Trying to escape Google’s ecosystem, but past purchases keep pulling me back. #DeGoogled #GoogleLockIn #PrivacyStruggles #TechDilemma #FOSS #DigitalFreedom #AndroidAlternatives
You can install paid apps with aurora store if you already bought them on Google Play or you can download them modded from other sources :)
Thanks for your info. 😄👍
modded from other sources
True! But depending on the obscurity of the app it can be hard to find non-malware versions of such modded apps.
Scan your sus APKs, folks! Its fast and free – Virustotal.com does a pretty good job 🙂 I’ve caught a coupla apk Trojans there in the past!
Let go of the past, think for the future!
P.S: You bought them, if the licence doesn’t transfer you are in all right to pirate them. 🙄 There is a really good megathread on reddit. Hopefully someday they move to Fediverse. 🤞🏻
Already done: lemmy.dbzer0.com/c/piracy
Let’s call it a five-finger discount. 🖐️
Everyone saying you can’t have Graphene and google store apps as a daily driver must have given up day one or had some important app that they needed. I’m about 10 months in now.
Graphene sandboxes all the apps, including google services. Yes, it’d be ideal to ditch google all together but reality makes that not feasible for a lot of people. Which is why graphene went through the effort to makes google services work.
You do have to download Google Services Graphenes own mini “app store”. gmail 2FA works, play store/and restoring purchases works, Android Auto works, push notifications work.
It is true, some apps do not work on graphene. Mostly banking apps with extra security. There is a compatibility mode you can set for the app that reduces Graphene’s restrictions on the app. Sometimes that works.
So in short, yes the meme is true. We are still locked into google one way or another, but at least we don’t have to let them and other apps steal all our data.
Google services are kinda like those family members you’ll only come see at family gatherings, but you otherwise don’t let them into any other aspect of your life.
You don’t need to run any binaries from Google on your phone, and still get most apps running fine with CalyxOS.
It’s not as hardened as Graphene, but I’m just looking for privacy while still having reliability and functionality.
It’s been 3yrs as a daily, works great with my banks,a few medical applications etc. Tap to pay still doesn’t work, and I don’t want a Google account anyway.
do you know if Revolut is usable on Graphene again?
There is absolutely NOTHING I purchased on the play store that I need. Forget about replacing, i’m genuinely better off without it
What’s with all the hashtags? This isn’t Twitter. Searching #FOSS for example shows a whole of not this with most seemingly only containing the ‘#’ part or FOSS but no ‘#’.
I’ll keep using hashtags for my Lemmy posts. 😄
Its not only in google purchases. Almost all digital assets are licensed based, you buy a license. You don’t own anything and it fucking sucks. I therefore try to buy CDs of games or movies if possible
I use a ROM with microg and it actually works for all the things I need.
Don’t hesitate for a second to buy a Pixel for the purposes of GrapheneOS. By all means avoid all other ways of giving Google money, but this is a clearly reasonable exception.
People don’t use GrapheneOS to avoid giving Google their money. They do it to protect their privacy.
No shit.
Your other post really makes it sound like you think people use GrapheneOS to hurt Google’s business model.
No it doesn’t? They literally called it an exception…
I’ve heard pixels have out of band chips in them acting as hardware backdoors
I’ve heard there’s nanomachines in 5G vaccines
That’s easy to prove, so unless a researcher has shown it to be true, I would take it as misinformation.
Stop with the hashtags, this isn’t Twitter
Edit: I was wrong, my bad.
iirc hashtags work for people using mastodon which lemmy.world federates with https://lemmy.world/instances
(could be wrong though)Damn, you’re right, my bad!
this isn’t Twitter
But this is Mastodon (for some of us).
Lemmy and Mastodon share content, now.
This new nerd Internet is weird, but it’s weird in cool ways.
Damn, you’re right, my bad!
Don’t feel bad, this place is weird. It’s a good weird. But weird.
deleted by creator
The thing people often dont realize is that if you do end up caving in and installing Google app services back onto your de-googled phone and logging into your old Google account - well, you’re almost back to square one. Google now ties all the identifiers of that phone/OS to your old Google account and will continue tracking it as much as possible whenever it sees those identifiers accessing anything. So I’d avoid that if your goal is de-Googling, but I understand why some need it as a stop-gap.
I thought the same initially re: sunk costs, but when I actually sat down and made a list of the apps I had on my old phone and what I used them for, I could quickly see that almost half of them were already FOSS. Then checked what alternatives are available for others and realized i could actually replace almost everything. The only premium apps I ended up “needing” were Poweramp*, and a couple others I actually forget now without finding my list. Almost everything can be replaced by using the website as a web link or web app, or using an open source alternative.
A big bonus of that process was seeing on the Aurora Store how many trackers were detected in each of the old apps while i was reviewing them and it was insane. I remember one Sudoku app I’d installed years back had like 16 trackers… Wtf. Checked FOSS options on F-Droid and found several alternatives.
*Poweramp can be bought direct from the developer, no need for Google apps, so I repurchased it via that method so I could avoid using my old account. I don’t mind buying things a second time if the devs have made the facilities available to avoid Google. I recently did the same for Symfonium.
The only ones that stung a bit to abandon was Sleep As Android which I’d paid for (I use their limited free version now and block it on the firewall to prevent ads/tracking); and Sygic (gps app) I’d paid lifetime maps for… I just use Organic Maps now, and while it’s not as fancy it navigates just fine and I use it regularly for car GPS.
Things like Shazam that there’s not really a FOSS alternative for but are free (with questionable tracking) you can install as a ‘work profile’ app via Shelter, which means it has no access to your real contacts and personal data, and can be set to auto-freeze (deletes cache and pauses app, keeps personal data). So you can use it and expose minimal data, and it can’t tie it back to a Google account to profile you as it doesn’t see one.
So far I’ve never needed a Google account on this phone, which means it’s been a clean break from Google entirely. 3 years now and very happy with the results.
GrapheneOS runs Google play services in a sandbox (rather than as a system level app) and randomizes the advertiser ID, IIRC.
I’m keen to give GrapheneOS a try when I upgrade to my next phone, it’s got some privacy enhancements that CalyxOS doesn’t (my current OS). The sandboxing is cool and every bit of obfuscation helps.
However unless your phone is on an always-on VPN with an IP isolated from your other devices, or you’re in a bulding full of other users to obfuscate your traffic somewhat, then just accessing your Google Play account via the phone will give them your public IP address and they’ll be able to tie that heuristically to your other data/accounts.
Eg scenario: you have a laptop at home, it browses and has a bunch of cookies saved, it uses your public IP. Google is all over the web, inescapable while browsing, and through browser fingerprinting has an advertising profile saved for your device even if you’re not logged into an account, this is often called a ‘shadow profile’. If it sees another device (your phone) on the same network (same internet IP) regularly accessing the same sites - those devices are likely linked in their database as ‘likely same user’, with frequency they will be merged permanently as same user. If you then log into your old Google Play account on the phone - boom, all history for that account is now linked in their database to any other profile identifiers for the shadow profile eg cookies, browser fingerprints etc. They don’t need you to log in multiple times, once is enough to confirm owership of that device & account. Opsec is a cat and mouse game and Google (and the other surveillance capitalism giants) are literally the most valuable businesses in the world because they’re good at tracking users to create personal profiles for them.
Things like Shazam that there’s not really a FOSS alternative for
Audire - https://github.com/alexmercerind/audire.
I’m very interested in this info; thanks. What OS and phone are you using? Graphene/Pixel? I desperately want to be off of Google. Apple is not an option.
I am going to transition to Infomaniak for cloud (dumping Proton, wtf Proton), but mobile is still a big question for me
Using a Pixel 5 on Calyx OS. I was attracted to CalyxOS and Graphene as they both use a locked bootloader allowing OTA updates and keeping the boot process secure. I’d say either are good choices. I’ve been very happy with CalyxOS, only a few minor issues in the few years I’ve been on it (a tile button not working in one update, that kind of minor stuff).
This phone model is EOL now and only getting security patches, so im on the lookout for a Pixel 8 to move to (going second hand for costs). I’m planning to give GrapheneOS a try for a few weeks when I upgrade as I’ve read good things about it and will have a good yardstick to compare it to now with my time on CalyxOS.
P. S. I think the Proton CEO thing is overstated - he praised an anti-big-tech pick for the (iirc) Assistant Antitrust Attorney General (that is objectively good), and then backed it up saying he is very hopeful this person with a proven track record litigating against big tech will take on their monopolies that have been hindering players like Proton heavily over the years. His statements were always going to be taken poorly though (any Trump action being praised - even if the action was good, is a red flag because Trump is a disaster for a thousand other reasons and people are understandably on edge), and the follow-up comments should never have been done from the official Proton social media account - which is something Proton also stated, and said wouldn’t happen again. Me: OK that’s strike one. I’m not throwing them out after 9 years of very positive work for one failure, I think there’s a tendency in the privacy community to ‘let perfect be the enemy of good’ and for me at least this is an example of that.
My issue is no one has developed a custom OS for my phone. Suprising considering it seems like the kind of phone FOSS users would love. A modern smart phone with an aux cord and replaceable battery still. Samsung Galaxy XCover 6 Pro for anyone interested.
It seems to go along popularity lines. I have never heard of this phone.
Its Samsung’s “rugged” phone. They certainly don’t advertise it at all. Its a shame because it is a really nice phone (poor camera though but I dont care about that). Probably cause it doesnt fit into the mainstream market of expensive (cheaper than their mainline stuff), disposable (this has a replaceable battery which prolongs its longitivity), and minimalist (still has its aux port and more than just a power and volume buttons).
Ps. They are coming out with a new one, the Xcover 7. It might have already come out actually.
Looks like it’s actually the XCover 8 that is is coming out soon.
Looked into the specs and it’s no wonder why it doesn’t sell. It’s worse than my 4-year-old device. Sucks that you have to sacrifice on performance to gain durability. I rather just buy a 2-year-old flagship and get an accidental damage coverage plan for it.
The performance differences feel like nothing. The only thing I have actually noticed is the camera quality being worse, and I don’t take many photos. I value durability and longitivity over what I see as minor hardware improvements. For the most part I use my phone as a phone. I watch youtube on it, message people, and listen to music. I’m not trying to game on it, thats what I have a computer for. So these hardware improvements they are constantly pushing (while removing valuable features) just doesnt feel worth it to me. But it is a to each their own. I just wish there was a bigger market catering to my needs rather than the whole industry striving to turn phones into all in one devices while removing quality of life features like aux cords, physical buttons, and replaceable batteries.
Hey I wasn’t trying to hate; if it works for you that’s great.
I don’t game on my phone, either (also have a PC for that), but I’m also impatient. Anything that can lead to UI sluggishness is going to be an instant do-not-buy for me. I want my apps to install and open instantly; hell, I get frustrated even if the phone takes more than 10 seconds to boot, especially since I’m already used to my PC booting nearly instantly.
My impatience is something I seriously need therapy for.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to come off as aggressive, that wasn’t my intention.
Speed has never really been something I cared a lot about. I’ve always been kinda used to things being at least a little slow. Nowadays the only thing I really care about speed with is load times while playing a game. But boot up times I have a lot more patience for. With how technology has become nowadays, I’ve come to value things like being opensource, durability, reliability, and adaptability more than processing power, because it feels like everything is built to become expensive copy and paste waste. I hate having to buy a new phone every two years or so cause the battery degrades too much, or having to repair an expensive screen when a radio with physical buttons did the job better and was easier and cheaper to fix, or streaming services losing media I am paying for to the void cause they didn’t want to renew the license and no one else wants to pick it up. All these sorts of problems have made me choose older, slower, but usually more reliable solutions. Cars with traditional radios, physical media or downloads over streaming, etc.
Again sorry for if the previous comment came off as aggressive. I wont deny my first draft of it started off that way cause I was being unreasonable, but I tried to remove it and clearly failed. I also do not mean for this one to come off as aggressive either, so please dont interpret as such
Like most rugged stuff the phone seems to be aimed at businesses which is probably why they don’t advertise it more broadly. I doubt most consumers have much interest in rugged devices. Since they are usually mediocre or even bad in many aspects that consumers seemingly care a lot about. Like camera, weight, size, and display.
It’s a cool phone though.
True, yeah. My needs for a phone I feel seem to be fairly old fashioned for the modern phone industry. Unfortunately the Xcover is the only series of phone that meets (most of) my needs in a phone that I have found.
I totally wish I could install an actual Linux based (I don’t consider android Linux) distro on my current phone and also be able to install something like Waydroid with some sort of sandbox for it. Though I’m pretty sure my budget Samsung would fry itself if I tried doing that considering I can’t even unlock the bootloader without it freezing up indefinitely.
There’s not really a whole lot of options unless you like Manjaro mobile, Fedora mobile, Arch mobile, or Ubuntu Touch that I’m aware of.
Would love to try them if my phone, which was bought outright from Samsung themselves, allowed me to unlock the bootloader to allow me to try it. Might, if possible, try at least one of them on an old S10, if I can get the bootloader unlocked.
Yeah it’s the DRM shit. You own a music CD? You can listen it to car, computer, home, friend’s house whatever. You own digital music, movies, games, apps on platforms, well good luck.
I deleted my Google account some weeks ago. I gonna miss mini Metro and KGWT when i transition to LinageOS. Overall it went smooth, but some apps don’t work (chatGPT for example, Deepseek is more smart offers apk without play store). My bank app is working though.
But i am not sure what happens with safety. Currently the phone uses phone protect and Knox from Samsung. But in LineageOS i must find out how the safety works.
As a side note, you can actually buy music online and it’s DRM free (Qobuz, HDTracks, 7 Digital, Bandcamp).
That’s sounds interesting. I hope the movies move to that direction one day.
Use Accrescent / Aurora?
I am. But you need having play store enabled and connected to an account to use chatgtp or deepseek from aurora. Basically they were popping up the play store to connect to a google account, so i deleted them. Some apps are tied strongly to google services that they check the play store connection.
I don’t know if MicroG fixes that but i need to root my phone or some other stuff that i won’t gonna do right now. In 3 months the phone is losing the warranty and i gonna just move to LineageOS.
Why do u have your purchases on Google?
Losing the ability to use my FELiCA chip is a big one for me. We use it for all kinds of things here in Japan, the most annoying of which being all kinds of things for verifying our identity by reading our My Number (and other) cards. It would also add up to an hour to any of my commutes to account for having to wait to buy tickets, etc.
