I have changed, in my Murena Fairphone 4, the camera app: I use GCam, this version (MGC). It’s a fork of Google Camera, and is amazing. I selected the “Pixel 6 - Oriole” mode, and everything is better than the stock app: the colours, the resolution, the stabilization of video, the 2 cameras, OISS and ultra-wide, perfectly detected and working, the quality of images in darkness, the simplicity of the app… I think could be a good idea implement this app into /e/ os. It’s really impressive. And I think it’s open source…
I run RethinkDNS on my device. As far as I have seen GCam (this means: the port I use) doesn’t do any network access, never. OK, this doesn’t mean that it will not happen some day …
Exactly this (is the one in “stable versions”): MGCA11V11.
More settings - Configuration of modes - Interface
Is a port, not fully open-source, but I think the app doesn’t have Internet connection (I have chosen “Gallery” to save pictures). And works with MicroG.
Exact. If someday the app try to access network, I’ll delete it.
Hey! This solution worked for me and finally I have a functional camera, thank you so much!
I just cannot change the place, where the pictures and videos are stored (right now they are stored in the murena cloud but I would prefer them to be saved on the internal space or the SD card)
Hi, thanks for your answer and sorry for the delay in mine. What is RethinkDNS for?
What you said about that GCam never accesses internet gave me some confidence, so I installed and tested it. In many cases I liked the results more than with the default e os cam.
However, in the permissions section for the app I found this, which made me return to my lack of confidence…
(I am trying to add some screenshots showing the permissions, but I can’t, I don’t know why, but there were many permissions regarding to network, if you can please check it in your device. I would love to continue using GCam, but just if it’s safe in terms of privacy, I would really appreciate your advice after checking the permissions section for this).
(I found it in Configuration → apps → camera (the gcam app, not the default one, of course) → permissions → all the permissions)
Hi, thanks for your answer and sorry for the delay in mine. I tested it and really liked the results!!
However, in the permissions section for the app I found this, which made me return to my previous concerns about privacy issues.
(I am trying to add some screenshots showing the permissions, but I can’t, I don’t know why, but there were many permissions regarding to network, if you can please check it in your device. I would love to continue using GCam, but just if it’s safe in terms of privacy, I would really appreciate your advice after checking the permissions section for this).
(I found it in Configuration → apps → camera (the gcam app, not the default one, of course) → permissions → all the permissions)
What permissions? Of course GCam wants have a permission on files, it will write image files on disk, or not? It needs a permission for the microphone because of taking videos with sound. And surely it wants to have a permission to use the camera. What else?
The permissions you say are normal, of course, for this kind of app. I was talking about others. If in your phone you follow the route I said in my previous message, after seeing the permissions you say, there are 3 vertical dots on the right corner, up. If you click there you can see something like “All permissions” (in mine it says “Todos los permisos” because mine is in Spanish. By the way, English is not my native language. So, sorry for any mistakes in writing).
In “All permissions” I see in my cel many ones! For example these (I will write them in Spanish, like I see them and try to translate): Ver conexiones de red (see network conexions), ver conexiones wi-fi (see wi-fi conexions), conectarse y desconectarse de la red wi-fi (connect and disconnect from the wi-fi network), permitir acceso completo a la red (allow complete access to the network), controlar la transmisión de datos en proximidad (control data transmission in proximity), acceder a los datos de sensores a una tasa de muestreo alta (access to sensors data at a high sampling rate) and many others!
Please check it and give your opinion. As I said in my other message, I liked the app very much, but I am concerned about all those permissions.
The cool thing in /e/OS is that you can deny internet access to any app. So denying this I’d not be concerned regarding permissions as without internet access an app can IMHO not transfer collected data…
You can deny internet access via this way
Ajustes → Aplicaciones → Cámara (quizás GCam que tu uzas se llama diferente…) → Datos móviles y Wi-Fi → desmarcar Permitir acceso a la red
Indeed, that’s not good. But I’m not sure how to interpret that. Since you can’t change anything the question remains: Are these permissions active in the meaning of granted? Developers, this is not good: something is mentioned but the user can’t find out what that means.
Especially questionable are the location permissions. I didn’t grant the grant location permission at all, it’s off. But under all permissions are two other location permissions related to when the app is in foreground.
What you describe is the norm on Android. There are permissions you can grant via Settings and a whole lot that are automatically available that you do not have control over.
Regarding location I’m not sure if the other location permissions are active if the main permission is denied.
In Organic Maps I denied location permission and then checked in App Manager and see that various locations are still enabled (fine location, gps, monitor location) under ‘App Ops’ tab. But under ‘Uses Permissions’ tab anything location related was off.
Hard to tell what’s really going on.
If one is truly concerned then one needs control over their device/ROM which means root or at least adb. Then one can control all/most of those permissions and AppOps. LineageOS before Android 10 (I think) had PrivacyGuard to deal with some of that.
Apps like Permission Manager X or App Manager will give one the control they need.
Both require root or adb to make certain changes.
I still wanted to answer: RethinkDNS is a tool which runs in background and has always a look at your network activities.
The first thing you can do with that is monitoring all your network traffic from any app and every OS component, you see where it goes and how often. Knowing what the device does is always a good idea because sending data all the time means also consuming a lot of energy.
The second is blocking unwanted traffic, either generally per app (for mobile and/or wifi) or more specific by IP addresses, server names or more complex rules.
A third functionality is blocking known ad or tracking servers using common block lists. Blocking means here that your device doesn’t request these servers at all.
It can also redirect you traffic over an own DNS.
Many of these tasks are also provided by other apps like NetGuard. But I found RethinkDNS more intuitive and more detailed and the developer answers questions.
So if you have a “suspicious app” like GCam on your device you can block the entire network access for this app completely and nothing will ever be sent. You can even make a setting that newly installed apps should be blocked by default, so even the first start of the app is already safe.
