>GrapheneOS does not have an equivalent of ublock origin built into the OS which I'd consider step 1 of fighting the problem.
Content filtering is built into the browser. GrapheneOS have always maintained that you cannot prevent an app from exfiltrating data, especially if it has internet access. Enumerating badness is an unsustainable approach they don't want to encourage. Instead they attack the heart of the issue with Storage Scopes/Contact Scopes/Network Permission/Sensors Permission etc. They allow aps to think they have full access when they do not, so you can control exactly what data they get in the first place. Maybe all of the other AOSP projects could contribute App Communication Scopes/Enhanced Clipboard Privacy and other things because this approach makes a lot of sense to me. Like preventing an illness instead of wasting energy treating symptoms.
>The "ideal android" in my head would just have a dynamic ruleset to patch/nop tracking libraries as the app loads, which as far as I know, nobody does that, eOS doesn't either. Kind of like Revanced but on steroids and built into Android.
Something similar was addressed some years ago as a feature request for GrapheneOS https://github.com/GrapheneOS/os-issue-tracker/issues/284. To summarise there was no way to do this without an unacceptable security cost to the OS, but this is sort of doable if you run your own userdebug build which you have the power to do.
> Something similar was addressed some years ago as a feature request for GrapheneOS https://github.com/GrapheneOS/os-issue-tracker/issues/284. To summarise there was no way to do this without an unacceptable security cost to the OS, but this is sort of doable if you run your own userdebug build which you have the power to do.
It's badness enumeration which is an unworkable approach to providing strong privacy. It fundamentally can't provide it, only weak case-by-case improvements which are very fragile and trivially bypassed. It can also be done by modifying APKs instead of having a hooking framework within the OS heavily compromising security. You don't need the OS providing anything to use arbitrarily modified APKs. We also don't want to give apps a legitimate reason to ban GrapheneOS as opposed to being able to convince the tiny number of apps enforcing Google certification to allow it.
> You don't need the OS providing anything to use arbitrarily modified APKs. We also don't want to give apps a legitimate reason to ban GrapheneOS as opposed to being able to convince the tiny number of apps enforcing Google certification to allow it.
I think you said the truth out loud, a rom which tries too much to fight for your privacy would just be banned. (And I do agree with that)
Protecting strong privacy conflicts with the kind of hooking features unable to actually protect privacy without being easily bypassed. The reason apps would ban doing that is due to compromising the privacy and security model for applications, not protecting user privacy.
Nearly the only thing which would potentially result in the OS being banned which is a legitimate privacy feature would be hiding that the Mock Location feature is enabled which is pretty much pointless since apps can ban the OS as a whole instead of only banning using them when Mock Location being enabled. Our planned per-app Location Scopes feature doesn't necessarily need to say that Mock Location is enabled but it should be possible for apps to detect so they don't have an excuse to ban GrapheneOS as a whole. It's far better that they ban using Location Scopes than banning using GrapheneOS at all. We could make our own API for detecting it's enabled so that apps detecting Mock Location work but apps aware of GrapheneOS can choose to ban Location Scopes rather than banning GrapheneOS. We aren't going to do something which simply hurts users should reducing the apps they can use for no actual benefit.
Content filtering is built into the browser. GrapheneOS have always maintained that you cannot prevent an app from exfiltrating data, especially if it has internet access. Enumerating badness is an unsustainable approach they don't want to encourage. Instead they attack the heart of the issue with Storage Scopes/Contact Scopes/Network Permission/Sensors Permission etc. They allow aps to think they have full access when they do not, so you can control exactly what data they get in the first place. Maybe all of the other AOSP projects could contribute App Communication Scopes/Enhanced Clipboard Privacy and other things because this approach makes a lot of sense to me. Like preventing an illness instead of wasting energy treating symptoms.
>The "ideal android" in my head would just have a dynamic ruleset to patch/nop tracking libraries as the app loads, which as far as I know, nobody does that, eOS doesn't either. Kind of like Revanced but on steroids and built into Android.
Something similar was addressed some years ago as a feature request for GrapheneOS https://github.com/GrapheneOS/os-issue-tracker/issues/284. To summarise there was no way to do this without an unacceptable security cost to the OS, but this is sort of doable if you run your own userdebug build which you have the power to do.