Gboard using play services as a 3rd party to send telemetry to google

n8726258

I wonder if downloading gboard and blocking all of the internet access is good enough and the play services are sandboxed, or do i just not use it at all and seek other alternatives?

fid03

n8726258 To my knowledge no one has yet shown evidence – such as by sniffing network traffic and looking at what data Gboard sends over the internet – that Gboard sends typing data or telemetry when telemetry is disabled in the Gboard settings.

leafnose

n8726258
Google Play services being sandboxed (in the same profile) is not relevant here, since IPC is not affected by that.
Also, what may be true today may become untrue as fast as an update is installed, be it because of Google’s intentions or because of an unfortunate bug.

Byku

The only article I know of that's presenting any actual research on the subject matter used to be here:
https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/gboard_kamil.pdf

Maybe someone knows a mirror?

EDIT: Here is one left:
https://www.scribd.com/document/917997055/Gboard-Kamil

There is communication with play services but can be reduced with the privacy settings inside the app. Made me ditch it when I was still relying on play services for notifications.

Also the article is from 2022. Thing might have changed for the better or for the worse.

GrapheneVista

Just don't use it. :)