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An idle Android smartphone sends user data back to Google servers nearly ten times more frequently as an Apple device sends data back to Apple servers.
This is just one of the many findings of a 55-page research paper [pdf] published this week by research agency Digital Content Next. The research looked at what type of data is sent back to Google servers from idle Android devices.
The overall conclusion of the research is that Google tracks its users more often and collects more information about their movements and behavior when compared to Apple or to Google's ability to track users on Apple devices.
[...] For starters, researchers said that while a user interacts with a phone, 46% of all communications sent to Google servers were to Google's publisher and advertiser products, such as Google Analytics, DoubleClick, AdWords, and AdSense.
"Magnitude wise, Google's servers communicated 11.6 MB of data per day (or 0.35 GB/month) with the Android device," researchers said. "This experiment suggests that even if a user does not interact with any key Google applications, Google is still able to collect considerable information through its advertiser and publisher products."
[...] Moreover, even if most of the data Google collects about users is anonymized, researchers said that there are various details that Google accumulates from the same device that can deanonymize users.
For example, researchers said that advertising identifiers such as DoubleClick cookie IDs allow Google to track a user across web pages and apps, and associate "anonymous users" with known Google accounts.
(Score: 5, Informative) by pTamok on Monday August 27 2018, @08:12PM (5 children)
If you want to stop data being sent to Google, you need to disable Google Play Services, which is a proprietary layer on top of the open-ish Android layer. Google actively 'encourage' App developers to access functions (like Location Services) through the Google Play Services API, which makes the App developers life easier at the expense of making Google Play Services a dependency. No Google Play Services, no App. Hence, although Android, the Operating System is more of less open (if you discount the binary blobs in firmware/drivers), you are actually forced to use their proprietary software layer to use Apps. Using Lineage doesn't stop this - in fact many people look for solutions to get Google Play Services running on their LineageOS phones to get access to the Apps they want to use.
You can do without, and use Apps from F-Droid - but that means no Facebook, WhatsApp etc, and no Android Pay, and no Google Apps, like Maps.
There is a project to replicate the Google Play Services API - the microG project, producing the microGMS core - but that comes with its own problems, requiring you to enable signature spoofing for system applications, which some regard as a big security no-no.
Essentially, the vast majority of Android users are stuck using Google Play Services, and all the data collection that proprietary software layer enables. Google have been very good at boiling the frogs. Most phone manufacturers want to offer the Google Apps on their phones, and the agreement for doing so requires them to enable Google Play Services. So most phones are effectively locked into proprietary, closed data collection for Google. You have to work very hard and give up a lot of convenience to not use Google. Most Internet Banking Apps will now check for the presence of Google Play Services and rely on its security model to assure that the phone has not been rooted etc. It actually doeasn't matter how free and ope source Android is, now that people are locked into the Google ecosystem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 27 2018, @11:04PM (1 child)
You say that as if it's a bad thing.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Tuesday August 28 2018, @04:15AM
Does F-Droid still run other apps... like MAPS.ME, Simple GPS, WabbitEMU, and FTP Server Pro? ( Like those gotten from Aptoide and similar? )
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2, Informative) by pTamok on Tuesday August 28 2018, @07:59AM
I should point out that my observations are not original, and in fact you can read an amplified version with more detail in this Ars Technica article (which I found after writing my previous comment).
Ars Technica: Google’s iron grip on Android: Controlling open source by any means necessary [arstechnica.com]
It first ran on October 20, 2013, and was republished with updates on July 21, 2018.
The result is that, in the mass market, it is very, very, difficult to avoid Google's data collection, unless you use Apple iPhones.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday August 28 2018, @10:16AM
Mobile Chrome I expect.
But Firefox is available for Android. Oh, sorry.
Perhaps there is a browser for Android that psychotics like me can use without stimulating our paranoia?
A significant advantage of using Mobile Websites as opposed to Mobile Apps is that it is significantly more difficult - but _not_ impossible! - to embed Mobile Websites with all the analytics that one can with Mobile Apps, where they know about your every tap.
You can block about half the Mobile Website analytics by unlocking your bootloader - and yes, Google really _does_ document how to do that, so as to enable you to develop your own firmware - then blackholing all the web bug servers in your phones /etc/hosts.
You can do that in iPhone to: once you've jailbroken in, you'll find that iOS Looks Just Like macOS - the operating system formerly known as "Mac OS X" - and has _many_ open source components for which apple really _does_ supply source:
https://opensource.apple.com/ [apple.com]
Anyway once you've jbed your iToy just scp your new hosts file to your phone.
But you can't use Facebook while at the same time blocking the Facebook Pixel. FB somehow manages to avoid being burnt in effigy by calling it a "Pixel" and not a "Web Bug".
What I'd like to do is write an HTTP Proxy within an App that would randomly change the ID number that's a query parameter to the Pixel's URL.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 28 2018, @02:39PM
connect a bank account to an android phone?
that's just nuts