacker News. It's a list of things aimed at my mom, not at a "hacker", whatever meaning you assign to this term.

The most telling may well be section "5. Be wary of unknown sources" which recommends "You should never trust software from these sources". One of the key ways of making Android privacy focused is to install F-Droid and use the non-cloud alternatives it offers to all the standard Play Store crap.

Sorry, I would have expected more from something posted on Hacker News. I expect everybody here to roll their eyes when reading a heading such as "Use a PIN".

Install everything from Google Play, that's all good. Never install anything from F-Droid, that's all bad.

That's basically what this article is saying.

> 7. Review your cloud sync

I used an Android device for a short while a few years ago. I disabled all sync functionality and would back up to my own storage device.

After an OS update, all of the sync functionality was automatically enabled and everything on the device was uploaded to Google’s services anyway. So I deleted everything that was uploaded, then deleted my google account, and bought an iPhone and swore to never use a google product again — and I haven’t.

This is so infuriating. sadly the majority of people have no idea just how deep the rabbit whole goes. They and their data are exploited at every turn for the gain of Google.

Everything on the Internet has to be "free," so that's the business model.

Not really in this case: I paid money for my smartphone. The manufacturer might not have paid anything for Android, but that's a problem of Google spending insane amounts of money outcompeting and destroying the entire mobile OS market, not a problem of me not wanting to pay.

You paid money for phone hardware. You didn't pay for the OS on top of it, or the additional software you got via the play store.

If it's anything like the Window's tax on consumer PCs, that would add $50 to the price tag. And then another 20 for McAfee anti-virus, and pay-per-month fees for Adobe and Office365, etc.

I wonder if this kind of behaviour is illegal under GDPR. At least it should be in my opinion.

Syncing contacts and pictures without opt-in sounds very illegal under GDPR.

I’m not sure what you’re getting at, but these are privacy settings that people choose, and they shouldn’t be constantly worrying if an update will violate their privacy.

While it is undeniably true that Android, just as any other networked product by Google, is a nightmare with respect to privacy, I hardly believe that Apple doesn't collect any user data. They very likely want to remain the #1 solution for wealthy people who don't want their communications to be bugged, and they're surely much much better than Google in that context, still I don't trust them because their product is even more closed than Android, therefore impossible to audit just as Android.

Apple's incentives as a product business align much better with user privacy than Google's incentives as an ad business though.

To put it more blunt: risking your rep for some additional amount per user isn't worth it, if your margin is already a non-trivial multiple of said amount.

That's not strictly true, as Apple's incentives as a business are to prevent user choice, regardless of the privacy benefits of the choice. Therefore if you believe, say, that browser engine choice can help privacy (both individually at a micro level and for the ecosystem at a macro level), then Apple's incentives as a product business align much worse with user privacy on that point. The same can be said for other Apple incentives such as kowtowing to some anti-privacy regimes, disallowing advanced software, etc. Treating this as black and white is just wrong.

And yet Apple's OS collects more information than Google's. You cannot even write an app for your device without handing over banking details like a credit card. You cannot get your location without also sending that location to Apple. If you're in China, everything in your iCloud is accessible by the Chinese government.

Edit: this is not whataboutism. People are seriously suggesting using Apple devices instead for privacy, when doing so is worse, as I have shown. If you believe anything I've said is false, go ahead and point it out. I've stated these claims multiple times on Hacker News and not once have they been refuted, so I'll be happy to get corrections before I state them again.

A lot of what you just claimed is completely false or misleading, given your rants throughout this thread though I doubt it’s worth time to enumerate it. You seem very intent to distract the discussions for this post towards Apple and whataboutisms.

Now that I can respond, this is not whataboutism. People are seriously suggesting using Apple devices instead for privacy, when doing so is worse, as I have shown. If you believe anything I've said is false, go ahead and point it out. I've stated these claims multiple times on Hacker News and not once have they been refuted, so I'll be happy to get corrections before I state them again.

> After an OS update, all of the sync functionality was automatically enabled and everything on the device was uploaded to Google’s services anyway.

Which carrier and phone manufacturer if you don't mind my ask? I've never had Google reset my sync settings but I've kept the same phone manufacturer (LG) for years. I've been an Android user since 2009 and I've never had my settings tampered with, the only exception was when Android added silent mode that made it so your alarms wouldn't go off, that sure pissed off a lot of people I'm sure.

So you are okay with everything being synced to Apple? What's the difference? Why do you think Apple respects your privacy more?

Because Apple isn’t an advertising company and doesn’t need to. They also at least come out and say they won’t share your data with 3rd parties, except as needed (this has caused some problems with Siri stuff in the past).

Google is an advertising company first. And advertisers will pay a lot more for that data.

> Because Apple isn’t an advertising company and doesn’t need to

While I agree, just because they don't need to doesn't mean they won't.

Google didn't need to invent gmail and get everyone sucked in to a free product, and then start reading emails to advertise, but it did.

I know it's not exactly apples-to-apples (no pun intended) but I wouldn't put all my faith in a company not doing something egregious for profit because they don't _need_ to

With Apple I trust, but verify. Apple actually has in it's EULA terms that it won't share the data. I know they can easily change it, but that's a good sign.

With Apple's icloud services, outside of a small free tier, you actually pay them money.

With Google, the only real revenue they have is from ads.

A friend of mine had that happen with iOS (iCloud sync settings that she disabled changed after an OS update) so I wouldn't feel safe from this kind of trickery after the OS switch.

He doesn't mention turning off Apple sync. It seems like he/she is ok with their data being owned by Apple and not by Google. Confuses me as to why they think Apple is more private.

Because unlike Google, Apple does not generate the vast bulk of its revenue from selling your private data to advertisers, so Apple does not have an extensive history of violating your privacy for profit.

Yeah, they generate revenue by locking you into an expensive ecosystem which has zero transparency, so we actually don't know what Apple is doing.

We don't know if Apple is violating our privacy. Who knows who Apple is selling your data to.

This information would have already been leaked by an Apple insider or a third party which pay Apple for user metadata. As neither have occurred, I'm inclined to believe they do not sell their user's data.

Google on the other hand have an entire business model which sells your data. I know who I'd trust with my data and TBH, I think you're just throwing stones without understanding your own subconscious bias against Apple.

They should’ve added a point #0 advising people to get a flagship device or an Android One device from vendors who have a track record of selling a phone with the latest Android release and also getting updates to the devices quicker.

Every other point in the article pales in comparison if the new device you bought is running a release more than a year old and you’re guaranteed never to get another update (or may get an update for a year). The point about keeping the software up to date is moot for most Android users.

If you're looking for privacy advice for iOS, then check out iVerify from Trail of Bits. It includes automated detection for certain kinds of malware, configuration checks, and privacy guides for all the rest.

Blog: https://blog.trailofbits.com/2019/11/14/introducing-iverify-...

iOS App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/iverify/id1466120520

Article in VICE: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bjw474/this-app-will-tell...

Aren't apps pretty heavily sandboxed on iOS? I am curious how this app has permission to read the places it needs to read to look out for stuff like malware.

"Don't"

If anyone who has been a google fan/early adopter can attest to, the more things you learn to turn off, unistall, or otherwise disable, Google will find a way to add in even more shit to track you. They are, without absolute certainty, an advertising company. They will always find a way to sell more ads, its the only reason they exist.

I hate iOS but good god android is awful! I bought a cheap one on new years to use as a balloon tracker (GPS boards are expensive so it seemed like a good idea.)

There are absolutely no diagnostics, every setting (including critical ones) seems to move around between OS updates. They’re constantly breaking things you actually need (termux API is missing half of what’s useful and silently fails on most things now) while still letting malware installed by manufacturers through. I think when I first connected the phone to a network it pulled down ~1Gb of shovelware including facebook. Thankfully it was on WiFi since I didn’t want to use up the data until we launched the balloon.

This of course never worked. It was able to connect and use data for about 30 minutes, I’m not sure what we did to make it work but it randomly stopped after that.

Mobile OSes need to die, they don’t help people they’re just another tool for corporations to push users through confusing broken mazes in order to manipulate them.

I've found some iOS apps tremendously useful over the years, so no, I'll pass on your hangup condemning all Mobile OSes to death.

Which ones?

I dunno, I find Android more obvious than iOS, but it seems pretty obvious it's because I've used one more than the other.

> "android is awful!" ... "I bought a cheap one"

Nothing like condemning the entirety of a thing based on a single limited intentionally-bottom-of-the-barrel experience!

Android is awful regardless of device you buy. Google's control is an absolute disaster for an OS.

If Google is involved, expect 0 privacy.

A cheap device would deliver lower performance, but that doesn't explain the poor OS design issues. I used to be quite a fan of Android, but even as performance has improved other things have gotten worse. I don't like the Apple ecosystem either so perhaps I will be a customer for the Pine phone as my app needs are quite limited.

> A cheap device would deliver lower performance

That's one way to lower price, but in an industry of razor sharp hardware returns if you really want to make something cheap you do it by getting money from services and if those "services" include interest based advertising then it's even better. Just look at why all modern TVs are "smart TVs" and default (often hard to disable) "call home" tracking features.

This is one thing I don't understand about the Android ecosystem... Android fans like to point out that you have a choice of phone price points from $100 up to $1000, where on Apple devices it's generally $600 to $1000. But if you actually buy one of those $100 phones and have a problem with it, the first response is always "well yeah that's what you get for buying a cheap phone".

Seems like an illusion of choice if you're guaranteed a working phone only if you buy the latest $1000 Samsung flagship.

Smartphones are like many other technology products. Yes, you can get the cheapest one available but it will be total garbage or you could spend another $100 or so and get a pretty decent phone. Going beyond this point you get diminishing returns, is spending another $700-800 really worth it for a better camera, a faster CPU/GPU and a screen with a bit better colour when all you do is watch Youtube videos and browse facebook/instagram/whatever other social media?

I agree with you, but for the same of argument... this Android user will also earn prospective buyers up front that they should steer well clear of the cheap devices before they buy them too!

At this point you’re probably better off buying an iPhone and disabling iCloud backup (or disabling iCloud entirely).

some of you wrote here, many months ago, something I will never forget: "how can you pretend privacy from a phone 'made' by an ads company"

Any experience with ProtonVPN? I am looking to give it a try

I use their free tier and it's relatively snappy. Plus you can get the actual ovpn files and avoid having any proprietary software on your machines.

never had issues

I've been saying this for a long time, but there's no technical solution to staying private. It's not scalable and no one has time to janitor every product and service they use in their lives.

The only solution to it is regulation. Fortunately one rich guy in California is putting his personal money up to move the ball forward [1]:

>Mr. Mactaggart said his 2020 state ballot initiative, among other things, would create a state enforcement agency, limit targeted advertisements based on geolocation and add items covered by the “negligent data breach” section, which would allow consumers to pursue legal action in more instances of a hack.

>Most significantly, Mr. Mactaggart said, his new effort would make it harder to adjust the current law any further. The initiative includes a “purpose and intent” section that requires any amendment to the law to be in the service of protecting consumers’ rights to privacy, a legally binding clause that Mr. Mactaggart said would prevent industry from chipping away at the measure.

CCPA is a mediocre version of GDPR, but it's certainly better than the status quo.

>The lobbying against Mr. Mactaggart’s earlier initiative kept it from the ballot in 2018, and legislators instead passed the privacy law. “It was the right thing to do because there was no guarantee at the ballot box,” Mr. Mactaggart said of his agreement to drop his measure. “Now, it’s different because we have the law.”

>Mr. Mactaggart said he would do whatever it takes to pass his initiative next year, including spending millions of his own money. He bankrolled his last campaign almost entirely himself, spending more than $3 million. Mr. Mactaggart will have to collect more than 623,000 signatures for his new initiative to qualify for the ballot. A survey in October by Goodwin Simon Strategic Research of 777 registered voters in California found that most supported Mr. Mactaggart’s initiative.

If you care about privacy, help this guy get his ballot initiative over the finish line. California can serve as inspiration for other state privacy laws (and may just become the default, as it often does). Tech people love scale, and you know who has scale? Governments. You can't fix a systemic problem like lack of privacy with individual action.

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/activist-behind-californias-new...

A simple step toward thwarting a mischievous app that demands internet access privileges (even though its functionality has no apparent need for it) is to install a firewall like NetGuard[1]. It's a simple step because it doesn't require rooting your device.

1: https://www.netguard.me/

NetGuard is great, but it uses battery about 20% faster with it on (mainly because the cpu cannot enter sleep states long enough iirc)

So why do I need google play store to install and google play services to use the ProtonMail app on android? Please release a standalone version like whatsapp does.

Look at the general tone of all this thread.

The Nokia n900 was an excellent smart phone. Still would be without nearly 10 years of improved tech hardware updates.

I'm really hoping the Pinephone, and other Linux phones succeed in creating a niche yet affordable libre phone with secure software. I ordered a developer phone simply because I'm interested and want to see what it has to offer.

The only thing that will be hard is working without my current setup of apps. A browser can only get you so far. The transition will be a little tough but i'll manage.

Android is a nightmare (both for privacy and for the artificial limitations imposed by Google)... the only solution appears to be a pure Linux phone like this: https://store.pine64.org/?product=pinephone-braveheart-limit...

I don't sign-in to my google account on my phone but I'm pretty sure that they do shadow profiles like Facebook does

Do you use a web browser?

Then 200+ companies already have shadow profiles on you.

I block most trackers...

but they don't have access to all those sensors on my phone anyways... including camera, microphone, gps, etc... unlike Google on your Android phone. You are comparing apple and oranges.

I cannot find many of the settings they talk about (android v.9), is it my o.s. old?

... don’t use Android, period. Google did a great job with PR in the early years, but the reality has always been that your data is exploited to their ends.

What are the alternatives? The iphone is prohibitively expensive for most people, and it's unacceptable that privacy should only be available to the wealthy.

There's basically an Android/iOS "duopoly" out there, and it's only getting worse. There are now bank accounts that are unusable without a smart phone app, and guess which platforms are supported...Google Play and Apple App Store. And don't even think about sideloading onto a rooted device, it won't work "for security reasons". Such bank accounts, and services like Apple Pay, are effectively enabling vendor lock-in for very important services.

I'm thinking of trying to dump my smartphone for a flip phone. It's much easier to control tracking/privacy from a laptop. Maybe I don't need the Internet everywhere I go?

There a secondhand iPhones (it's also better for the environment). Otherwise no alternative than using a desktop computer and forego some smart conveniences.

There are literally banks out there that are unusable without an Android/Apple smartphone. And while it's currently still possible to use a bank that isn't as insane, I expect this trend will only get worse. It'll no longer be a case of foregoing some smart conveniences, but about being able to access important parts of the economy.

Not only is it still possible to find a bank that works without a smartphone, at least in America you'd have to go dramatically out of your way to do business with a bank that only works if you have a smartphone.

The number and quality of banks that work without a phone is so much higher than the number of banks that require a phone, it's barely even worth mentioning.

The course has been set, that's the way all banks are headed.

Challenger banks like Revolut, N26, Bunq, ... are all very reliant on smart phone apps. Even if they have web interfaces, you can't log in without authenticating with the app

Tangent: American banks might not be the best example here, given their reliance on ancient tech like signatures, paper checks and magnet strips. But they, too, will move in this direction.

The problem with secondhand iPhones is Apples relentless war on repairability - with Apple Stores not being widely available and Apple limiting supply of spare parts (and using DRM to lock them), those secondhand iPhones are very poor value proposition.

Especially when new Androids come with manufacturers warranty, local repair center and fraction of the cost.

DRM? Wasn't that only with the fingerprint sensor? (Which was wrong anyway). On my iPhone 7 I've repaired the screen, battery and charging port and haven't had one problem at all.

Apple is getting better at providing more affordable iPhone options. You’re not getting a flagship under a thousand bucks but you’ll still have a damn good device that’ll be supported for a while.

The cheapest iPhone available in my region still costs almost as much as the average worker wage. The Android phones are available for 1/5th of the price.

Also iPhones are not localized to the local language at all, so this again provides significant barrier to less well off.

Oh wow, I didn't know that. That sucks.

$200 for an Amazon Renewed iPhone 7 which I just bought when my previous iPhone was stolen.

https://www.amazon.com/iPhone-7-Plus-Renewed/s?rh=n%3A169477...

The 7 is at the bottom of Apple's support list from this point forward, and I recommend you check your battery health on that "renewed" device before you decide $200 is a good deal. You can get "new open box" (opened but never used/used for a week and returned) iPhone 7 devices for less than what you paid.

I'm not trying to sour your purchase, but I'm desperately trying to find something to replace my iPhone 7 that is not Android and not a face-scanning iPhone, and I'd rather spend good money on something like the PinePhone or a Jolla (if they would sell to me) than wasting money on the Apple treadmill.

I just bought a used iPhone X and have disabled the face-scanning and use code to unlock instead.

According to the Apple prognosticator with the best track record for accurate predictions, Apple will be releasing a new model with the guts of the current flagship in the body of an iPhone 8 for $400 this quarter.

https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2019/10/14/20913321/...

If the prediction is true, that represents a significant advantage in privacy, performance, and years of software support after the sale at that price point.

The iPhone is even worse for privacy, as I've pointed out elsewhere in this thread. If privacy is your main concern, don't log in to an account on an Android phone and get your apps from F-Droid and GitHub. There are also private-by-default Android and Linux phones that can provide stronger guarantees, but they are not yet ready for primetime.

Step 1: Never, under any circumstances, sign into Google Play Services. Better still would be to rid your Android of it altogether and install LineageOS.

Google or privacy - choose the one.

99% of the population don't want to essentially make their phone useless and difficult to use. This is the problem.

Also that 99% doesn't care that the government knows they have downloaded Candy crush.

Also 99% "of the population" doesn't use Android.

What? I thought Android has market share in the billions. Where do you live? Mars?

Billions = 99% of the population. Oh I see. Okay.

> Today, it is estimated that more than 5 billion people have mobile devices, and over half of these connections are smartphones. [0]

> Android's smartphone share is hover around 87% [1]

> 7,600,000,000+ human population [2]

( 5 billion * 0.5 * 0.87 ) / 7.6 billion =

29% of the world has an Android

[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2019/02/05/smartphone-own...

[1] https://www.idc.com/promo/smartphone-market-share/os

[2] https://www.census.gov/popclock/

Yeah, essentially all these DIY fixes to surveillance involve majorly inconveniencing yourself and being a technical expert to maybe achieve what they're suggesting.

These Android topics are always full of complete fabrications about how Android actually works (usually from Apple users, which don't know a lot about the OS).

Let's see if this time is any better or we'll see Apple marketing people come out of the woods again :)

This is unfortunately very common but doesn't take away the fact that privacy on Android can be significantly improved with very small changes.

For example:

* Reintroduce the network permission

* Add a notification event so your smartwatch etc can subscribe to that instead of requiring full access to your email account

* Clean up the Google privacy settings which is right now the most complex part of Android

* STOP passive data gathering for giving users crappy services they don't use anyway. Let them actively search when needed.

Of course, I'm all for expanding privacy (I've actually led several workshops to help people de-Googlify Androids and will continue to do so).

However the issue with HN these days is that these topics turn into brand cheerleading, where people come out of the woodwork to proselityze Apple while mercilessly downvoting any posts that talk about privacy issues on iOS platform.

That's not defending privacy - that's just defending another corporation and letting them get away with violations.

Please don't take HN threads into brand-fan flamewar or insinuate shillage or astroturfing. These things break the HN guidelines and lead to much lower-quality discussion. Your comments include substantive points—please stick to those.

I think his point is (and yes, he could have put it more nicely) that this sort of articles often turn into Android bashing and praising Apple which unfortunately steals attention from an important discussion.

This is specially annoying when people who don't understand the subject immediately enter the discussions to promote a company/product pretty much regardless the context.

I'm sad that OP was heavily downvoted and later flagged.

Amazingly bad advice. They don't even mention to set a non-chrome, privacy-focused browser as default (brave, Cliqz, Firefox, etc).

That's a bit misleading. The 12th point did say:

> In order to use a more secure search engine, you need to download an alternative browser [0]. These let you change the default search engine and avoid Google collecting data on your queries.

[0]: https://protonmail.com/blog/best-browser-for-privacy/

The above article lists Brave, Firefox and Tor

Amazingly bad advice yourself, listing Brave and Cliqz as privacy-focused alternatives before Firefox.

I've been using brave and Firefox because of a perceived privacy benefit over chrome.

Would you mind expanding upon this statement on regards to Brave?

Thank you and happy new year!

> smartphones per se are not evil.

No, just the people who write the code.

It's not the people who write the code, it's their management. If they were paid to write secure privacy centric code then that's what would happen

If the people who write the code had a sense of ethics they would go work for someone who did not ask them to violate user privacy.

What is your surgeon was only paid to do something on you that was unethical?

Ah yes "I was only following orders", a classic defense.

I suspect that a significant amount of developers do not care. A job is a job, if the problem to solve is interesting enough or it pays well enough, rest is irrelevant. This is supported by my experiences interviewing developers who apply for jobs in my department. Questions about the ethical implications of the things they have worked with more often than not are incomprehensible to them. Note that this is distinct from having made an informed and motivated choice, let's say, 'yes, I am aware of x, but due to a, b and c I work with it anyway' or similar. I do not judge the content of the motivation, but I strongly judge the presence or absence of it. This is why I strongly support having strong courses in both etics and diversity / inclusion in all CS / data engineering programs. The blind spots seen in the thinking of some people who work with software that has potentially far-reaching consequences for minorities, privacy etc is sometimes really unnerving.

Another tactic not mentioned: I disable automatic app updates, and never update most Google apps, at all. Eventually, they fall so out of date that they break or at least suffer from reduced functionality eg. Google exchange services.

That sounds like disabling apps, but with more vulnerabilities along the way.

for the love of God don't disable updates for WebView

> How to stay private when using Android

1. Stop using Android.

FTFY

> How to stay private in general

1. Stop using the smartphone - some of its tracking features are near impossible to disable

2. Use VPN or/and TOR

3. Enable either DNS over TLS and DNS over HTTPS

4. Never login anywhere

5. Use the most common OS (Windows 10 at the moment) + the most common web browser (Chrome at the moment)

6. Make sure your web browser locale is set to English

7. Set your system timezone to US

8. Make sure your desktop resolution is 1920x1080 and your Chrome and Windows are as default as possible

9. Do not install any additional fonts

10. Install a single extension which hides your WebGL vendor string e.g. WebGL Fingerprint Defender

11. Do NOT visit websites from your country (it's quite easy to match your VPN traffic patterns with local websites visits and de-anonimize you)

12. for each site that you visit: * Clean all web browser data before visiting it * Close the browser * Open the browser again * Open your website

I've probably missed something like canvas fingerprinting protection, JS timings detection, CPU concurrency detection, etc. etc. etc.

TLDR: It's near impossible to browse the web without being tracked if the company which wants to track you has the resources for that. Web browsers and the web were not designed this way.

> 5. Use the most common OS (Windows 10 at the moment) + the most common web browser (Chrome at the moment)

Use the OS with built-in telemetry and the web browser that constantly reports your activity to a data harvesting company and which keeps trying to prevent people from blocking ads or limiting data harvesting on the browser? Try again.

Wiping all data in Google Chrome is enough for Google to lose track of you.

Windows 10 leaking personal data hasn't been conclusively proven by anyone in the entire world. There's no evidence Microsoft has ever downloaded a single file off Windows 10 PCs (except for telemetry, e.g. application minidumps, which doesn't uniquely identify you, or contains any of your personal documents). Disabling telemetry in Windows 10 isn't too difficult either.

There's a lot of unwarranted mass hysteria in regard to the most innocuous things in this world which is perhaps an indication that people have no other real worries to attend to.

Even this post about "staying private in Android" is overblown out of proportions. Yes, there are individual apps which abuse your data but you can get rid of them.

Yes, Google assigns a unique identificator to your Android device but that doesn't mean this data is leaked/sold left and right.

And no one is even talking about the fact that US cell operators have been implicated in tracking their users 24/7 and it's not apparent they've stopped doing that.

Your cellphone company (which also serves for most as an Internet operator) is already a threat enough not to use any cell phone at all.

Then there are technologies to break into cellular networks by impersonating cell towers and monitor users against their will and I'm quite sure this feature is used and abused to no end by at least three-letter agencies in the US.

If you're an average American you're passing by dozens if not hundreds of CCTVs daily which are monitoring your whereabouts 24/7.

Privacy in this world only exists for those who don't use the perks of our modern society or who's quite rich and can afford their own island without dealing with the rest of the world.

>Disabling telemetry in Windows 10 isn't too difficult either.

Really? For future reference, how does one do this? Because I was under the impression that it was not possible to disable all telemetry, and that even the lowest "level" of telemetry that Microsoft offers is only available to "enterprise" versions of Windows. At least, that is what the wording used in the Group Policy Editor implies:

https://techcortex.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/disable-mi...

https://techcortex.com/disable-microsoft-compatibility-telem...

"There's no evidence Microsoft has ever downloaded a single file off Windows 10 PCs (except for telemetry, e.g. application minidumps, which doesn't uniquely identify you, or contains any of your personal documents)."

If there was, it would be outright scandalous and probably lead into criminal proceedinds. That does not mean anything less than that is fine.

"Disabling telemetry in Windows 10 isn't too difficult either."

It is. Yes, you could use some third-party tools that supposedly prevent it and hope that they a) work and b) won't break anything important.

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