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PSA: Nova Launcher has been owned by analytics company Branch since 2022(www.androidpolice.com)

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spiritedpause@sh.itjust.works
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privacyguides@lemmy.one
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Since a few folks seem unaware of this, I’m posting anew for visibility.

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Ilandar@aussie.zone
15 points

If you are concerned about analytics and tracking then I have bad news for you. Most apps on the Play Store are absolutely loaded with inbuilt trackers. You can check them using Exodus (or use the Aurora Store since privacy reports are displayed by default there).

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tourist@lemmy.world
5 points

Thank you for that site. Very useful.

I haven’t seen that feature on the aurora store, but I probably just missed it.

I expect free apps to have tracking, but if it’s something like an app launcher that needs so many permissions and is running all the time… That’s just horrific

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Ilandar@aussie.zone
4 points

I haven’t seen that feature on the aurora store, but I probably just missed it.

It’s towards the bottom of the page for whatever app you’re viewing. Sometimes it won’t have a privacy report available by default, but you can always go through to the website and generate one yourself. One of the worst apps I’ve found so far is the Woolworths one (Australian supermarket). It contains 11 trackers and within the first 6 hours following installation my tracker blocker had already prevented 11,325 tracking attempts.

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Dave@lemmy.nz
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As someone who likewise freaked out when I got a pihole setup and 30% or more of requests were blocked, the early days are normally just the same requests endlessly retrying. So while it blocked 11k, if they weren’t blocked it would probably only be a few hundred. Probably poor programming not covering the fact it can be blocked.

Still better to block, though.

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