[deleted] Can Google Keyboard collect data and spy even with the network permission revoked? All other permissions have also been revoked.
Gboard has an in-app option to disable data collection, in the Privacy menu within the app. Even though Google is known for their data collection and ad profiling, I very much doubt that the app doesn't respect the "Share usage statistics" option. That is backed up by the 2022 study that Eirikr70 linked. If you look at chapter 6.4 in the study, it says:
Opting out of this
setting reduced the LATIN_IME logs only to contain a single log entry, which consisted of a
timestamp, the keyboard event "IMS_INPUT_VIEW_STARTED", the Gboard version and
keyboard layout, as well as a couple of other fields which were deemed insignificant.
That constitutes data collection, but arguably not of any significant value.
In chapter 6.5, the study outlines the data that is being collected when the "Share usage statistics" setting is enabled. That is an interesting read, but is irrelevant for users who opt out of usage sharing.
On a more general comment to the study in question: The paper takes a clear idealistic stance by questioning why keyboard apps in general wants network access by default, questioning the optional permissions that Gboard requests, and questioning why the usage sharing option is opt-out rather than opt-in. Those are perfectly fine points to raise, and in my opinion are expected to be included in a study that relates to software privacy. However, for a research paper I would have expected those points to be raised in a separate discussion section, and not mixed in with a findings chapter.
I personally use Gboard because it has great swiping and word suggestion features for both English and Norwegian, and because I trust that it respects its privacy settings. That first point might sound silly to some people, but it greatly reduces the time I spend on writing with my phone, and for example allows me to type posts in this forum much faster than when I'm using other keyboard apps without this functionality. I largely agree with the points the author of the study makes, and in principle I believe that data collection in software ought to be opt-in by default. But until an open source and (by default) non-data-collecting keyboard app that can compete with Gboard comes along, I will be happily using Google's app.