Sandpoxed Google Play

d9780

Is there any problem with sandboxes Google play running in my main profile if I'm always logged out and only use a burner gmail account to login to the pkaystore to download and use privacy apps like protonmail, Bitwarden and IVPN?

treequell

There isn't a problem exactly, it's just good to understand what doing so means.

The three Google Play Services apps are sandboxed like any other apps on GrapheneOS. They'll require network permissions and Google Play Services will need unrestricted battery usage for push notifications, e.g. for Protonmail. They don't need any other permissions.

To understand what installing these apps mean, you could read this to see what each app in a profile can see. That way you know what information Google will be able to see.
https://hub.libranet.de/wiki/and-priv-sec/wiki/what-can-apps-see

You could always use Aurora Store or Github to update those apps. As long as you have a way to keep your apps up-to-date. Then you wouldn't need to sign into Google Play Store.

Darce

Just so I understand, google only gets data if your signed in?

unwat

Darce

We don't know since Google apps are closed source apps, so I wouldn't think of it as a "what can they access" question and more of a "what identifying info do you give them" question. Obviously, if you log in, they have an ID they can use to track you across different devices and services. Without logging in, they can try to guess. If you don't use a VPN or have location on with location permissions enabled, then it becomes easier for them to figure out who you are.

There's no reason they can't pull info from a device that's not logged in.

Darce

unwat
Ok thats reasonable enough. I know it not practical to be a true ghost, I'll settle for grey rock. Coming from an Iphone, the data stream is going to be significantly reduced. Thats all anybody can hope for I guess. I have no plans of signing in to the play store. I just need mysudo to run properly. Hopefully it helps if I donwload apps from f-droid and Aurora instead of the GPS directly. The only reason I'm wanting mysudo is I like the idea of the virtual credit cards and it offers voip and vc's in one subscription.