DeGoogle Yourself

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A community for those that would like to get away from Google.

Here you may post anything related to DeGoogling, why we should do it or good software alternatives!

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Who owns your shiny new Pixel 9 phone? You can’t say no to Google’s surveillance (cybernews.com)

submitted 1 month ago by gytrash@feddit.uk to c/degoogle@lemmy.ml

32 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Google's latest flagship smartphone raises concerns about user privacy and security. It frequently transmits private user data to the tech giant before any app is installed. Moreover, the Cybernews research team has discovered that it potentially has remote management capabilities without user awareness or approval.

Cybernews researchers analyzed the new Pixel 9 Pro XL smartphone’s web traffic, focusing on what a new smartphone sends to Google.

“Every 15 minutes, Google Pixel 9 Pro XL sends a data packet to Google. The device shares location, email address, phone number, network status, and other telemetry. Even more concerning, the phone periodically attempts to download and run new code, potentially opening up security risks,” said Aras Nazarovas, a security researcher at Cybernews...

... “The amount of data transmitted and the potential for remote management casts doubt on who truly owns the device. Users may have paid for it, but the deep integration of surveillance systems in the ecosystem may leave users vulnerable to privacy violations,” Nazarovas said...

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[–] ExtremeDullard@lemmy.sdf.org 31 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (4 children)

Who truly owns the device is a question that has been answered ever since Android came into being.

Ask yourself: do you have root access to YOUR phone? No you don't: Google does.

It's the so-called "Android security model", which posits that the users are too dumb to take care of themselves, so Google unilaterally decides to administer their phone on their behalf without asking permission.

Which of course has nothing to do with saving the users from their own supposed stupidity and everything to do with controlling other people's private property to exfiltrate and monetize their data.

How this is even legal has been beyond me for 15 years.

[–] ProgrammingSocks@pawb.social 24 points 1 month ago

Weirdly, Pixels are actually the best Android phones for installing custom ROMs, at least out of the major manufacturers. So for me, there isn't another choice, because I can finance a Pixel, and I can't finance a Fairphone or something.

GrapheneOS is really the furthest away from Google you can get on an Android phone and it's mainly developed for Pixel.

[–] circuscritic@lemmy.ca 23 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

Please read the many write-ups by developers of well regarded privacy and security ROMs, such as grapheneOS and divestOS.

Who detail in great length why root access is a bad idea, and why many apps that require root access, are just poorly developed security nightmares.

That said, I agree that it should be an option, or at least a standardized means of enabling it. As well as all bootloaders should be unlockable. But phones are more personal devices than the PC ever was, and there are good reasons NOT to push for the proliferation of standardized root access.

[–] selokichtli@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 month ago

Yes. It is the principle, everyone should be informed of the security risks, but not stripped of the root privileges they keep for themselves.

[–] Psyhackological@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I have GrapheneOS and I know having root is not ideal and I was wondering about https://shizuku.rikka.app/ It looks like a more elegant way to have for some apps higher privileges while preserving security but I'm not sure about it so I'm thinking out loud

[–] circuscritic@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

I will admit that I also use Shizuku, but I only enable it for short bursts when I need access for a very select number of precise use cases. Immediately afterwards, I reboot.

I also assume that if I spent any amount of time digging into it, I would realize it's a bad idea, but nothing's perfect.

And don't assume that all apps allowing Shizuku access were developed securely, or that there all developers have good intentions. Really I only use it for Swift, or if I'm really behind on my updates, I'll briefly allow Droidify access for hands off updating.

[–] Psyhackological@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 month ago

Is rebooting disables Shizuku?

How do you do these short bursts? Through adb?

And still Shizuku seems like a better idea than rooting the smartphone.

[–] jjlinux@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 month ago

And this is different from Apple. Right? Right?

[–] Ephera@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 month ago

Yep, what radicalized me against Google was all the way back when they had bought Android and rolled out the Play Store for the first time.

I was on my first-ever phone, and yes, it did have rather limited internal storage, but then the Play Store got installed, taking up all the remaining space. I had literally around 500KB of free storage left afterwards, making it impossible to install new apps.

Couldn't uninstall the Play Store, couldn't move it to the SD-card and it didn't even fucking do anything that the Android Market app didn't do. It just took up 40MB more space for no good reason.