Any ETA/roadmap for the Contacts and App communication isolation?

eatinggrumble84

As referenced by this tweet:
https://twitter.com/GrapheneOS/status/1545756149324173312?s=20&t=wRD52h00jGfknvjHn96nKw

My interpretation of the app communications is the IPC, correct? Being able to limit this would greatly reduce the need for work/secondary user profiles. Is there active work on this or still just on the roadmap?

unwat

Why? Just because we're worried about Google using this to collect data doesn't mean they need to break functionality for other apps.

Also, the app sandbox is sufficient for most use cases. The idea is IPC communication is mutual. Apps communicating via IPC want to talk to each other. Use separate profiles if you need the same app but for different uses. Like work / personal / spy / internet habit I'm hiding from my husband/wife profiles. Think of profiles more as different people/uses and less as another barrier for sandboxing apps. The sandbox works fine in a single profile.

tl;dr, don't worry about IPC.

Ponty

unwat
"The idea is IPC communication is mutual. Apps communicating via IPC want to talk to each other."
It may be mutual between the apps, but that doesn't mean that I as a user approve of it. It should be possible for a user to allow which apps can communicate with which other apps. It should be a user choice rather than a mutual choice between app houses.

AtriumCompound

The main concern I have and I've seen in other posts is that apps with non-overlapping permissions, e.g. one has media / location / something sensitive access but internet denied and the other (like GPS) has network but no other permission could, with mutual consent, communicate to send sensitive data off the device. Based on responses from GOS developers, it doesn't seem like this is something any of the google apps actually do, but it's not out of the question.

unwat

Agreed. My only thing is that IPC is an integral part of Android, so it's hard for GrapheneOS devs to lock it down without breaking basic Android app functionality.

I guess the biggest thing to say is GrapheneOS does a great job of increasing privacy and security, but it can't do so 100%. The only way to achieve 100% privacy and security is to never use your phone.

Stock Android will spy on you for sure. GrapheneOS will block 90% of the spying (I'm making up numbers as an example). You're much safer with GOS, but tech can only protect users as much as the tech allows.

As long as you're using a computer or a phone, there's no such thing as 100% protection. You could have a profile without Google Play stuff installed, but an app can have Google libraries embedded in it. That app will send data to Google.

IPC is likely to be the least of your worries. IPC requires mutually permissible communication. In practice, that means only Google apps will talk to Google apps. If you need Google Play Services installed, just avoid Google apps. If you can't avoid Google apps, don't give them permission to do anything.

Personally, I have many Google apps installed on my personal secondary profile. Google apps have access to the internet. That's it. No files, no photos, no media, no SMS, no physical activity...

Lock down all apps so they only have access to what they need. Never give apps access to your data. Storage Scopes is one of the best features of GrapheneOS. If a Google app has nothing to access, they have nothing to share via IPC.

eatinggrumble84

That's rather well put. My use case is currently using Gboard without network permissions in my main profile for the offline voice typing and I have Play services isolated in a work profile. But I'm likely to switch to Google Messages for SMS, which unfortunately seems to require Play services, so ideally I would like to be able to prevent Gboard from transmitting data through Play services.