I remember reading an article where the government and Google were able to read notifications and record them from every android device. I wonder if Graphene might have patched this problem, and if not, do they have any plans to do so?

Thanks!

  • Skull giver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nlEnglish
    2·
    4 months ago

    I believe apps working without FCM should be fine, or at least require more effort for third parties like law enforcement to intercept. There’s nothing preventing the NSA from listening in on the notifications of alternatives either, of course. Ideally, all notification services have their notification encrypted end-to-end. If app developers do that, FCM should be fine.

    • MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      1·
      4 months ago

      Would you happen to know what WhatsApp and Signal use? I believe FOSS apps from F-droid do not use Google’s notification service

      • Skull giver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nlEnglish
        2·
        4 months ago

        Both default to FCM as far as I know. WhatsApp has a fallback notification system, but I don’t think Signal does.

        Edir: correction: Signal does seem to work without FCM, but if you set it up and then nuke FCM, Signal will show a near permanent notification indicating that Signal needs Google Play services because of a bug.

        FOSS apps sometimes use FCM, though that should be labeled in the app details as an anti feature, I believe. It’s very hard (almost impossible) to write power efficient notifications without centralising the notification flow.

        There are semi-standards, like Unified Push, that can help, and UP can even use FCM as a backend if you so wish, but I don’t think many apps use it at the moment.

        • MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
          1·
          4 months ago

          Thanks, I’ll go read some more. I’m trying to move away from WhatsApp and wanted to run Signal in my main profile on Graphene. I hope I can use it without FCM there.

          • dracs@programming.devEnglish
            1·
            4 months ago

            Signal does have a fallback if FCM is unavailable. It supposedly uses slightly more battery, but I can’t say I noticed it. I’ve swapped to using Molly which is a fork of Signal which implements UnifiedPush (among some other features).