/e/fondation should get actually a didactic position.
You could be inspired of what we do for prevention of disease like paludism or Sida. Everybody may be confronted to paludism without be able to avoid a trip in an infected country. Nevertheless you’re not condemned to contract the sickness. You do what you want, but you know what you do !
The main problem on Ggl Play Store is that you don’t know and it is so easy !
It is not being paranoid to say that as a Yann-geek or a Katell-grandma, we need :
to be Informed of the risk
to Prevent the risk
to take a Decision
to Find a Treatment (in case of “infection”).
/e/ app store would have to take in account these steps and guide the user to his own choice.
Give information about the ways and the risks of tracking.
Partneship with LaQuadrature, for instance
I like the idea of filter @Gregoire : default safe and untracking, etc
A color code could visually help too.
A dedicated security section of the /e/store, where we could get different way of protection
DNS filters
Proxy, etc
/e/fondation should put in full view the default /e/ apps and their qualities : efficiency, security, etc.
You know what you are doing : do it !
But you maybe won’t put a picture of your niece on her swing set on tiktok.
Damned, Facebook is tracking me !
To late ! Take yours datas and run away to Diaspora !
I use Linage with F-Droid.
I did not think I was a Geek or Nerd, maybe I am.
F-Droid apps have information about permissions and a Web address to look up Bugs.
I also like the Colour code for Linux Mint Green = Safe, Yellow = Safe Mostly, Red = You Better know how to fix it if you break it.
But ultimately the choice is up to the user.
I have not dug around in e but Simplified instructions on how to back up with TWRP would be helpful.
How about we can have the /e/ appstore designed in 3 sections? One section is similar to Fdroid. Only opensource apps here. Another section (yellow section) is proprietary apps (maybe with few trackers, but no apps by GAFAM) Last section (red section) has all apps in Play store (like Aurora, like /e/ appstore is now)
3 sections, and all searchable, so everyone can use what section they like best!
You could have three colors green/yellow/red and also +/-. So that would be similar to a rating from 1 to 10 regarding trackers. Green + like 10, green 9, green - 8, yellow + 7, etc.
I would expect that with installing only green apps there would be no software on the phone making things like online tracking, location tracking, profiling, usage data collecting (only opt-in), device specs collecting and things like that. I guess no closed source app can be green.
I don’t think we should restrict app access. Only thing I would suggest is to create a way for people to realise how trackers relate to the real world, like a list of news articles mentioning the app in relation to privacy.
I posted a feature request for that outlining my idea
My view is that everyone can do what they want is a difficult approach. Sounds good in theory but does not really help anyone.
/e/ stands for data protection and privacy and I think so should the /e/ store. That means it is in my view ok if not every app ends up in the /e/ store because there are serious concerns about data protection and privacy and also alternatives exist.
Example: I don’t see any reason why the /e/ store should include Google Chrome. There are many good privacy focused alternatives available. If a user really needs Chrome for something he can at his own risk install an alternative app store like Aurora or Yalp (forked). /e/ documentation can explain how to go about this but also point out that by using one of those apps it is likely from expert experience (rather than proof everything) that the user is loosing some of the /e/ data protection and privacy features.
This leads for me to this approach, partly explained in other posts:
differentiate between recommended apps and apps where data protection and privacy aspects are unclear or questionable (green and amber from another post)
exclude apps that have serious privacy and data protection concerns (red). As mitigation have some documentation how a user can install them anyway if needed with an alternative app store. As mentioned, this has the challenge to select and deselect certain apps in an efficient way and by a what criterium?. This needs some thought.
Discoverability is important for me. If the /e/ app store contains 100 messenger of which experts would really recommend 3-4 apps over the others then it would be helpful if these recommended apps are presented more prominently in lists and searches. As long as that is not possible I would, for example turn lists off instead of showing just something. At the time of writing (22 Oct) the number one entry in the Top updated app list is WhatsApp. I struggle to see why the /e/ app store puts WhatsApp in such a prominent position to discover regardless of the question whether it should be in the app store or not.
Trust is also important, I think it is necessary to document how the /e/ app store works. What is selected for the store and why. How can a privacy conscious user find the apps she/he needs? How does search work, what’s presented first as a result and what second and why. Similar for lists, what makes top of the list (e.g. Home tab in the /e/ store: Discover) why?
So I think it is ok for a project like /e/ to have an opinionated approach on the app store, the prominent presentation of apps, search results and lists. User who are informed about possible consequences can be guided to alternative stores to install apps they need which do not meet the /e/ project objectives.
My vote is “yes” /e/ Apps store, mainly for these two reasons.
I use F-droid as my primary app source, Apps as my secondary, to (easily) check additional apps for trackers. There are decent apps out there without trackers that are not on F-droid because they are not FLOSS. For anything else, app repositories and Classy Shark. The key is that in all cases, I am making a (generally) informed decision, modulated by exigencies of the here and now. An imperfect system, admittedly, but the perfect system doesn’t exist. The antidote for an imperfect world is information, /e/ Apps offers information.
the problem is, that it’s the exodus proof. And as you can read here Don't trust exodus website result, you shouldn’t trust the result.
That’s the only way to check the trackers on your installed apps. I often install an app, check it with ClassyShark and remove the app after check, because it has trackers as hell but it has a good rate in apps store
There is something actually I’d like to use as soon as possible: It’s ok (and the right way imho) to have unsafe apps, but I’d prefer to also have a slider or something similar. Let’s say if I set the slider to green, I’d only get search results with apps having privacy ratings 10, 9 or 8. So if I search for e.g. “compass”, I do not even want to see apps with a worse rating than that. If there is anything else where I’d want to see all apps (including unsafe apps), I’d set the slider to red. Not sure how non-tech people would grasp this concept.
For me, people do what they want, and / e / is here to help them whatever their purpose by protecting them from trackers.
/e/ Apps must contain all the applications that are useful to these people while guaranteeing easy access to information about the applications contained in Apps.
Do you think /e/ Apps should contain ‘unsafe’ apps ?
For me, the first thing is that the system is safe
Then I want safe apps which mean no virus or no corruption file but I want to be able to use the main apps, safely (which mean be sure it is the official apps) like official newspaper app, train app or vod app I choose to pay for. For me it is very important to have them and to be sure I have the official app and I think a major task for e is to have official apps of big supplier (for exemple in france sncf and ratp for public transport, canal+ for video, all the official newpapers (les echos, le figaro, investir, liberation, le monde,…)). I don’t want to be track every second by google but if I use newspaper services I want to be able to have them
First I am interested in news and I want newspaper and journalist to live so I think it is good to look at them and pay for them.
Even with trackers, I’m pretty sure their apps collect less data than android by google itself (first you can limit the authorization of the apps and of /e/ setting so that localization for exemple is unknown. Even if they have a google tracker ,if /e/ follow its promise, if we don’tallow the system to collect some data it won’t and the app will not be able to do so (contrary to goole which has collected localization data with localization deactivated…)
Thirs point, I don’t know the possibility because I’m not a software guy but we might have a setting which forbid any collection or activity of apps when they are not opened. As a result yes the apps and all its tracker will only know you use their app the few time you sue it. Not a big deal for me that a newspaper I pay for know that I have read it…
Fi
Absolute wrong. Apps are collecting data as hell. And e can’t do anything against. You, the user can do a lot against data collecting. Don’t use apps which collects data via trackers.
You want read newspaper , why don’t use the webpage of the newspaper ? Every good website is designed to work with a special ‘mobile layout’. That way is better than installing the tracking snd data mining app.
Absolute wrong. Apps are collecting data as hell. And e can’t do anything against
When you put some settings (for exemple some economy mode or data limitation), it’s written that your apps can’t send data in background mode (which can perturbate them). So if there is no data in background mode the app can do nothing when you are not using them I think (or I don’t understand anything about allowing or not background mode).
more specifically for my situation than newpaper webpage you have group offers (like netflix for video) with a subscription you have access (often through you mobile provider) to lots of newpaper; therefore you need to use the app (very often internet webpage are not so good on mobile…and you can also have tracker in the webpage…) so I need the app.
And last point, I’m sure you’re right and some of my data are collected (even by google via partnership) but much less than with classical android with google mobile service I’m sure because if every app give google the same information than GMS, google will have no reason to force their use
So yes ideally we should use no tracker at all but if we want some commercial services we will have to but we can work to limit it with /e/ for exemple. But /e/ will be very great with official bank app, train app, newspaper apps, video service app even if they are not open source because they are used and required by lots of people
You must know, that some apps not only collecting your data you use in the / with the app, there are apps which collecting the data from ALL apps you are using.
Thanks for this interesting and worrying information;
my point is if you don’t allow apps to work and process data in background mode how can they know what you do when the app is closed? (for exemple in data economy mode it is written in /e/ restricted access to data (except for apps we allow to have unlimited access to data, if no apps have access to localization, if we trust /e/ contrary to google how can app access to your localization data etc…) What is wrong in these assumption?
The apps will collect abd save your data ehen they are in foreground. when they are an backgroud nothing happens but the saved data is still available for other apps which can sebd them ‘home’
i’m a new user of /e/ and really admire what they are trying to do.
i think it’s necessary to offer mainstream apps via the store otherwise mainstream users will never adopt /e/ , but the main issue I see with this is that such users of a degoogled OS will immediately install many apps with many trackers and straight away negate the perceived privacy advantage of /e/.
the privacy rating is a great start, and certainly opened my eyes and pushed me to deinstall the worst apps and look for better alternatives but for less tech savvy users a more prominent warning about the trackers in each app might be a good idea , plus the ability to sort apps based on privacy rating would help when choosing alternative apps that respect privacy
