Time by time I revisit the DNS requests my GrapheneOS makes. Today I found out the following new activities:

  • I have frequent connection requests to firebaselogging.googleapis.com and sometimes to firebaseinstallations.googleapis.com. After changing my apps network permissions and testing where is this coming from, for me it clearly seems that all of these are made by all my Proton apps. If I revoke any of my Proton app (Mail, Drive, Calendars, VPN) network permission, the requests stops. If I re-enable any, it starts again. ProtonVPN downloaded from F-Droid, the rest is from Aurora Store, all has the same behaviour regardless of this fact.
  • All of the Proton apps are connecting to reports.proton.me regardless I opted out any crash report and telemetry (in every app one by one).

Is there anyone having the same experience as me? What on earth is happening?

    bootloader

    My understanding is that Proton uses google play services for notifications. Do you have google play services installed on your phone? Perhaps its just notifications, but I'm stabbing in the dark here

        10 days later

        treenutz68 Thanks for your comment! I definitely don't, no notifications enabled and no Google Play services installed. So this is out, still not sure what is causing this.

          fid02 I did a few days ago, I'll update this thread if there is any updates.

          Meanwhile, is there anyone has the same experience? Or it is just me?

            fbi all of my Proton apps have the same behavior. Calendar, Mail, Drive, VPN. After the first eye twitching this is my conclusion too. I cannot imagine than any of the Proton apps should have this behavior on purpose.

            I wrote Proton with this now a week ago, and still didn't get any reply back. Probably my mail just lost somewhere, but still, this whole story makes me feel very uneasy.

                bootloader Time by time I revisit the DNS requests my GrapheneOS makes

                Just curious - what method do you use to review DNS requests for your device?

                    Which Data is being PING-ed in and out ? Proton should disclose the technical details of what exactly points to Firebase/Googleapis. You are surely aware ProtonMail is not fully encrypted ( the content is scrambled but some metadata is in plain text ) , useful to have a response.

                      How did you contact Proton? I reported a differenr issue in the ProtonMail app "report an issue" option and they got back to me within a couple of days.

                        fbi

                        zzz I'm not sure how to monitor that as I simply use NextDNS on my firewall to filtering connection attempts.

                        jroddev Via Mail, but great idea, never tried that! Thanks for the idea.

                              Hello,
                              I'm not using any Proton stuff so I'm not checking the apps on my phone. Did you check the Exodus reports of those apps? https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org

                              To me, Firebase and everything else related, is to be considered as tracking. Period. I'd not use such apps personally, without blocking those connections. Proton using Google stuff is a privacy contradiction, imo.

                              Edit:
                              If you want to check (and block) the connections on your phone, you may want to try the app "RethinkDNS".

                                TRInvictus Hello, thank you for the app suggestion! I'll definitely check that out.

                                Interesting, Exodus says there is only one tracker in the app, but that is Sentry, not Firebase. Anyway, I completely agree with you. So far I was a heavy Proton user, but now I'm thinking of divorce.

                                  I'm not sure that the presence of certain libraries in an app necessarily means that their functionality is activated during one's usage of the app. Proton has optional telemetry and crash reporting, and if one does not trust that disabling those toggles does not actually disable the telemetry / crash reporting, I think one should look for alternative apps. I personally don't think Proton disrespects that, and the only way forward that I see in this case is to get a clarification from Proton Support.

                                  Proton's ticketing system has been known to mistakenly auto-mark submitted tickets as spam, sometimes when the customer sends a follow-up email to the original ticket after a brief amount of time. That means that a support agent will not respond in due course. I recommend filing a new ticket, with reference to the old ticket, in the case of no response.

                                  The GrapheneOS account has raised some points about the issues with the results displayed by Exodus Privacy, which I think is of relevance here: https://x.com/GrapheneOS/status/1793051200255848553

                                    UPDATE: Proton staff just reached me back. They were kindly apologized for the delay, but their answer was in short:
                                    this is indeed the expected endpoints in the Android app, and this two google api connection is used for Android push notification.

                                    As in the Proton app alternative routing, push services, notifications, crash reports, telemetry are completely disabled (and also: there is no Google Service on my phone), I asked them more questions if there is a way to opt out/stop these connections. I'll share an update here once there is a reply.

                                      fid02 Thank you for the infos! Meanwhile they answered (see my before comment), but it's good to know.

                                      I agree. My worries here are more about the Proton apps constant connections to Google API, what at the moment looks like it is default, and not sure if there is a way to opt out apart from blocking. Let's see what Proton answers again, but if there is no way to stop these connection, then indeed as you said, I should move on. Sadly, as I really liked Proton, but if their apps are saying hello to Google API every ten minutes and I can't opt out, that is an absolute break up reason for me.

                                          To compare notes:

                                          Inspired by this thread, I used RethinkDNS to monitor traffic for the last 2 days.

                                          Active Proton apps include:
                                          VPN (not using it for internet at the moment though because RethinkDNS takes up that slot)
                                          Mail
                                          Calendar
                                          Drive

                                          I never use push notifications for these apps. Originally, it was because if my belief that it contributes subtle yet harmful impacts on a person's behavior and inner life. Better to check manually, of one's own initiative.
                                          As of recently, I've added a new reason - push notifications are rarely implemented without using Google or Apple's infrastructure. Signal is ok, but very few others are (for me)

                                          Even without push notifications, I am indeed seeing roughly 1x call per day to firebaselogging.googleapis.com, possibly from the proton apps, possibly from the 10x other apps in that profile.

                                          I might do some more testing to isolate the proton apps only and report an update here.

                                          I did find one workaround. It might not be for everybody, but here goes:

                                          -

                                          Use this version of RethinkDNS by Celzero (threat model allowing, of course)
                                          https://github.com/celzero/rethink-app

                                          Then generate a Wireguard config file from Proton, instructions here:
                                          https://protonvpn.com/support/wireguard-configurations/

                                          Upload that config file into Celzero's Rethink app.

                                          Block DNS queries to anything that looks like google, while still enjoying (some) benefits of ProtonVPN.

                                          The proton apps continue to work great this way.

                                          -

                                          Hope this helps!

                                            zzz can I derail the thread slightly and ask you about Rethink? I have recently heard about it. Is it as good as it looks from a first glance?

                                            • zzz replied to this.