To everyone in the forum – a small but important thought:

[MaDalton]

When I read some of the posts here, I wonder about our attitude towards this whole digital sovereignty issue? And: is there another way, or shouldn’t it actually be the other way around?

The fact that certain apps don’t work is important information; reporting and discussing bugs is crucial, as it drives the entire project forward and helps with development – ​​and ultimately, it benefits all of us by providing alternatives to Big Tech, in this case, /e/ OS.

But complaining, condemning – I wonder if our attitude towards the whole thing is wrong? Are we starting from the wrong end?

Ask yourself:

Whose fault is it that your banking app isn’t working?
Whose fault is it that any app, no matter what, isn’t working?
Why are you having problems at all and can’t you just use /e/OS the way you want?
Why are we all even here?

This is not about what /e/OS can do for your banking app (or your government app, or any app, etc.), but about what your bank (or government, etc.) can and should do for you as a /e/OS user.

Not only are you entitled to use /e/OS or any alternative operating system, etc., but you’re also the clever one, seeing miles ahead into the future – and governments, companies, and banks are now realizing this too – dependence on Big Tech is dangerous. France is leading the way, and other countries are starting to become independent. I don’t want to list all the examples now, just one: Denmark migrated 1 million teachers to an open-source platform in a very short time. But you already know all this, because that’s why you’re here…

So, here’s a suggestion:

Of course, it’s important and right to point out errors, but the criticism should be directed at the right place:
Demand that their app be adapted for /e/OS. Contact the banks, government, agencies, etc., and demand that their respective apps be opened or adapted (include links (see down) about digital sovereignty). It’s important that they hear about this. And if they don’t, then terminate your customer relationship—do you really want to have such a bank/company, etc.? Inform/write to the consumer protection council that their apps don’t work on your smartphone and PC.

Maybe I’m just a data protection- spoiled Norwegian, because we have a fantastic Consumer Protection Council that has brought both Meta and Amazon to their knees several times. When I switched to /e/OS there were no problems at all, all apps and everything works smoothly. The only exception was incorrect APS settings, but I found the right ones myself and shared them here in the forum and GitLab – hence others have the solution. (when I started I had no idea what APN was… )
Of course I could have complained like hell and mock /e/OS….

But if we do that, Google, Meta, etc. will laugh up their sleeves…

https://www.forbrukerradet.no/breakingfree

https://www.forbrukerradet.no/news-in-english/digital-products-and-services-are-getting-worse-but-the-trend-can-be-reversed/

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_26_1187

Regain your privacy! Adopt /e/OS the deGoogled mobile OS and online services

[jhansen63]

Thank you very much for your post. You have written what I often had thought reading some messages. I agree that the problem is not e/os, the problem are who program only for google devices.
I have been on e/os now for 5 years. In the meantime I did not have any problem with any app. Everything working well. Only my bank-app after an update did not work. So I wrote to the bank asking them the reason. I proposed a two-factor authentication with yubi, but for them it was too heavy to program for only a few people. At the end they installed an alternative and very practical way of authentication without needing the app on the phone.
Only in the last months I had a little more problems, because of many financial services in Italy like credit cards are relaying heavily on Google verification and they tell me that my cellphone is not secure. I prefer to say that my phone is secure but I am not willing to have contacts with google. Why do they have to know what i am doing with my financial accounts?
Every time there is a problem, I write directly to the bank, financial service … and so on, because, indeed, they are responsible. And if a service is closed to me … i change or in the worst case I leave.

Last piece of the story. Friends told me that the VW app does no longer work on degoogled phones. So I wrote to VW to know how is their orientation underlining that a google-orientation will do that I will search for other cars and not take, as I wanted, the i3. No answer …
One thing I won’t never do: leave e/os, privacy matters.

[MaDalton]

Yes, @jhansen63 ,I have the same experience as you. You can tell VW the story how John Deere remotely disabled farming equipment (who’s side are you on - politics are irrelevant here, it is about the possibility/ability)

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/05/01/europe/russia-farm-vehicles-ukraine-disabled-melitopol-intl/index.html

[Manoj]

Way back in 2005 when Gmail was still a ‘by invitation only’ service I remember asking the architect on my project to help me with an account! Those days we were happy to just get an email ID. Gmail worked well with the browsers and also gave us GBs of free data storage. Gladly we shared answers to all the questions asked never thinking it could ever be misused. Next Google search became our staple search engine, fast and light weight. Beyond the average user the corporate world and Governments adopted the Google verification as the mandatory gateway to whatever service you require.
By the time we realized how our data was being used or rather misused it was too late. Our digital footprint was all over the web. In India forget Gmail even an ID like protonmail is not accepted by some corporate websites! Some key government and banking apps still require google IDs to clear verification. And yes I and others like me who would prefer to make our own choice with regards which IDs to use and how to use them do complain as much as possible.
To make matters worse the corporate world keeps changing the rules and the code. Which is why you see apps running fine on /e/OS one day suddenly throwing errors the next. We keep getting complaints about Banking and Government ID apps from users across the world.
On our side, the /e/OS developers would require bug reports and logs to help diagnose what changes have been made to the app code. Based on that we continue our efforts to make more and more apps compatible with /e/OS.
We do appreciate the letters our users have sent to their political representatives and corporates requesting them to modify application to work with Open Source code and apps.
We will never give up but are energized by the support users have shown and continue updating the code to work across all applications and in all environments.