why can apps know if i am on cell or wifi?

notahuman

Simplex shows me the type of connection used

Is this protectable? I really like apps to get as little data as needed to run even though i trust simplexchat

other8026

notahuman I could be wrong, but I don't think blocking apps from accessing that information is planned in any way.

Honest question, but why block apps from accessing that information? Right now, I can't think of any way a malicious app can use that information to gather more information about someone. I think it's helpful for apps to know so they can change their behavior accordingly. Like, for example, auto play videos when on wifi, but not when connected to a mobile network.

wuseman

other8026
The way I see it, Android apps can already access far too much info even if they have zero permissions. I find it quite odd that apps can see every other installed app, without you even getting a choice to allow that or not.

I imagine notahuman views this in the same way.

de0u

wuseman I find it quite odd that apps can see every other installed app, without you even getting a choice to allow that or not.

Would it be odd for Proton Mail to offer to add a calendar event to Proton Calendar if Proton Calendar is installed?

Android is designed for apps to communicate to provide a better user experience. Keyboard apps and the clipboard involve apps sharing data.

For sure desktop operating systems make it easy for apps to detect each other and communicate (e.g., D-Bus).

GrapheneOS provides some support for users who wish to hide some apps from others (e.g., more profiles). Over time maybe more mechanisms will be provided. Meanwhile, developer resources have used to find and close important ways that devices were being actually exploited, such as USB port control and reboot memory wiping.

other8026

wuseman I'm not sure it's fair to compare access to list installed apps and access to determine whether the device is connected to wifi or a mobile network.

The official project account has mentioned an upcoming app communication scopes feature multiple times here on the forum and on official social media accounts. According to a developer, this feature will include blocking apps from listing other installed apps, so clearly the project agrees that implementing a way to block this kind of access is worth their time and effort. Here are two issues in the issue tracker that might be of interest: app communication scopes and blocking apps from listing other user installed apps.

notahuman

wuseman Yes, this is it.

Android is designed to have people tracked. It makea Google lots of money.

I would like to be able to not be tracked and have Apps go "This is notahuman's phone, she's connected to cell towers at these times, these are the unique combination of Apps she uses that no one else uses, she mostly connects to WiFi during these hours and cell phone towers during these hours."

It's another layer of tracking. I mostly get around that by using open source software and denying network to what is not in use.

However, if even 1 of these Apps is actually a honeypot, they could collect that info for seemingly legitimate purposes and send it back to the mothership. It would surprise me if among Session, SimpleXChat, Telegram, and the various VPNS that NONE of them are honeypots. Privacy aware users are more likely to be targeted by a honeypot, not less. Many Apps are setup to always run in the background. Even if the code is is open, I'm sure someone could slip something in there and say it's just so the App can function. I don't trust my ability to analyze code to know what is a honeypot and what's not. If I fed all the code to a large language model, it could probably identify threats.

GrapheneOS already has the media ID consistent across profiles, but I really don't want Apps to determine what sort of network I'm on. It's a lot of behavioral data unless I start only connecting via MiFi.

I don't like being tracked, I do think even open source Apps can be hostile. I understand GrapheneOS doesn't virtualize and that's fine, but I wish I could at least protect Apps from having access to things like that.