Will /e/ be able to stop this new threat to privacy?

I just read this article. It describes software loaded on the phone by design that tracks what you do, your messages and can send that data to whoever.

Are the people at /e/ aware of this? Do they think /e/ devices can remain free of this?

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We can always stop using Facebook.

This has triggered me to give a short rant: As a civilization, we gave away our privacy to corporations disturbingly fast. Because the average everyday person with little technical know how was able to get ready access to software that required nearly zero understanding of how it came about or how it runs (which can be a good thing) we inoculated ourselves with essentially a virus on at every level of society. We are starting to run a small temperature but not enough to stop us from going to work (aka: checking in to Facebook for the 30th time today).

We have royally screwed ourselves folks, there really is no other way to look at it. More specifically: if you feel as a person you can’t stand the FOMO (feeling of missing out) and will actively neutralize your privacy by using these services, you/we/I really can’t blame anyone but ourselves. We should be better than that.I don’t know if we are as a civilization.

This does not answer your question, but I’m really kind of livid at Facebook for this new strategy and at ourselves. I think in their high level meetings, they are calling Facebook users gullible, addicted to their service useful idiots. I do not use Facebook.

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Interestingly, while giving up privacy and security to the private sector we scream at the top of our lungs at government surveillance.

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They have become the same thing. Governments around the globe have concluded that it is far easier to shake down the private sector for “their” (read: OUR) data than to try to procure it directly.

In the U.S., it is a wonderful end-run around the Fourth Amendment.

And @haggisns is absolutely correct, we have royally screwed ourselves. We all wish that there can be convenience without cost, but there ain’t no such thing as a free-lunch…

I would be very surprised if this is “new”. As far as I am concerned Google and Apple have been doing this to some extent for years. Why else are there MB of data flowing to Google and Apple? Any Open source OS would have such data gathering open for all to see, and would soon be found out. As for apps they are already data mining this is just a more blatant data mining.

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ok… so, back to my question…

Will /e/ be able, in general, to prevent surveillence software loaded onto the phone’s OS itself? (That is how I am understanding what the article is describing.)

(BTW: I do not have Facebook loaded onto my devices, either.)

As you may be aware w/e/ aim to provide a safe OS for users. Which means the basic set of Apps will be google free and respect the user’s data privacy.
On top of the /e/ OS user can install ‘most’ applications available on various repositories. We do not enforce or dictate what the user can and cannot do. Through our Application Installer (Apps) we will provide the user details of what damage if any installing a particular app will do to his / her phone. We leave it to the user to decide what is in his / her best interest.
We have users who have tried to install Google Play store on the /e/ ROM - not sure if that is even possible but again we do not dictate or enforce users to adopt a particular app .

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Am I misunderstanding the article?

I thought that, in addition to the danger from an app like Facebook, that we could be headed toward a situation in which the phone OS itself would already have this spying feature built in.

Here are two specific questions:

  1. If an app like Facebook has this “feature”, would it be allowed on the /e/ app store? Or, if it is, would that problematic feature be made known?

  2. Since /e/ can be installed on phones that already have an android OS on it, if in the future this kind of spying is built into the OS, will /e/ still be able to replace the OS and destroy that spying capability?

Apps in the Apps application repository are requested by /e/ users. If a user requests for Facebook it will show up on the Application list. The idea behind displaying the Ratings - Rating - Privacy and Energy is to give the user an idea of what is the risk he takes in installing the application. Some of these features are still under development though.

To be honest this ‘spying’ exists even today . Google has its trackers embedded in its code in multiple locations. This was the idea that launched /e/ in the first place …to clean up the code and provide users a safe mobile OS.
This process of clean up of the spying-capabilities will continue in the future as well.

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I am sure the answer is yes, you can install a spyware laden tracking software on your phone if you want. I’m glad the /e/ store warns you of the implications with each app, wish the play store did the same, a lot of people wouldn’t go along with it if they could see that ahead of time.
On a side note, you can install aurora store to access all of the apps on the Google play store without logging in to a Google account.

I’ll enforce the position of user “Githyanki”. Neither /e/OS or the stock-ROM (as delivered by the manufacturer…) touch or affect your basic freedom: " freedom of choice"
Me, for example, I’ve installed a untouched/unmodified “vanilla”-called
LineageOS-ROM fitting my phone. The /e/-functionality added in a second step (installing ‘Nextcloud-client’, as suggested on my personal /e/-Webspace, then ‘DAVx5’ for contacts/calendar-sync, atvlast pointing my email-program ‘K9’ to my mail.ecloud.global-adress…), deciding one step further whether to include some of my purchased (on Google-Play) apps or not… I have FDroid as main app-repository, Aurora-Store as second. The latter named gives you the opportunity to check, if the avised app to install has trackers or not, by a checking-service called " Exodus" (you can read in details about the trackers on their website, where you are redirected to… I decided to install some Software from Google for sake of functionality, for example an old version of “Google Search” (-> only for the offline voice recognition !!), “Google Translate” (-> offline translating capabilities) and “Google Earth”/streetview (both in older versions). As I’m concious of the " imported Google-Trackers", I have a Firewall installed (AFWall), configured to maintain privacy and functionality…
I think, one should not be tempted to delegate responsability for privacy to others but better see it as a challenge for gaining some technical knowledge and “bake your own” :slight_smile: .
In former times I’d have said “just search, Google is your friend !” which I don’t advice no more… (I opted for the open source search enging located in Germany, called ‘Metager’)…

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