Hi Everyone,
despite my search I am unable to found the answer of my questions. Before to use /e/, I used TrackerControl on the stock rom of my phone. Now I am on /e/ and I wonder if TrackerControl is useful because of Advanced privacy features. Is it redundant? Is it complementary?
What do you think ?
Thank you for your help
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It is likely that the advanced privacy features of /e/ already provide protection against tracking, so TrackerControl may be redundant in this case. However, it is always a good idea to have multiple layers of protection against tracking, so if you feel more comfortable using TrackerControl in addition to the privacy features of /e/, then it could be considered complementary. Ultimately, the decision of whether to use TrackerControl with /e/ will depend on your personal level of comfort and desired level of protection against tracking.
Personally, I use Netguard in addition to Advanced Privacy.
I take care of my privacy, but I don’t want to stack layers that do the same job. I prefer complementary tools. I understand that TrackerControl and AdvancedPrivacy are redundand, so I want to keep the better. Netguard is like TrackerControl isn’t it ?
I have some apps from Microsoft jailed in my “Work profile” thanks to Shelter app. Despite I cloned AdvancedPrivacy into the work profile, it seems to not work at all because zero tracker are detected. TrackerControl works in the work profile. I’am very surprised because I thought, due to Android limitation, it wasn’t possible to have two VPN enabled in the same time. But on /e/, two TrackerControl app work together in personal and work profiles.
There are people who take homeopathics, and although it is completely indisputable that globules are completely ineffective. Here then the placebo effect works.
However, the placebo effect demonstrably does not help against trackers.
Therefore, I think we should remain as objective as possible here.
@Skidrow I really love your sentence about homeopathics and placebo effect 
But I am not sure to understand well your analogy 
You mean that both TrackerControl and AdvancedPrivacy are like placebo against tracking from Microsoft apps…
No, my contribution referred more to the sentence
As far as I know are they using different block lists. The results are different. I had more web pages that did not work while trackercontrol was running. This indicates that it blocked more. With advanced privacy I have 500 - 1500 blocked request / month. Far less than I had in trackercontrol. Yet, I trust the selection by the e.foundation and asume that their list is balanced/sufficient.
You did notice that Tracker Control isn’t meant to monitor browsers, right? There’s big title
Browsers not supported 
With Tracker Control it is meant to use browser inbuilt tracking protection, some sites does also have problems if Advanced Privacy is used on top of browser inbuilt tracking protection…
In generally Tracker Control seems to find more trackers from app than Exodus Privacy project does + when Tracker Control is installed, it will show trackers found at newly installed apps. There’s also option to fine-tune what’s blocked, with Tracker Control. It gives even categories like essential, analytics etc. Tracker Control also has option for traffic log.
Advanced Privacy on the other hand doesn’t require VPN slot when not using “hide my IP” / TOR and it’s possible and likely Advanced Privacy will be improved over time, some improvements in feature wise and for blocking lists etc. have been already suggested at gitlab.
Selection which one to prefer is based somehow at personal matters, at time being I prefer Tracker Control more. It doesn’t have those features I don’t use anyways like TOR, has imo better Blocklist & has traffic log. For me those are currently more important features. Someone else might prefer other things more.
I had TC on my /e/ devices before AP was introduced.
Being nudged by this thread, I installed TC again from F-Droid.
Well: TC detected a tracker by amazon from Signal app.
I will keep both TC and AP on.
By reading your post, I was very surprising to learn that Signal App had amazon tracker. So I checked my own TC to confirm that it is not true … until I click on a link to Amazon market place website At this moment, TC detect Amazon but not in the trackers’ section. So I guess that Signal doesn’t track us.
I did a comparaison between protection provided by TC (TrackerControl) and AP(AdvancedPrivacy) about Spotify app. Definitively, both app detect trackers that are not detected by other. I will keep both.
Another thing funny is that TC detects a tracker in AdvancedPrivacy
But it is about Mapbox to generate the map for the fake localisation feature. I read somewhere that the team is aware about this and is seraching for another library.
Yes, this problem is known to the team:
Signal uses AWS (Amazon Web services) so probably TC detects some traffic to Amazon servers…
Ok so my bad, it was only a coincidence. I’ll ask to TC to block but I guess it is necessary for Signal functionning.
RethinkDNS recorded 12 different servers accessed ever (!) by my Langis installation, the names of them all end on .signal.org. OK, may be some of them are hosted by AWS. There may also be a responsible Signal feature I never use (multimedia messages, calling).
Can’t say if it’s dangerous from our privacy standpoint.
Here you are a screenshot from TC on Signal.
Signal works flawlessly with TC on.
Interested by the topic, I downloaded TC but it seems to require a VPN connection to work and I use it already with AP and Hide my IP. So it’s not possible to have both AP and TC, if Hide my IP is activated, right?
I had to activate the Amazon connection when I logged in to the app. You did not have to?
@mihi: no, I was not required to activate any Amazon stuff.
@MaMaTT88: yes, that’s true, Android can use only one VPN but apparently TC does not complain about AP.
Intriguing (at least to me )
Where is your Signal from?
