TrackerControl VS AdvancedPrivacy

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 :warning:

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.

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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 :sweat_smile: 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 :sweat_smile:
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?

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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?

https://www.twinhelix.com/apps/signal-foss/

The loginscreen was just blank even after some time. Had similar behaviour with other apps.

I agree with you, I remember that Android can use only one VPN and, as you, I can see that TC works with AP enabled but, without IP hiding. AP activate the VPN icon (the little key at the top of the screen) only when IP hiding is enabled.
In the settings → Network and Internet menu, VPN show which application is enabled (TC or AP). If the VPN is owned by AP, when you enabled TC, it kick off AP to take the VPN privileges. These tests tell me 2 things :

  • You can enable only a unique VPN connection at the same time (in fact it is false if you use profiles)
  • TC trackers blocking is using VPN but AP tracker blocking is working in other way, and don’t need VPN. So both can work together.

Thanks to Shelter App I activated the “Work Profile”, and TC is installed in my personal and working profile. I can enable the two instances of TC in the same time. But, in this case, TC monitor only app in the profile where it is installed.
@MaMaTT88 perhaps it is possible to enable AP from the Work profile to only activate the IP Hiding, et keep TC in the private profil to monitor the trackers from the app.

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TrackerControl (TC) is not redundant. It functions very differently from Advanced Privacy (AP) and therefore provides something that AP cannot deliver.
AP acts as a DNS, hence it blocks DNS requests to trackers. This is a very easy and simple way to implement a blocker, but it can as easily worked around. It’s very similar to the internet blocking of some sites that some countries implement to prevent their usage, and the protection is just as weak. e.g. the ip can be hard coded into the site (it’s not that hard to update that) or the app could just contact another DNS server in case that it can’t resolve the address of a tracker.
Given that there is actually money behind the whole tracker business, I’m pretty sure that this will happen sooner or later if many people block stuff. (Maybe it already happens, I don’t know.)
And if that happens, AP has no means of detecting that.
Therefore, AP actually gives you a false sense of privacy.

TC on the other hand actually tracks connections or rather connection attempts. To do so, it uses a local VPN, which is also the main disadvantage of using TC. This VPN means that you can’t use a real VPN or you have to disable TC when you do and it also results in slightly higher battery usage (although I haven’t measured it).
However, the approach is much more solid and for that reason, I would always choose TC over AP.

The other two features of AP (faking location and ip) are completely unrelated to TC.

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Thank you for your comprehensive and complete answer :grinning: I didn’t know that AP act as a DNS, and now I understand better some weirdness when I tried to use Private DNS and why TC and AP can work together…

That’s my setup as well. Advance privacy is an excellent app but I do use Netguard too. I like having the power to decide which apps are allowed to go online and which aren’t.