4 ms·

Android is the biggest example of how companies practice bait and switch under the banner of "open source". I's rather have fully proprietary software that resp

Android is the biggest example of how companies practice bait and switch under the banner of "open source". I's rather have fully proprietary software that respects my privacy than open source software that opens up my private data.

kelnos 8y ago
My guess here is that most of the tracking bits are implemented through the Google Play Services app/service, which is fully closed source. This isn't an open vs. closed thing... unless someone would want to make the point that this sort of tracking would be easier to find and verify if the software doing it actually was open source.
- jcfrei 8y ago
  That's true as far as I know as well. I started removing permissions from the play service applications in Android. I've run into two issues afterwards: Some apps complain (but continue to work) and you can't install new apps from the play store (the store stops working without any warning or error). However I wonder how effective this is - does anybody have any insights to share?
gcb0 8y ago
chrome/ium is even worse. google employees revert community features (e.g. hiding/limiting referrer header, essential for adwords revenue) silently with big unrelated commits (the referrer one at least 3 times)
- dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
  Can I read a bit more about this? In any case, you can still use the --no-referrers option, don't you?
  - gcb0 8y ago
    no, reverted and that setting is no more. for a very long time by the way.
    - cpeterso 8y ago
      Looks like there is still some Chromium code to support no-referrers: https://cs.chromium.org/chromium/src/services/network/loader_util.cc?l=101-108 https://cs.chromium.org/chromium/src/services/network/loader...
ehsankia 8y ago
I don't understand what the problem is. You can turn off location tracking in Google Maps. You can see all the data it has collected in your activity page, and you can delete all of it too. Sure, the fact that it's opt-out instead of opt-in is dodgy, but to be fair, the majority of the features we use everyday such as traffic estimation wouldn't exist without this data.

kelnos 8y ago

My guess here is that most of the tracking bits are implemented through the Google Play Services app/service, which is fully closed source. This isn't an open vs. closed thing... unless someone would want to make the point that this sort of tracking would be easier to find and verify if the software doing it actually was open source.

jcfrei 8y ago
That's true as far as I know as well. I started removing permissions from the play service applications in Android. I've run into two issues afterwards: Some apps complain (but continue to work) and you can't install new apps from the play store (the store stops working without any warning or error). However I wonder how effective this is - does anybody have any insights to share?

gcb0 8y ago

chrome/ium is even worse. google employees revert community features (e.g. hiding/limiting referrer header, essential for adwords revenue) silently with big unrelated commits (the referrer one at least 3 times)

dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
Can I read a bit more about this? In any case, you can still use the --no-referrers option, don't you?
- gcb0 8y ago
  no, reverted and that setting is no more. for a very long time by the way.
  - cpeterso 8y ago
    Looks like there is still some Chromium code to support no-referrers: https://cs.chromium.org/chromium/src/services/network/loader_util.cc?l=101-108 https://cs.chromium.org/chromium/src/services/network/loader...

ehsankia 8y ago

I don't understand what the problem is. You can turn off location tracking in Google Maps. You can see all the data it has collected in your activity page, and you can delete all of it too. Sure, the fact that it's opt-out instead of opt-in is dodgy, but to be fair, the majority of the features we use everyday such as traffic estimation wouldn't exist without this data.