Google’s ‘Secret’ Update Scans All Your Photos
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That would definitely be better.
The Graphene devs say it's a local only service.
Open source would be better (and I can easily see open source alternatives being made if you're not locked into a Google Android-based phone), but the idea is sound and I can deny network privileges to the app with Graphene so it doesn't matter if it does decide to one day try to phone home... so I'll give it a shot.
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I didn't understand the value of fdroid all since it feels like a web wrapper. Thanks to you finally pulled the trigger on Obtanium. Omg that's simple af
It's a web wrapper that points to a non-Google software repo.
The non-Google software repo is the important part, the interface can be bad as long as it can install software.
I use Obtanium too, but fDroid is my first stop when I need an app. Google's Play store is a last resort.
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Google says that SafetyCore “provides on-device infrastructure for securely and privately performing classification to help users detect unwanted content. Users control SafetyCore, and SafetyCore only classifies specific content when an app requests it through an optionally enabled feature.”
GrapheneOS — an Android security developer — provides some comfort, that SafetyCore “doesn’t provide client-side scanning used to report things to Google or anyone else. It provides on-device machine learning models usable by applications to classify content as being spam, scams, malware, etc. This allows apps to check content locally without sharing it with a service and mark it with warnings for users.”
But GrapheneOS also points out that “it’s unfortunate that it’s not open source and released as part of the Android Open Source Project and the models also aren’t open let alone open source… We’d have no problem with having local neural network features for users, but they’d have to be open source.” Which gets to transparency again.
Graphene could easily allow for open source solutions to emulate the SafetyCore interface. Like how it handles Google's location services.
There's plenty of open source libraries and models for running local AI, seems like this is something that could be easily replicated in the FOSS world.
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i have system updates disabled and still found this piece of shit installed.
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SafetyCore Placeholder so if it ever tries to reinstall itself it will fail due to signature mismatch.
Wow that's actually genius thank you
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The Firefox Phone should've been a real contender. I just want a phone that takes good pictures and plays podcasts.
Unfortunately Mozilla is going the enshittification route more and more. Or good in this case that the Firefox Phone did not take of.
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if there was something that could run android apps virtualized, I'd switch in a heartbeat
Do you mean sandboxed?
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The Graphene devs say it's a local only service.
Open source would be better (and I can easily see open source alternatives being made if you're not locked into a Google Android-based phone), but the idea is sound and I can deny network privileges to the app with Graphene so it doesn't matter if it does decide to one day try to phone home... so I'll give it a shot.
God I wish I could completely deny internet access to some of my apps on stock android. It's obvious why they don't allow it though.
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God I wish I could completely deny internet access to some of my apps on stock android. It's obvious why they don't allow it though.
You can, if you root your phone. Unless it is not a thing anymore.
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Per one tech forum this week: “Google has quietly installed an app on all Android devices called ‘Android System SafetyCore’. It claims to be a ‘security’ application, but whilst running in the background, it collects call logs, contacts, location, your microphone, and much more making this application ‘spyware’ and a HUGE privacy concern. It is strongly advised to uninstall this program if you can. To do this, navigate to 'Settings’ > 'Apps’, then delete the application.”
Thank you was able to find and uninstall the app with no issues
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Per one tech forum this week: “Google has quietly installed an app on all Android devices called ‘Android System SafetyCore’. It claims to be a ‘security’ application, but whilst running in the background, it collects call logs, contacts, location, your microphone, and much more making this application ‘spyware’ and a HUGE privacy concern. It is strongly advised to uninstall this program if you can. To do this, navigate to 'Settings’ > 'Apps’, then delete the application.”
Even with the latest update from Samsung, I am not seeing this app. My OnePlus did get it with the February update and I had to remove it.
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Is there any indication that Apple is truly more secure and privacy conscious over Android? Im kinda tired of Google and their oversteps.
For true privacy you'll want something like GrapheneOS on a Pixel, with no Google apps or anything. Some other ROM with no gApps as a second choice.
Other than that, Apple SEEMS to be mildly better. I'll give you an example: Apple pulls encryption feature from UK over government spying demands
While it's a bad thing that they pull the encryption feature, it's a good sign - they either aren't willing or able to add a backdoor for the UK security services. Then there was this case. If the article is to be believed, they started working on security as of iOS 8 so they could no longer comply with government requests. Today we're on iOS 18.
Apple claims their advertising ID is anonymized so third party apps don't know who you are. That said, they still have the advertising ID service so Apple themselves do know a whoooooole lot about you - but this is the same with Google.
Then regarding photo scanning - Apple received a LOT of backlash for their proposed photo scanning feature. But it was going to be only on-device scans on photos that were going to be uploaded to iCloud (so disabling iCloud would disable it too) and it was only going to report you if you had a LOT of child pornography on your phone - otherwise it was, supposedly, going to do absolutely nothing about the photos. It wasn't even supposed to be a categorization model, just a "Does this match known CSAM?" filter. Google and Microsoft had already implemented something similar, except they didn't scan your shit on-device.
At the end of the day, Apple might be a bit more private, but it's a wash. It's not transparent and neither is Google. I like using their devices. Sometimes I miss the freedom of custom ROMs, but my damn banking apps stopped working on Lineage and I couldn't be arsed to start using the banks' mobile websites again like I'd done in the past. So I moved to iOS, as Oneplus had completely botched their Android experience in the meantime while I'd been using Lineage so I was kinda pissed at what I had considered one of the last remaining decent Android manufacturers (Sonys are overpriced and I will never own a Samsung, I hate them, I didn't like my Huawei or Xiaomi much either).
So if you want to run custom ROMs, get a Pixel or something. If not, Apple is as good a choice as Android. A couple of years ago it was the better choice even, as you'd get longer software support, but now the others have started catching up due to all the consumer outrage.
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Per one tech forum this week: “Google has quietly installed an app on all Android devices called ‘Android System SafetyCore’. It claims to be a ‘security’ application, but whilst running in the background, it collects call logs, contacts, location, your microphone, and much more making this application ‘spyware’ and a HUGE privacy concern. It is strongly advised to uninstall this program if you can. To do this, navigate to 'Settings’ > 'Apps’, then delete the application.”
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The app can be found here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.safetycore
The app reviews are a good read.
Apparently I'm a beta tester? How, what? Thanks for the link!
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if there was something that could run android apps virtualized, I'd switch in a heartbeat
I have used Waydroid, mainly with FOSS apps, and although it has some rough edges, it does often work for just having one or two Android apps functionality.
Linux on mobile as a whole isn't daily driver ready yet in my opinion. I've only tried pmOS on a OP6, but that seems to be a leading project on a well-supported phone (compared to the rest).
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For true privacy you'll want something like GrapheneOS on a Pixel, with no Google apps or anything. Some other ROM with no gApps as a second choice.
Other than that, Apple SEEMS to be mildly better. I'll give you an example: Apple pulls encryption feature from UK over government spying demands
While it's a bad thing that they pull the encryption feature, it's a good sign - they either aren't willing or able to add a backdoor for the UK security services. Then there was this case. If the article is to be believed, they started working on security as of iOS 8 so they could no longer comply with government requests. Today we're on iOS 18.
Apple claims their advertising ID is anonymized so third party apps don't know who you are. That said, they still have the advertising ID service so Apple themselves do know a whoooooole lot about you - but this is the same with Google.
Then regarding photo scanning - Apple received a LOT of backlash for their proposed photo scanning feature. But it was going to be only on-device scans on photos that were going to be uploaded to iCloud (so disabling iCloud would disable it too) and it was only going to report you if you had a LOT of child pornography on your phone - otherwise it was, supposedly, going to do absolutely nothing about the photos. It wasn't even supposed to be a categorization model, just a "Does this match known CSAM?" filter. Google and Microsoft had already implemented something similar, except they didn't scan your shit on-device.
At the end of the day, Apple might be a bit more private, but it's a wash. It's not transparent and neither is Google. I like using their devices. Sometimes I miss the freedom of custom ROMs, but my damn banking apps stopped working on Lineage and I couldn't be arsed to start using the banks' mobile websites again like I'd done in the past. So I moved to iOS, as Oneplus had completely botched their Android experience in the meantime while I'd been using Lineage so I was kinda pissed at what I had considered one of the last remaining decent Android manufacturers (Sonys are overpriced and I will never own a Samsung, I hate them, I didn't like my Huawei or Xiaomi much either).
So if you want to run custom ROMs, get a Pixel or something. If not, Apple is as good a choice as Android. A couple of years ago it was the better choice even, as you'd get longer software support, but now the others have started catching up due to all the consumer outrage.
Thanks for the detailed reply dude. This is so thorough.
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Per one tech forum this week: “Google has quietly installed an app on all Android devices called ‘Android System SafetyCore’. It claims to be a ‘security’ application, but whilst running in the background, it collects call logs, contacts, location, your microphone, and much more making this application ‘spyware’ and a HUGE privacy concern. It is strongly advised to uninstall this program if you can. To do this, navigate to 'Settings’ > 'Apps’, then delete the application.”
Thanks for posting, I just uninstalled
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Unfortunately Mozilla is going the enshittification route more and more. Or good in this case that the Firefox Phone did not take of.
Is there some good Chromium browser with hardware video decoder support and a working adblocker, that is not Brave? Or which Firefox fork is recommended?
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I struggle with GitHub sometimes. It says to download the apk but I don't see it in the file list. Anyone care to point me in the right direction?
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God I wish I could completely deny internet access to some of my apps on stock android. It's obvious why they don't allow it though.
