Users can find a critical review of the App Lounge by Nervur herei
Regain your privacy! Adopt /e/ the unGoogled mobile OS and online services
11 Likes
Thanks @Nervuri for your efforts! Bad news for users who are stuck <eOS 1.3 (<App Lounge v2.3.4) and never will get an update (Nougat,Oreo,Pie) and still there are enough remaining bad news for users who get a newer version of App Lounge ;- )
Rooting and removing at least App Lounge <v2.3.4 for me seems to be mandatory, although I don’t know how easy (painless) and complete this can be done without interfering with the rest of the system.
I was just about to post about this. Thanks for beating me to it, Manoj! (As with my previous article, I ran it by the /e/ devs first, for corrections).
I want to mention a couple of things that are not in the article (yet):
-
The domain name for each PWA is shown as the “package name” field at the bottom of the app details page. So users can check that their Telegram PWA isn’t coming from
hax0r.org. It’s easy to miss, though; I think PWA URLs ought to be displayed prominently. -
Untested hypothesis: even though CleanAPK no longer sits between the user and Google Play, it may be able to block updates to Google Play apps. This is because if an application is included in both CleanAPK’s and Google Play’s API responses, only the CleanAPK result is displayed to the user. CleanAPK could present a past version of a specific Google Play app to specific users in order to keep them from updating. I have not checked this; I suppose the updater logic could be different from the what-the-user-is-shown logic, so App Lounge might grab the update from Google Play anyway. /e/ devs may want to check this, at least if their plan to cut out CleanAPK completely is not close to being achieved.
Lastly, I highly recommend checking out https://accrescent.app/ - a new app store with great security features that /e/ devs may be able to take a few ideas from.
3 Likes
You’re welcome. I thought this update would be a short “problem solved” inserted at the beginning of the previous article, but the closer I looked, the longer the text got, so I gave it its own page.
I wonder if there are many such users.
You don’t need root. I described how to do it in the previous article.
1 Like
Probably not but I have for sure too much ;- ) Four and one where an update is available but it renders the phone nearly unusable at least when I do an update and keep settings.
Is this not what is already happening with my Mull?
Particularly the list of installed apps leaking to Google is something I wasn’t aware of and that I hope can be remedied soon. Thank you Nervur and Manoj for bringing that to our attention.
That list can uniquely identify a device, contain information about interests, relationship status (presence of dating apps), gender (presence of a period tracker app), political affiliation (choice of news apps), health information (blood sugar tracker, diet apps, etc.), family status (parenting apps), income (control apps for cheap or expensive devices, cars, etc.) and more and would therefore be of high value to advertisers.
I would also agree that the security update situation is currently very problematic, but I guess it’s mainly a matter of resources and will improve in the future.
Generally, I currently consider /e/ a work in progress that’s already better than the other solutions, not a finished product. No other privacy friendly ROM has this wide device support for example.
I do see quite a bit of room for more collaboration between all the security and privacy focuses Android projects mentioned in the article, though (for a firewall solution for example).
@anon88181694: There is no question that CleanAPK can halt updates to F-Droid apps. What I’m wondering is whether it could interfere with updates from GPlay as well. It can block the initial install of any GPlay app, but I’m not sure about updates.
So i am screwed with my FP4, no lineageOS, none of the other more secure OS are functionable with it.
I am sad.
And I am confused According to the Fairphone community forums, there are several available OSs / custom ROMs that work with FP4
https://forum.fairphone.com/t/operating-systems-for-fairphones/11425#fairphone-4-24
including
Fairphone OS
CalyxOS
DivestOS
/e/OS (Murena)
iodéOS
LeOS
LineageOS
postmarketOS
Ubuntu Touch
Why do you think none of these are functional?
1 Like
Status differs … “First test build available” … “unofficial build” … “Fairphone 4 is said to be rudimentarily supported”.
But indeed it’s not nothing.
1 Like
There seems to be well established unofficial LOS 19 & 20 builds
And an official IodéOS build (if you don’t mind using closed source proprietary OSs 
)
https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/rom-fp4-12-0-iodeos-lineageos-19-1-microg-adblocker-27-07-2022.4397481/
Thank you all for your quick response and sorry i don’t do the same.
May i am just frustratet about the over all unsecure data situation.
And may i don’t search deep enough.
I looked at: GrapheneOS, CalyxOS, DivestOS, Replicant. Non of them supports FP4.
I hopped the most by LineageOS, but they don’t do also. Not in the stable branch.
That’s why i felt lost.
But i hope for the future.
I came from ios and i am searching for an replacement. And i think e/OS is on the right way.
I looked at: GrapheneOS, CalyxOS, DivestOS, Replicant. Non of them supports FP4.
Both CalyxOS and my DivestOS support FP4.
Such has been repeatedly noted by others in this thread.
1 Like
Which device is this? I wonder if we can explore a workaround?
Thank you for you support! Practically on the tablet probably I will switch to an unofficial LineageOS 17.1 Android Q (Samsung Tab S2 9.7, gts210vewifi), on Samsung S3 (i9305) I will remove App Lounge.
This topic was automatically closed 15 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.