I use the Fairphone 5 with /e/OS (1.18-t) but I’m new to both Android, /e/OS and this forum. I aim to decentralize my usage and prevent trackers and ads as much as possible. However, yesterday I was served some personalized ads in an app, which made me confused and curious how that was possible. After a bit of digging, I think this happened because both Reddit and the other app use Google Firebase Analytics, which probably leak my interests from Reddit. Anyways, while investigating this, I also found that Android AdServices are installed by default, as one of the core apps. Again, I’m new to Android so I apologize if this is a stupid question, but what is this used for and why does it come pre-installed on a OS which aim to prevent trackers?
Another question I have is, if I go into the microG settings, then Cloud Messaging, why can’t I turn it off? I can disable Notifications for every app manually to achieve “Status: Disconnected”, but I can’t disable it globally using the blue bar at the top. How come? Same question goes for the Google SafetyNet, where none of my apps seems to use it, but I still can’t disable it?
I’m running /e/OS 1.18-s but didn’t find ‘Android AdServices’ in my (system) apps list.
Oh, strange. It’s there on my phone and I can’t uninstall or disable it though.
Also, someone on Matrix confirmed that it’s there on his FP5 running 1.15.1-t-20230928335656-stable-FP5 too.
Thanks for more documentation. Unfortunately though, it doesn’t answer any of my questions. The solutions listed as “How to disable” doesn’t work (nothing happens when I click on the switch), hence my question.
Discussed with the developers. They have asked me to create an internal issue so that they can check what this service does and if it is necessary for the /e/OS ROM.
