Say I have Google Camera installed with network permissions revoked. Say I also install Play Services which does have network access. Would Google Camera be able to share data about my pictures to Play Services which would then phone home to Google?
This is why I don’t like Graphene os. Its encourages using proprietary apps that over Foss. With a Foss camera app from F-droid you don’t need play services and the app with do exactly what its meant to do, nothing more.
I’d like to see some evidence that F-Droid is less secure (or privacy respecting) than using the big Gs playstore or services, which many, if not most, playstore apps depend on to function.
I mean this sincerely and respectfully. I’d love to look onto it.
Because in my current opinion and approach, if you vet your apps and practice good digital hygiene, then FOSS>GOOGL/Alphabet for nearly everything from a privacy and security perspective.
Edit: if I misunderstood and you were saying don’t use G playstore or Aurora AND don’t use F-Droid, then may I ask where are you getting your apps, other than directly from the devs page or github and so on?
I personally don’t use anything of google, browsing and trying apps from fdroid, and have obtainium for the ones I usually use
But Graphene’s approach is all about security, and privacy only after it So they recommend the most secure options first, and don’t recommend minor options So, their current opinion on fdroid that it’s less secure than googlag’s store, so a more secure option would be googlag, or that second store that has 3 apps in it
But it’s for “marketplace” apps, so obtainium not in the scope, but kinda should be (we just need to rethink where we get our apps from)
Also to correct you, Google Camera does not need any Play Services installed. The reason I brought up Play Services is because I would need it to be able to get RSC working on Google Messages which I eventually plan on doing once RSC support is added to iOS.
Tf are you on about? I AM looking for a foss camera option. But it is practically non existent. Besides 2, Open Camera and Libre Camera, both of which have a UI from 2012 and Libre Camera lacks a ton of features.
And despite that, GrapheneOS comes with its own open source camera, but there is a reason nobody uses it, it has no features just like the other very limited open source camera apps (Open Camera excluded)
I don’t know if Google Camera would share the information with Sandboxed Google Play. However, something to be careful of, is if you have two apps by the same developer (Google in this case), and you have network permissions for only one of them. The developer could share those permissions with their other app. TheHatedOne did a podcast episode on this. He checked with a GrapheneOS developer beforehand, and found, that this is possible.
Yea I have heard of that too. Unfortunately I don’t know what other Camera app I would use. Open Camera has a good amount of features but I can’t stand the UI, and the GrapheneOS camera is very bare bones. I have tried some other proprietary camera apps but none of them seem to be as good as Gcam and for obvious reasons.
Ultimately, it depends on if it is an issue in terms of your threat model. I have noproblems with people using some proprietary tools. Sometimes you do need things to just work, unfortunately.
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