[HN Gopher] Privacy Friendly Apps - improved privacy protection ...
___________________________________________________________________
Privacy Friendly Apps - improved privacy protection on the
smartphone
Author : manveru
Score : 110 points
Date : 2022-04-30 11:20 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (secuso.aifb.kit.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (secuso.aifb.kit.edu)
| pyaamb wrote:
| is there a smartphone that runs a fully functional
| emulated/virtualized android? feels like that would be a good
| starting feature for a privacy friendly phone
| kkfx wrote:
| A curious question: why caring about _app_ privacy when the
| ecosystem they live in is designed to milk data? We do want only
| big &powerful being able to eavesdrop privacy but not countless
| of smaller actors?
|
| It might sound sterile polemics but it's not, I'm really curious
| how techies can talk about _privacy_ on Android, iOS etc. My sole
| opinion there is just avoid using them.
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| >privacy on Android, iOS etc
|
| I was looking for your comment, but this line equating the two
| highlights a constant ambiguity in HN comments re: the threat
| model. Cut and paste from another of my comments on the
| subject:
|
| If the subject threat model here is (1) defending against
| companies stealing and selling my data then Google should be
| called out. If the (2) state level agencies spying on you
| through these companies then you can add Apple to the call out.
|
| I see this happen often and I think every conversation should
| be clearly grounded in the threat model that is being
| addressed.
| woojoo666 wrote:
| There are also people working on privacy friendly mobile OSs,
| like GrapheneOS, CalyxOS, or DivestOS. Simply not using Android
| or iOS, is a big ask for a lot of people. Reducing tracking by
| using a privacy friendly OS and downloading privacy respecting
| apps, is a way to reduce tracking while still maintaining most
| of the convenience of a mobile device.
| Bilal_io wrote:
| > We do want only big&powerful being able to eavesdrop privacy
| but not countless of smaller actors?
|
| We don't. And that's why there are efforts to create operating
| systems that are do not track users. Unfortunately those
| efforts are not well funded.
|
| Again, we don't want big companies to track us and collect our
| data, but your questions sounds more like "since big companies
| collect our data, why should we put an effort to prevent
| everyone else from doing it?" I apologize if I am misreading
| what you're saying, but we have to do this one thing since the
| alternative is available, and once an alternative OS is here,
| we can switch to it as well.
| kkfx wrote:
| No need to apologize :-) but you miss a real-world part: we
| do have some open-platform, even if NOT open hardware
| desktops, we do not have anything easy to buy at a reasonable
| price for mobile.
|
| I own a Pine64 phone, it's nice to play as it was the old
| OpenMoko, but it's not much usable as a daily driver
| suggestible to generic users, including those who can use
| GNU/Linux desktop normally as simple users. That's the
| biggest issue and it's a similar systemic issue described
| above: we can't have really Free software if it need non-free
| systems to run, so we can't have free OSes if they demand
| non-free hw + fw crap.
|
| Since desktops so far are at least manageable I generally
| suggest to run to save them, pushing desktop computing again
| and simply say mobile world so far is just a prison. This way
| perhaps since actually we need desktops to work in 99% of the
| cases we would been able to have them in the future, as
| "free" as today...
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| ranger_danger wrote:
| privacy friendly but must use github ??
| manveru wrote:
| All their apps are available on F-Droid, unless you want to
| build them yourself:
| https://search.f-droid.org/?q=secuso&lang=en
| mdp2021 wrote:
| What privacy issue do you see/know involved with GitHub?
| CursedUrn wrote:
| Microsoft aren't exactly known for privacy, given how much
| data they collect continuously from Windows users (e.g.
| details on every application you launch, hard-drive wide
| program sweeps, etc). Also with Github specifically they used
| everyone's code to fuel their machine learning product
| without asking permission.
| als0 wrote:
| Why is this university spending money to make basic apps instead
| of working on research?
| rollcat wrote:
| Apps that are simple enough to be taken apart and studied,
| while complete enough to be practical tools in day-to-day
| tasks? Obviously you can just use them as they are (many people
| value minimalism), but there's also huge educational value for
| aspiring developers, or as testbeds for other experiments (can
| you be productive with only basic tools, how does it impact
| your social life, etc).
|
| I think there's a huge gap between what e.g. suckless.org
| produces, and what's usable by ordinary people, and it would be
| of tremendous value to society if we could push back on
| unnecessary software complexity.
| indymike wrote:
| Doing good in society is the purpose of a university, and is
| usually the motive for research to begin with.
| weberer wrote:
| Only Android is supported.
| hiccuphippo wrote:
| I thought iOS didn't allow open source apps? How can you
| compile/install them?
| Jcowell wrote:
| iOS allows open source. You just have to prove you own the
| application is full.
| als0 wrote:
| You compile and install them using Xcode.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| It seems sad that in 2022 it still needs explaining what privacy
| is and why its a good thing.
|
| I don't wish to knock this great project, but I'm growing weary
| of reading what seem to be almost obligatory structures;
| 1) Initial platitude about how smartphones are ubiquitous,
| inevitable, inescapable centres of existence without which humans
| would die within seconds. 2) Tragic self-mocking
| account of how we're all idiots without self-control who
| can't work these things, but remain utterly dependent on
| technology we have no clue about. 3) Confusing,
| terrifying litany of all the evil-doers, hackers,
| cybercriminals, corporations, agencies, and other bad guys f-king
| us over, while trying not to sound paranoid and hopeless.
| 4) Optional apologetics justifying unconscionable shitshow of (3)
| on the basis of convenience and getting stuff for free.
| 5) (Point at which most normies stop reading) Solution involving
| jaibreaking, firmware updates, running a private VPS server,
| building your own DNS network and soldering in some new chips
| using dangerous solvents, X-Rays and a x100 bench
| microscope. 6) Shrugging summary about how this
| "probably isn't for everyone".
| imiric wrote:
| > It seems sad that in 2022 it still needs explaining what
| privacy is and why its a good thing.
|
| Because for most people privacy on the internet isn't
| important. They either don't care it's being abused ("I've got
| nothing to hide"), or are OK with paying the price of giving it
| away in exchange for the services they get, and think are
| entitled to, for free.
|
| This has many reasons, and a major one IMO is that we didn't
| build privacy-focused tools from the beginning. The web was
| built with a consumerism model where the user is only meant to
| _browse_ it. When corporations grew larger based on a very
| lucrative market and adtech was born, there was no going back.
| Now, privacy-focused individuals are desperately trying to
| educate people and reverse the trend, governments are
| attempting to catch up and fight it, but that train 's not
| stopping anytime soon.
|
| The sad part is that majority of people won't even be
| interested in this article, let alone use the tools it
| suggests.
|
| As for the tools themselves, as someone who's been using a de-
| Googled phone for years now, I'd never use any of these. It's
| great that they're FOSS and request no permissions, but the
| fact they're built by the same team and market being "privacy-
| friendly" as their main selling point just feels off to me.
| There are similar alternatives already on F-Droid and I'd
| rather use apps from different developers, in case someone goes
| rogue I don't lose all my eggs, so to speak.
| izacus wrote:
| > Because for most people privacy on the internet isn't
| important. They either don't care it's being abused ("I've
| got nothing to hide"), or are OK with paying the price of
| giving it away in exchange for the services they get, and
| think are entitled to, for free.
|
| The fact that "privacy" doesn't mean the same thing for all
| people isn't helping. Privacy fundamentalist use the same
| rhetoric and fundamentalism as Stallman does, where they use
| a definition of "privacy" which is disconnected from what
| most people are worried about when talking about "privacy".
|
| Counting clicks on a button in an app (privacy
| fundamentalists: "spying") is far from concerning for most
| people while uploading their private messages, leaking their
| private pictures or having their coworkers read their
| messages is concerning. For an example of that, consider that
| in another comment thread on HN, the networkers were
| vehemently defending their right to reading anything and
| everything on "their" networks while still demanding privacy
| from their phones.
|
| And as long as the definition of "privacy" is abused to
| harvest clicks and outrage, meaningful progress can't be
| made.
| autoexec wrote:
| > Counting clicks on a button in an app (privacy
| fundamentalists: "spying") is far from concerning for most
| people while uploading their private messages, leaking
| their private pictures or having their coworkers read their
| messages is concerning.
|
| People aren't concerned about "clicks on a button" because
| they don't know what that means. It's never just "clicks".
| That's the problem with privacy. Everyone understands why
| it's bad when their coworkers can read their private
| messages, but nobody knows that because of the data they've
| given up but "don't care about" they got turned down from
| the last job or apartment they applied for, they're paying
| more for the exact same items than their neighbor while
| shopping online, companies are telling them their polices
| are one thing while others are getting better terms, they
| wait longer on hold when they call for tech support, or
| that it's why their health insurance bill went up again.
|
| If people saw all the ways the data they gave up was being
| used to exploit them at every opportunity they'd care a
| whole lot more about what "privacy fundamentalists"
| consider spying, but unless the consequences are immediate
| and right in their faces they can continue to be
| manipulated without being aware.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > Because for most people privacy on the internet isn't
| important.
|
| This is untrue and the only place I see people claiming it's
| true (ironically) is here on HN. Privacy is intentionally
| made as difficult as possible when using anything where
| control could conceivably be centralized. These services are
| also made crucial through the elimination of others that are
| more privacy-respecting. In the case of the internet, this is
| inevitable because internet business don't have to make a
| profit, and they destroy the previous businesses that did.
|
| I don't meet anyone who doesn't want privacy as the default.
| It's weird to even have to say that when Snapchat is winning
| among the generations that get most accused of being
| comfortable with this corporate and government-imposed lack
| of privacy.
| imiric wrote:
| > This is untrue
|
| > I don't meet anyone who doesn't want privacy as the
| default.
|
| We're both speaking from experience. You can't claim that
| my experience is untrue, just as I can't claim that yours
| is.
|
| _Most_ people I 've spoken to--particularly outside of HN
| --in the baby boomer and generation X demographics, and
| even some millennials, have expressed what I said above.
| Practically speaking, almost anyone who is not technically
| savvy certainly wouldn't be concerned about protecting
| their online privacy, since the internet (or "Facebook") is
| just a tool they use to stay in touch and keep
| (mis)informed.
|
| As more and more people come online their first exposure to
| the internet will be via these services. The failure of web
| developers has been not building privacy-focused tools from
| the beginning, and not educating people about what they're
| sacrificing by using "free" services. We can work on the
| latter, but the former will always be an uphill battle, as
| the momentum of adtech has taken over the web.
|
| > Snapchat is winning among the generations that get most
| accused of being comfortable with this corporate and
| government-imposed lack of privacy
|
| What makes you think Snapchat respects users' privacy? Snap
| is an opaque corporation, running a profitable ad-based
| business, like most tech giants.
|
| I'd reckon that most Snapchat users don't use it because
| they think it's private, but because it has the content
| they're interested in. This is the same demographic
| obsessed with TikTok after all.
| disadvantage wrote:
| > Because for most people privacy on the internet isn't
| important
|
| That's changing. There's a movement online to get people
| weaned off big tech and surveillance capitalism. The thing
| about privacy online is that it's hard to measure, since many
| opt out of telemetry so you can't easily gauge just how many
| people have opted out of big tech & surveillance. I imagine
| the number is exponentially rising as each year passes.
|
| Now I don't expect _everyone_ to be fully private in 10
| years, and you 'll always get freeloaders exchanging personal
| data for something free. That's just a fact of life. You have
| to think of this in terms of 'radioactive waste'. They say
| data is 'the new oil' but it's really the new radioactive
| waste!
| imiric wrote:
| I wish I had your optimism.
|
| > There's a movement online to get people weaned off big
| tech and surveillance capitalism.
|
| This is a niche movement at best, ironically mostly
| followed by people who are already concerned about privacy.
| I doubt they manage to convince many others into joining
| them and abandoning big tech. My own attempts at doing so
| have mostly been met with a few responses: "I have nothing
| to hide", "It's too inconvenient to switch", "I just use it
| for X and don't spend a lot of time on it", or "I don't
| care".
|
| > The thing about privacy online is that it's hard to
| measure, since many opt out of telemetry
|
| Hah, right :) I think we can track it by simply seeing how
| the user bases compare between big tech and privacy-focused
| services. So far the numbers are several orders of
| magnitude apart, it's pointless to even compare them. There
| are many reasons for this, and I hope things keep
| improving, but I doubt we'll even make a dent in 10 years.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > This is a niche movement at best
|
| No, really you are wrong. I am watching this closely and
| if you have not noticed the tectonic political shift
| going on you're living on Mars. Just the other day the US
| signed with 60 other signatory nations on a bill
| specifically set to burn down widespread privacy
| violations. And the US is tepid compared to a groundswell
| in Europe.
| bornfreddy wrote:
| Yup, well said. And it's not like there are no alternatives.
| Even for "normies" there is /e/ OS (now Murena) where you can
| buy a ready made private (or at least mostly degoogled)
| phone. And for "techies" there is LineageOS, GrapheneOS,...
| maybe even Linux.
| bdominy wrote:
| End-to-end encryption will make a big difference as people
| choose applications that offer a great experience while
| protecting their data from 3rd parties. WhatsApp, Signal, and
| Apple are all making big pushes in this area and working to
| inform people about why it is important for their privacy.
| When I explain e2ee to people and how it is used in my own
| app for contact info sharing, they immediately get it and
| want it as a feature.
| imiric wrote:
| > WhatsApp, Signal, and Apple
|
| One of these is not like the others. I have a hard time
| trusting Meta's and Apple's claims about privacy, including
| E2EE. They're both billion-dollar corporations with a
| history of deceiving marketing practices and data leaks.
| Meta's business model in particular is based on advertising
| and abusing users' privacy. Why should we trust WhatsApp
| has their users' best interests in mind, when the company
| that runs it makes a profit from exploiting user data? To
| say that it's a conflict of interest would be an
| understatement.
|
| Good luck with your app, but please don't recommend Meta
| and Apple products to users concerned with privacy.
| bdominy wrote:
| Meta and Apple can both be sued or fined heavily if they
| are misrepresenting their use of e2ee. Signal has maybe
| 100 million users, but WhatsApp and Apple account for
| over 2 billion. They've done more to improve security in
| the text messaging space than any other group. Maybe they
| are doing it because they don't want data leaks any more
| than you do, or they sense the trend towards respecting
| user's privacy and want to at least appear to care. In
| any case, we should encourage this adoption of end-to-end
| encryption and support it where it makes sense.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| This project does not seem to contain any of the six points
| raised. Instead it is simply an introduction to open source
| apps for smartphones under the moniker that they are privacy-
| friendly. (For Android check out the NetGuard and PCAPdroid
| apps. I have not seen anything like them for iOS.)
|
| The problem I have reading criticisms of anyone else's interest
| in computer privacy is that in general most but not all people
| these days who are using their ability to program computers as
| a paying job are somehow reliant on the sustenance and/or
| growth of online advertising or other money-raising strategies
| that depend on surveillance of people's computer use, or simply
| people's continued computer ignorance. In the case that the
| critic has any connection to this type of "work", there is,
| IMHO, a conflict-of-interest/bias to consider. Needless to say,
| "normies" generally have neither the time nor inclination to
| pen such criticisms let alone read them.
|
| It is remarkable how developers commenting on HN are so willing
| to speak on behalf of "normies". One can see this practice not
| only in this thread but routinely, on nearly every privacy-
| related discussion on HN. If normies were given a vote how
| would they exercise it. When iOS users were given the choice to
| block apps from tracking them, what choice did they make.
| Facebook lost 20% of its market value as a result of Apple
| giving people that choice. It's too easy to manipulate choice
| and then pontificate about what they do or do not want. This is
| the game "tech" companies play.
|
| In any event, I think the six points lead to the following
| conclusion: we need to have (more) laws that regulate online
| advertising and the privacy-invasive practices used to support
| it. If computer surveillance shenanigans employed by "tech"
| companies were sufficiently regulated, it would bring a swift
| end to the type of "web content" described by the six points.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > in general most but not all people these days who are using
| their ability to program computers as a paying job are
| somehow reliant on the sustenance and/or growth of online
| advertising or other money-raising strategies that depend on
| surveillance of people's computer use,
|
| In my book I address precisely this. What I found in my
| research is that this _is_ a driver in the privacy crisis,
| but it 's a distorted account.
|
| The software industry is enormous. The vast majority of it
| still delivers traditional value. In automotive, medical,
| military, civic infrastructure and commodities, space,
| pharmaceuticals, agriculture, education and much, much more -
| the majority of working programmers build benevolent utility
| for a fair days pay without compromising their morals.
|
| The disease is in the smartphone/web ecosystem (I am simply
| paraphrasing it's creator Sir Tim Berners Lee), and we should
| not confuse that with the wider project of computing in
| general.
|
| What is called "Silicon Valley" (The Californian Ethos) in
| the vernacular, is an aberration. Its culture is
| disproportionately supposed to operate throughout "tech".
| Part of this operation, and power, is indeed rooted in it's
| mythology, and the projection of its ideals, that there is
| "no alternative" and that the grotesque exploitation of other
| peoples private lives is somehow a natural, evolutionary
| condition of networked digital technology. It's insistence
| that "this is how we pay for free" is victim blaming.
|
| > or simply people's continued computer ignorance.
|
| Yes, but there's more to it than you surmise. The ignorance
| has overtaken the creators and investors as much as the users
| ("consumers in a marketplace"). We were long ago swamped in
| the complexity and uncontrollable churn of our own creations.
| Not to realise this is to set up a Machiavellian "us and
| them" schism, to put too much blame on ourselves and users as
| exploiters and victims respectively. The way out of this to
| admit that we don't have the first f-king clue what we're
| doing with technology and haven't for almost 30 years. The
| tech revolution has never had a _telos_ , and is mostly the
| product of bored mathematicians creating solutions looking
| for problems.
|
| To escape that spiral we need a new revolution of digital
| literacy. Digital Literacy 1.0 was all about discovering what
| amazing things computers are, and what they can do. Having
| now explored many the dangerous things computers shouldn't
| do, Digital Literacy 2.0 will be about figuring out what we
| really want them for, and why.
|
| > It is remarkable how developers commenting on HN are so
| willing to speak on behalf of "normies".
|
| Absolutely. I'm sorry that I too fall into that, and using
| that word. The arrogance is astonishing. Many of us are still
| stuck in a down-talking mansplaining way of seeing the world
| and have a good dose of "saviour complex".
|
| > If normies were given a vote how would they exercise it?
|
| The problem I am alluding to in my original (sardonic but
| hopefully not disparaging to TFA) comment is that right now
| it's not fair to even invoke the concept of _choice_. The
| greatest triumph of SV tech this past couple decades has been
| creating the illusion of unprecedented choice while stymying
| it and boiling down the market to a handful of near
| monopolies. These contradictions run deep. It 's there in the
| distance between Apple's 1984 SuperBowl Ad, and its bid to
| introduce mandatory client-side content scanning almost 40
| years later.
|
| > laws that regulate online advertising and the privacy-
| invasive practices used to support it.
|
| I am against regulation as a rule. If we're going to have it
| I see mandated interoperability and a legal support for
| radical consumer choice as a better way. The most powerful
| choice people may still have is non-participation.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > It seems sad that in 2022 it still needs explaining what
| privacy is and why its a good thing.
|
| It should be about as sad as the fact that addition and
| subtraction still need to be explained. People are still being
| born.
|
| > I don't wish to knock this great project, but I'm growing
| weary of reading what seem to be almost obligatory structures;
|
| If this is your first time reading something like this, you
| need the obligatory structure. If you already know everything,
| it's not for you. If it's complicated and normies can't do it,
| that can't be helped, it's what we have. If you are a normie
| looking for privacy and see that it looks unintelligibly
| difficult, _that 's educational._ You might be upset by that
| fact, and therefore support and amplify criticisms of the
| current regimes, software that simplifies the process, and/or
| legislation to protect people.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > If this is your first time reading something like this, you
| need the obligatory structure.
|
| I used to think the same way, and started out writing all my
| educational pieces in the vernacular structure... with great
| patience and sensitivity to the idea that maybe some people
| are ambivalent about privacy.
|
| Over the years I've come to revise that.
|
| We create mythologies in the hacker community. Amongst the
| many caricatures we conjure up are "Mom", "Gran" and someones
| "Little brother". These hopeless half-wits will set a
| computer on fire as soon as touch it. The reality is that
| todays "Granny" was head of social informatics at IBM in the
| 1960s. Todays "Mom" is ferociously aware of protecting her
| children, eschews 'nanny cams' and gets irate at the school
| for posting the class photo on Facebook.
|
| We need to revise our stereotypes and should seriously ask;
| who are these imaginary people who are "reading this for the
| first time"?
|
| Part of the reason I think we create these mythological half-
| wits is that it gives us a simple explanation as to why the
| uptake of dignity respecting technology is slow. The reality
| is that it's actively impeded, but we're not quite ready to
| fully take that on-board and point at the culprits.
|
| Part of the solution I think is to adopt more direct speech,
| to stop treading on eggshells around privacy and start going
| in hard with a more mature understanding of where people are
| in 2022 with respect to their threat models around different
| technologies. Regular people get that the horsemen of the
| infopocalypse are bogus, that their phones are fundamentally
| insecure, and they want change.
|
| > If it's complicated and normies [1] can't do it, that can't
| be helped
|
| We do need to up the game in so many places, as you say,
| education and UI are still paramount.
|
| > You might be upset by that fact, and therefore support and
| amplify criticisms of the current regimes, software that
| simplifies the process, and/or legislation to protect people.
|
| You raise a really important issue. There's a lot of
| hostility towards advocates of rights respecting technology.
| I always assumed that came, at least here in forums like HN,
| from those directly involved in advertising and surveillance
| activities who see their livelihood threatened. But now I
| think there's more to it. I get about eighty percent very
| positive sentiment toward my Digital Vegan book, ten percent
| justifiably critical, but there's ten percent who are
| disproportionately angered and indignant.
|
| I think the psychology is really complex and involves a kind
| of defensive rationalisation, learned helplessness, Stockholm
| syndrome and some sunk-cost bias. Some will vigorously shout
| down opponents in defending their right to be spied on and
| abused. Something's amiss there.
|
| [1] sorry I used that word, it's demeaning
| haswell wrote:
| > _It should be about as sad as the fact that addition and
| subtraction still need to be explained. People are still
| being born._
|
| This is the key. And privacy, the lack thereof, and what to
| do about it - is significantly harder to grok in 2022 than
| your standard education coursework.
|
| Any material that attempts to educate and empower users on
| this subject should be encouraged.
|
| Markets change when consumers demand it. Until consumers know
| what to demand and why they should demand it, change will not
| happen.
|
| Not long ago, smart homes were reserved for tinkerers and
| tech savvy types. Now, almost anyone can set up some smart
| bulbs and such.
|
| Staying private is in that earlier stage. Every product or
| movement that became accessible to the masses started out as
| an inaccessible or impractical hobby of a few.
| motohagiography wrote:
| Android is a write off from a privacy perspective, it's already
| an inferior good. The only viable near term privacy product I
| could see for it would be a virtual machine platform for phones
| that lets you run multiple OS instances with identities on the
| bare metal. I think there is still opportunity to create premium
| privacy experiences on existing platforms and apps, but only
| because those platforms are established and privacy becomes an
| extra power, and I don't think there is as much growth in a
| replacement platform for "privacy centric twitter/FB/goog."
|
| One startup idea I briefly pursued some years ago was developing
| privacy focused work-alikes for common utility apps, and what I
| sensed from it was after "flashlight," "calendar" and "QR code
| reader" apps are their own contained brand experiences. There is
| no messenger workalike, each game is itself the experience, and
| playing a clone is less satisfying, and there's a quality to apps
| that is as intrinsic and unique as a story that you can't just
| replicate.
|
| The business model was to charge for privacy focused work-alikes
| of popular free utility apps as an effective luxury privacy brand
| for apps, but even this misunderstood luxury products (an area I
| had some experience with, in addition to security and privacy).
| Luxury goods represent stories of aspiration and belonging, where
| privacy is a reactionary value that needs a foundation of
| something valuable beneath or behind it to protect. It's a
| quality and a feature, but to succeed, it can't be the reason.
|
| To be valuable, privacy needs to socially elevate the user,
| similar to how the whole apple brand experience does, and
| distinct from the way someone using Tor/Tails all the time would
| relate to the world. Privacy as a concept has acquired the vibe
| of an inferior good, something you want when you don't have
| power, and so it's not something used for elite signalling the
| way exclusivity was just 20 years ago.
|
| In this sense, privacy must be _attractive_ , which is a real
| magic sauce. To do that, what people mean when they say something
| is cool or sexy is that it is powerful. Together, it means that
| for a privacy centric tech to succeed, it must first be powerful.
| Blockchains and cryptocurrencies were technically powerful, but
| their bar to entry meant they were adopted by unpowerful people
| first, and are still percieved as an economic "inferior good."
| Power over things is just leverage, where desirable power is
| necessarily status over other people. There's a lot of
| opportunity to refine this still.
| Aachen wrote:
| Within f-droid, though they're also on google store I assume, I
| can recommend Simple Mobile Tools. Just one Slovakian dev but the
| apps can replace various stock and non-stock apps and work
| fantastic. The names are a bit generic though, like Simple
| Gallery or Simple File Manager.
|
| They're powerful enough for me, and simple enough that I install
| them for my mom and grandma (grandpa can't read, dad chose the
| dark side), and my brother apparently also discovered them
| independently. Few months ago I figured I should take stock of
| how many of these apps we use together and did a donation for us
| collectively. One benefit for family members is that now they
| don't have to get used to a new interface if they get a new
| phone, so they're less locked into one brand. Android UI always
| changes and just gets worse imo, and unfortunately you need the
| stock camera for good quality pictures, but at least things like
| their gallery always looks the same.
| severine wrote:
| Yeah they're on the Google Play Store too:
|
| https://simplemobiletools.com/
|
| https://github.com/SimpleMobileTools
|
| https://simplemobiletools.com/donate
|
| I use half of them and agree completely on the peace of mind
| they bring when changing phones or onboarding other people.
| adalu wrote:
| https://secuso.aifb.kit.edu/english/Pedometer.php
|
| I have a Samsung phone, s10+. I've not tried this app yet, but I
| will. However all apps I've tried so far got my steps wrong. I
| imagine because it's something that isn't documented by Samsung
| and they know exactly which values to use to calculate the steps
| and distance and speed.
|
| So essentially you buy a product with the right sensors but there
| is no documentation for you on how to use those sensors to have
| near accurate conversion results if you're going to write
| software that uses those sensors.
|
| If you know better, please let us know.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _However all apps I 've tried so far got my steps wrong._
|
| FWIW, every pedometer (digital or not) ever created is "wrong"
| about the number of steps you take per day. What they do offer
| is a device- or app-relative measurement of roughly how many
| steps you take.
|
| https://www.medicinenet.com/pedometers/article.htm
|
| _" Accurate pedometers are those with step-count errors less
| than 10%, high or low. [...] The Colorado on the Move,
| Sportline 330 and 345, and Yamax Skeletone EM-180 were within
| acceptable high or low error limits of 10%. The Accusplit and
| Freestyle underestimated steps by 20% and 25%, respectively,
| and the Walk4Life, Omron, and Oregon Scientific overestimated
| steps by 20%, 30%, and 45%, respectively."_
| alephxyz wrote:
| These apps are also usually just a wrapper around the Android
| step counting API, so it's unlikely that you'll get better
| results with different apps.
|
| https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/sensors/sensors_m.
| ..
| butz wrote:
| Good initiative, but might be better idea to provide less apps
| with similar functionality and concentrate on one that actually
| works. I'm still searching for a decent privacy respecting (no
| internet, no sync, no google account required) app for simple
| reminders and notes, but neither of Secuso apps worked, mainly
| reminders in "To-Do-List" were not working at all.
|
| If anyone has made a simple reminder/note app, similar to ones
| you'd find on smartphone pre-installed - please share. No idea
| how many apps I already tested, and each one has some annoying
| issues. I just need a simple Google Keep clone without sync,
| location features.
| alephxyz wrote:
| If your version of Android supports it, consider installing any
| app from the Play Store and disabling its internet access. I
| did that for Google keyboard since it's the only way to get
| proper swipe-typing.
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