SafetyNet on /e/OS Community "dev" devices - let it in or not?

@GaelDuval @Manoj Did the team came already to a decision?
Cheers

We will share the final decision on all our communication channels. This is a big change and definitely the feedback from the users on this thread will be the prime factor behind the outcome.

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I already voted and made my comment, but would like to add a thought:
If the problem will be “naturally” solved for A12+ why not move straight to A12 for every phone (and GSI)?

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And because banks seem to be hallucinating that “Google = Security” on the internet. :roll_eyes:

I don’t do banking on phones, so I will refrain from voting; I’ll just say that I came to /e/OS to be as free of Google on Android as possible, but I won’t stop using /e/ in any case. :slight_smile:

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I also commented already, but I’d like to add a bit more. The very reason why we invest money, time and work in getting out of Google’s system is to avoid all things related to them and their aggressive strategies, so why even think of falling back into this trap? I’m not tech-savvy, but I will do whatever is needed to learn to use Murena’s apps instead of Google’s, and to forgo these latter ones. Google is not indispensable. They may make us think that, but it is not true and we do not have to believe it!

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The purpose of /e/OS is to offer a fully functional smartphone operating system, compatible with Android apps, without sending any information to Google that can track users, plus pro-privacy features such as Advanced Privacy. That’s really what we are doing, including with SafetyNet support.

If you really want to get out totally from anything from Google, I’m afraid you have to use some Linux based operating system, but this won’t probably be enough since most of the time they are using some Android low-level routines to ensure hardware compatibility.

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Yeah, that’s the reasons why a choose eOS for my daily phone, in one words “compatibility”.

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That maybe your motivation, but not everybody shares it. If you want to “avoid all things related to” Google, then don’t use any devices running any version of Android - Google wrote Android.

Google have made a great phone OS, and have made it open source, allowing all the great custom ROMs to be made. They also make some great apps, some of which can be used in such a way that they do respect your privacy and don’t send any personally-identifiable information to Google.

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Correction : Google ‘bought’ Android (in 2005) :wink:

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But Android surely didn’t qualify as a “great phone OS” as early as 2005 when Google bought it :wink: . Promising at best, in some regards.

Well … may be that’s the actual (really inconvenient) truth, but this is quite not the promise of e-OS, if we can discuss about what’s an important app … OK, this is not an app, but a feature : the GPS location => is it not an important feature ? and so, is it not a real issue if some unreplaceable apps stop working because they are relying (stupidly, I agree, but no replacement) on Ggle location layer rather than on standard AOSP location layer … and because microG is in this kind of bad period of time during which the location code has been broken for some reason and not yet fixed because it takes time and guys, and because they are not much and many ? and may be clumsy at times ?

It very much is, and it isn’t broken for everybody.
I wish I knew what the problem is on devices having trouble (apart from the HereWeGo App), but I don’t.
It’s working totally fine on my Fairphone 3 on 1.6-s-20221201239247-dev-FP3 (with OsmAnd, Magic Earth, GMaps WV, GPSTest and SatStat).

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Maybe this one:

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Yeah, also Settings - System - microG - Location modules - Mozilla Location Service seemed to be disabled for some users for unknown reasons and re-enabling it helped … but both of these things don’t seem to apply to the cases in which the HereWeGo App is the only one able to use the correct location (I edited my previous post to be more clear) … or I missed the connection, which is possible.
Anyway, off-topic.

You are right, not broken for everyone, see this gitlab issue :

  • since 1.2 (july 2022, after the location module of microG/GmsCore was heavily changed),
  • at least S9, S9+, S10e and One,
  • limited to some apps : at least Trackbook (FOSS), Sygic with “system” location mode (closed source), Naturalist (closed source, said to use FusedLocationProviderClient API),
  • most other apps (like those you list) do work as expected (but do they use the Glglg API or the AOSP one ?)

Trackbook has many other possible replacements ; I don’t know for Sygic (but guess it has at least some, partly ?) ; as for Naturalist, no replacement for this semi-professional on-field animal data collection app feeding up biodiversity follow up databases : I’m stuck with no information about when someone will look at this (found no related issue on microG bug tracker) :frowning:

OK, I understand we are not enough numerous to be taken care of … that’s life and death.

I think it was already open source when gogol bought Android, that’s why they built their own proprietary infrastructure aside to android and implement links to it into android
(Gogol Services Framworks)

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I can certainly understand your frustration, so let’s just hope mentioning the issue in the context here will help in some way.

If you are talking about NaturaList by Biolovision Sàrl, this App is GSF-dependent (Google Services Framework) according to Aurora Store (which displays this info for Apps). In this case technically nobody can guarantee you that it will work on /e/OS at a certain point in time. That’s what I’m talking about.

True, simple advertising to get more potential users at the cost of dealing with eventual grievances afterwards. A choice was made.

In the end as they say you can’t have your cake and eat it. You can’t degoogle and expect to still have 100% Google. You can try to come close, though … and /e/OS is a very good try in that sense, chances are really high that most of the Google-dependent Apps will work just fine most of the time. But as you correctly point out, that’s not how they word it up front.

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That’s interesting. Can you provide link to the information about why Google did that? :wink:

“Secret of the affairs” is practical when you project to enchain and spy your customers.
Open source is very efficient but not secret.

This is an enlightening read: