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Privacy Friendly Apps – improved privacy protection on the smartphone

• ranger_danger 4y ago
  privacy friendly but must use github ??
  • manveru 4y ago
    All their apps are available on F-Droid, unless you want to build them yourself: https://search.f-droid.org/?q=secuso&lang=en https://search.f-droid.org/?q=secuso&lang=en
  • mdp2021 4y ago
    What privacy issue do you see/know involved with GitHub?
    • CursedUrn 4y ago
      Microsoft aren't exactly known for privacy, given how much data they collect continuously from Windows users (e.g. details on every application you launch, hard-drive wide program sweeps, etc). Also with Github specifically they used everyone's code to fuel their machine learning product without asking permission.
      • mdp2021 4y ago
        That GitHub may be related to non privacy-friendly actors does not make software hosted on GitHub lose any privacy-friendly quality. Was it meant to be a "don't deal with those guys" stance? Practically, that would further force us as nomads.
• adalu 4y ago
  https://secuso.aifb.kit.edu/english/Pedometer.php https://secuso.aifb.kit.edu/english/Pedometer.php I have a Samsung phone, s10+. I've not tried this app yet, but I will. However all apps I've tried so far got my steps wrong. I imagine because it's something that isn't documented by Samsung and they know exactly which values to use to calculate the steps and distance and speed. So essentially you buy a product with the right sensors but there is no documentation for you on how to use those sensors to have near accurate conversion results if you're going to write software that uses those sensors. If you know better, please let us know.
  • CharlesW 4y ago
    > However all apps I've tried so far got my steps wrong. FWIW, every pedometer (digital or not) ever created is "wrong" about the number of steps you take per day. What they do offer is a device- or app-relative measurement of roughly how many steps you take. https://www.medicinenet.com/pedometers/article.htm https://www.medicinenet.com/pedometers/article.htm "Accurate pedometers are those with step-count errors less than 10%, high or low. […] The Colorado on the Move, Sportline 330 and 345, and Yamax Skeletone EM-180 were within acceptable high or low error limits of 10%. The Accusplit and Freestyle underestimated steps by 20% and 25%, respectively, and the Walk4Life, Omron, and Oregon Scientific overestimated steps by 20%, 30%, and 45%, respectively."
    • alephxyz 4y ago
      These apps are also usually just a wrapper around the Android step counting API, so it's unlikely that you'll get better results with different apps. https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/sensors/sensors_motion https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/sensors/sensors_m...
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• weberer 4y ago
  Only Android is supported.
  • hiccuphippo 4y ago
    I thought iOS didn't allow open source apps? How can you compile/install them?
    • Jcowell 4y ago
      iOS allows open source. You just have to prove you own the application is full.
    • als0 4y ago
      You compile and install them using Xcode.
      • jeroenhd 4y ago
        Doesn't that require repeated resigning/reinstalling to keep the apps installed? I've heard some iOS users complain about the stupid workarounds they need to do to install apps from unofficial sources and I'm pretty sure there's more to it than just installing the app from your computer.
        • als0 4y ago
          If you have a paid developer account you have to reinstall every year. If you’re using a free account I think you have to do it every week. Not great, but also not harder than connecting your phone and pressing the Run button in Xcode.
• nonrandomstring 4y ago
  It seems sad that in 2022 it still needs explaining what privacy is and why its a good thing. I don't wish to knock this great project, but I'm growing weary of reading what seem to be almost obligatory structures; 1) Initial platitude about how smartphones are ubiquitous, inevitable, inescapable centres of existence without which humans would die within seconds. 2) Tragic self-mocking account of how we're all idiots without self-control who can't work these things, but remain utterly dependent on technology we have no clue about. 3) Confusing, terrifying litany of all the evil-doers, hackers, cybercriminals, corporations, agencies, and other bad guys f-king us over, while trying not to sound paranoid and hopeless. 4) Optional apologetics justifying unconscionable shitshow of (3) on the basis of convenience and getting stuff for free. 5) (Point at which most normies stop reading) Solution involving jaibreaking, firmware updates, running a private VPS server, building your own DNS network and soldering in some new chips using dangerous solvents, X-Rays and a x100 bench microscope. 6) Shrugging summary about how this "probably isn't for everyone".
  • imiric 4y ago
    > It seems sad that in 2022 it still needs explaining what privacy is and why its a good thing. Because for most people privacy on the internet isn't important. They either don't care it's being abused ("I've got nothing to hide"), or are OK with paying the price of giving it away in exchange for the services they get, and think are entitled to, for free. This has many reasons, and a major one IMO is that we didn't build privacy-focused tools from the beginning. The web was built with a consumerism model where the user is only meant to browse it. When corporations grew larger based on a very lucrative market and adtech was born, there was no going back. Now, privacy-focused individuals are desperately trying to educate people and reverse the trend, governments are attempting to catch up and fight it, but that train's not stopping anytime soon. The sad part is that majority of people won't even be interested in this article, let alone use the tools it suggests. As for the tools themselves, as someone who's been using a de-Googled phone for years now, I'd never use any of these. It's great that they're FOSS and request no permissions, but the fact they're built by the same team and market being "privacy-friendly" as their main selling point just feels off to me. There are similar alternatives already on F-Droid and I'd rather use apps from different developers, in case someone goes rogue I don't lose all my eggs, so to speak.
• kkfx 4y ago
  A curious question: why caring about app privacy when the ecosystem they live in is designed to milk data? We do want only big&powerful being able to eavesdrop privacy but not countless of smaller actors? It might sound sterile polemics but it's not, I'm really curious how techies can talk about privacy on Android, iOS etc. My sole opinion there is just avoid using them.
  • Bilal_io 4y ago
    > We do want only big&powerful being able to eavesdrop privacy but not countless of smaller actors? We don't. And that's why there are efforts to create operating systems that are do not track users. Unfortunately those efforts are not well funded. Again, we don't want big companies to track us and collect our data, but your questions sounds more like "since big companies collect our data, why should we put an effort to prevent everyone else from doing it?" I apologize if I am misreading what you're saying, but we have to do this one thing since the alternative is available, and once an alternative OS is here, we can switch to it as well.
    • kkfx 4y ago
      No need to apologize :-) but you miss a real-world part: we do have some open-platform, even if NOT open hardware desktops, we do not have anything easy to buy at a reasonable price for mobile. I own a Pine64 phone, it's nice to play as it was the old OpenMoko, but it's not much usable as a daily driver suggestible to generic users, including those who can use GNU/Linux desktop normally as simple users. That's the biggest issue and it's a similar systemic issue described above: we can't have really Free software if it need non-free systems to run, so we can't have free OSes if they demand non-free hw + fw crap. Since desktops so far are at least manageable I generally suggest to run to save them, pushing desktop computing again and simply say mobile world so far is just a prison. This way perhaps since actually we need desktops to work in 99% of the cases we would been able to have them in the future, as "free" as today...
  • wintermutestwin 4y ago
    >privacy on Android, iOS etc I was looking for your comment, but this line equating the two highlights a constant ambiguity in HN comments re: the threat model. Cut and paste from another of my comments on the subject: If the subject threat model here is (1) defending against companies stealing and selling my data then Google should be called out. If the (2) state level agencies spying on you through these companies then you can add Apple to the call out. I see this happen often and I think every conversation should be clearly grounded in the threat model that is being addressed.
• als0 4y ago
  Why is this university spending money to make basic apps instead of working on research?
  • indymike 4y ago
    Doing good in society is the purpose of a university, and is usually the motive for research to begin with.
  • rollcat 4y ago
    Apps that are simple enough to be taken apart and studied, while complete enough to be practical tools in day-to-day tasks? Obviously you can just use them as they are (many people value minimalism), but there's also huge educational value for aspiring developers, or as testbeds for other experiments (can you be productive with only basic tools, how does it impact your social life, etc). I think there's a huge gap between what e.g. suckless.org produces, and what's usable by ordinary people, and it would be of tremendous value to society if we could push back on unnecessary software complexity.
  • ranger_danger 4y ago
    why are chefs baking bread? there's buildings to construct.
• Aachen 4y ago
  Within f-droid, though they're also on google store I assume, I can recommend Simple Mobile Tools. Just one Slovakian dev but the apps can replace various stock and non-stock apps and work fantastic. The names are a bit generic though, like Simple Gallery or Simple File Manager. They're powerful enough for me, and simple enough that I install them for my mom and grandma (grandpa can't read, dad chose the dark side), and my brother apparently also discovered them independently. Few months ago I figured I should take stock of how many of these apps we use together and did a donation for us collectively. One benefit for family members is that now they don't have to get used to a new interface if they get a new phone, so they're less locked into one brand. Android UI always changes and just gets worse imo, and unfortunately you need the stock camera for good quality pictures, but at least things like their gallery always looks the same.
  • severine 4y ago
    Yeah they're on the Google Play Store too: https://simplemobiletools.com/ https://simplemobiletools.com/ https://github.com/SimpleMobileTools https://github.com/SimpleMobileTools https://simplemobiletools.com/donate https://simplemobiletools.com/donate I use half of them and agree completely on the peace of mind they bring when changing phones or onboarding other people.
• motohagiography 4y ago
  Android is a write off from a privacy perspective, it's already an inferior good. The only viable near term privacy product I could see for it would be a virtual machine platform for phones that lets you run multiple OS instances with identities on the bare metal. I think there is still opportunity to create premium privacy experiences on existing platforms and apps, but only because those platforms are established and privacy becomes an extra power, and I don't think there is as much growth in a replacement platform for "privacy centric twitter/FB/goog." One startup idea I briefly pursued some years ago was developing privacy focused work-alikes for common utility apps, and what I sensed from it was after "flashlight," "calendar" and "QR code reader" apps are their own contained brand experiences. There is no messenger workalike, each game is itself the experience, and playing a clone is less satisfying, and there's a quality to apps that is as intrinsic and unique as a story that you can't just replicate. The business model was to charge for privacy focused work-alikes of popular free utility apps as an effective luxury privacy brand for apps, but even this misunderstood luxury products (an area I had some experience with, in addition to security and privacy). Luxury goods represent stories of aspiration and belonging, where privacy is a reactionary value that needs a foundation of something valuable beneath or behind it to protect. It's a quality and a feature, but to succeed, it can't be the reason. To be valuable, privacy needs to socially elevate the user, similar to how the whole apple brand experience does, and distinct from the way someone using Tor/Tails all the time would relate to the world. Privacy as a concept has acquired the vibe of an inferior good, something you want when you don't have power, and so it's not something used for elite signalling the way exclusivity was just 20 years ago. In this sense, privacy must be attractive, which is a real magic sauce. To do that, what people mean when they say something is cool or sexy is that it is powerful. Together, it means that for a privacy centric tech to succeed, it must first be powerful. Blockchains and cryptocurrencies were technically powerful, but their bar to entry meant they were adopted by unpowerful people first, and are still percieved as an economic "inferior good." Power over things is just leverage, where desirable power is necessarily status over other people. There's a lot of opportunity to refine this still.
• pyaamb 4y ago
  is there a smartphone that runs a fully functional emulated/virtualized android? feels like that would be a good starting feature for a privacy friendly phone
• butz 4y ago
  Good initiative, but might be better idea to provide less apps with similar functionality and concentrate on one that actually works. I'm still searching for a decent privacy respecting (no internet, no sync, no google account required) app for simple reminders and notes, but neither of Secuso apps worked, mainly reminders in "To-Do-List" were not working at all. If anyone has made a simple reminder/note app, similar to ones you'd find on smartphone pre-installed - please share. No idea how many apps I already tested, and each one has some annoying issues. I just need a simple Google Keep clone without sync, location features.
  • alephxyz 4y ago
    If your version of Android supports it, consider installing any app from the Play Store and disabling its internet access. I did that for Google keyboard since it's the only way to get proper swipe-typing.
    • butz 4y ago
      Good call, but in some rare cases, like Google Keep, it won't work without internet connection.
  • JeremyNT 4y ago
    I've been using their QR scanner and had no idea it was part of a brisket initiative. I think by having apps for so many use cases they may have better luck picking up enough users. I for one will be checking out the rest of their work based on that experience with the barcode scanner. There's also something to be said for many small programs that do one thing well. See also the "Simple" suite of apps, which seem to have a similar philosophy.
• davidkuennen 4y ago
  I have a privacy friendly investment portfolio app with minimal permissions and without ads or third party tracking. But It's not open source so I guess not eligible.