Hacker News Reader

Comment by BiteCode_dev | Hacker News Reader

On Android at least, even if you don't need to log in to your google account when connecting to chatgpt, the app won't work if your phone isn't signed in into google play, which doesn't work if your phone isn't linked to a google account.

An android phone asks you to link a google account when you use it for the first time. It takes a very dedicated user to refuse that, then to avoid logging in into the gmail, youtube or app store apps which will all also link your phone to your google account when you sign in.

But I do actively avoid this, I use Aurora, F-droid, K9 and NewPipeX, so no link to google.

But then no ChatGPT app. When I start it, I get hit with a logging page to the app store and it's game over.

View on HN

I have a similar experience with the pager duty app. It loads up and then exits with "security problem detected by app" because I've made it more secure by isolating it from Google (a competitor). Workaround is to just control it via slack instead.

Well you can use the web base chagpt so there is a workaround. Except it's worse a worse experience.

You might like: https://e.foundation/e-os/

That won't make chatgpt's app work thought.

It might well do, depending on what ChatGPT's app is asking the OS for. /e/OS is an Android fork that removes Google services and replaces them with open source stubs/re-implementations from https://microg.org/

I haven't tried the ChatGPT app, but I know that, for example my bank and other financial services apps work with on-device fingerprint authentication and no Google account on /e/OS.

I already have microg installed.

So the requirement is to pass the phone’s system validation process rather than having a Google account. I don’t love that but I can understand why they don’t want to pay the bill for the otherwise ubiquitous bots, and it’s why it’s an Android-specific issue.

You can make a very rational case for each privacy invasive technical decision ever made.

In the end, the fact remain: no chatgpt app without giving up your privacy, to google none the less.

“Giving up your privacy” is a pretty sweeping claim – it sounds like you’re saying that Android inherently leaks private data to Google, which is broader than even Apple fans tend to say.

A person who was maximally distrustful of Google would assume they link your phone and your IP through the connection used to receive push notifications, and the wifi-network-visibility-to-location API, and the software update checker, and the DNS over HTTPS, and suchlike. As a US company, they could even be forced to do this in secret against their will, and lie about it.

Of course as Google doesn't claim they do this, many people would consider it unreasonably fearful/cynical.

Sure, but that says you shouldn’t have a phone, not that ChatGPT is forcing you to give up your privacy.

Google and Apple were both part of the PRISM program, of course I'm making this claim.

That's the opposite stance that would be bonkers.

PRISM covered communications through U.S. company’s servers. It was not a magic back door giving them access to your device’s local data, and even if you did believe that it was the answer would be not using a phone. A major intelligence agency does not need you to have a Google account so they can spy on you.

Forest for the tree.

Google and Apple are both heavily invested in ads (apple made 4.7 billion from ads in 2022), they have a track record of exfiltrating your data (remember contractors listening to your siri recordings?), of lying to the customers (remember the home button scandal on iPhone?), have control over a device that have your whole life yet runs partially on code you can't evaluate.

Trusting those people makes no sense at all. You have a business relationship with them, that's it.

It’s interesting how each time you say something which isn’t accurate you try to distract by changing the topic.

> it sounds like you’re saying that Android inherently leaks private data to Google, which is broader than even Apple fans tend to say.

Yes? I mean, not "leaks" - it's designed to upload your private data to Google and others.

https://www.tcd.ie/news_events/articles/study-reveals-scale-...

> Even when minimally configured and the handset is idle, with the notable exception of e/OS, these vendor-customised Android variants transmit substantial amounts of information to the OS developer and to third parties such as Google, Microsoft, LinkedIn, and Facebook that have pre-installed system apps. There is no opt-out from this data collection.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com