I recently asked the /c/Android community what information Google has access to on stock Android, assuming the user is not using any Google apps, and was told Google has full “unstoppable” access to the entire device, including Signal messages, the microphone, duckduckgo search history and anything displayed on the screen at all times.
Does this mean that encrypted messaging is essentially pointless to use on Android? I’m a newb here so go easy on me.
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Google Keyboard has network access, so it can theoretically log every keystroke and send it somewhere.
Personally, I installed GrapheneOS which lets me deny network access to the keyboard.
To be fair, if you’re on GrapheneOS and have play store installed, GBoard can still theoretically send the data, even without network permission, as there is IPC. But that’s getting a bit too paranoid so I don’t want to think about it.
I denied play store network access too 😆.
Seriously, some apps just check if it’s installed or not. I use Aurora for actually downloading apps.
i had been using chinese phones until recently and they all prompted for “secure keyboard” or “regular keyboard” for passwords/pins; but i suspect that the secured keyboard option had a backdoor installed. lol