this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2023
1240 points (97.0% liked)
Privacy
31609 readers
81 users here now
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
Chat rooms
-
[Matrix/Element]Dead
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I've always had a niggling worry that downloading apps from 3rd party app stores came with a higher risk of getting apps with viruses and spyware.
any truth to this?
Not really.
Fdroid is a secure repositorie and the applications are reviewed before being made available for end users.
The repository is also highly focused on privacy and security and will warn if applications have security flaws or depend on non free services.
As an example, I use NewPipe instead of the standard YT app and it has a warning it depends on non-free services.
One other example I can give is Librera. It's a very feature rich ebook/pdf/etc reader. At some point, a security flaw was discovered and the app was instantly flagged has having such problems and users were advised to not install it.
Reviewed by who though? Malicious apps even get through apple and Google's screening. I can't see how fdroid can match the capabilities of those guys.
[This comment has been deleted by an automated system]
How is Librera to download now?
Works fine for me.
The benefit of open source apps is anyone can view the code to see if there is malware or other installed.
What I can tell you is that Google was extremely detailed in their monitoring of my apps - even looking up e.g. rate limits of the steam api to check if I properly deal with those. And I pick that example since I don't want to talk about the ways I mishandled user data out of negligence or ignorance.
Back then I perceived it as harassment. Today I will certainly not install any apps that didn't pass their testing.
And we're not even talking about deliberate malware but simple incompetence. I would consider the average hobby app project to be borderline malware and a proper QA needs qualified personnel. I don't see how F-Droid can ever reach those standards.
Thats what they want you to think
But its because they want your money
Yes but F-droid is an exception. Be careful of adding third party repos though
Even small companies have to deal with, "supply chain", attacks, criminals putting code into open source repositories to steal data and get access to servers. App stores are major targets too.
There have been weather apps that need your location to show you weather and oops we also send your location history to our data center in China and sell that data.
There have been, "document scanner", apps that help you take pictures of things like credit card statements and did we not mention we send those images to Russian servers?
Do use a major brand phone like Samsung, keep your OS up to date, and don't expose private info to these apps or give them special privileges, especially, "accessibility", or, "screen reader", and you should be okay.