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 :)
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I can’t believe you use the calculator for 2x2! Do you need help from mathtutors.com? It’s only $5 per month but just for you we’re applying a special rebate which puts your offer at a much lower $12 per month.
We also noticed that you calculated numbers near 700,000…are you try to buy a house? And also you keep dividing things by 9 and 12. Are you expecting a baby soon?
Who knows, maybe they’re required by Google to provide a privacy policy, like xscreensaver was
Google is so far off the deep end of “cloud” shit and surveillance capitalism that the people running the Play Store can no longer even conceive of software that’s incapable of spying because it doesn’t connect to the Internet to begin with.
We send your calculations to your fourth grade teacher
Shows them with the “you’re not going to have a calculator everywhere” talk
[aggressive ruler-slapping in the distance]
They want to know if you type in 8008135
I use opencalc, stick to FOSS software as much as humanly possible.
Is it free?
Nothing is safe.
No. Nothing is also not safe.
Use the one that comes with Lineage OS. Alternatively you could use one off of F-droid
stockpile on handhelds because soon even those are going to be data connected
deleted by creator
That’s so cuuuuute
A teenager making a simple and cute calculator and deciding to share it with the world and the world takes that, people contribute, and project emerges
This is actually inspiring
A privacy policy could literally say “our policy is to track and store nothing”. Having one does not make it evil.
In the case of Google, I would not be surprised if it stays running in the background using a relatively large amount ram just for fun.
while True(): youtube.background.play( video=rick_astly_nggyu, exclusive_ads_mode = true, audio=mute )
In this case, it redirects to Google’s general privacy policy that covers all their services. Anyway Google’s calculator stores a history of all the calculations you did in your account somewhere. So I guess it needs to have a policy stating what they do with that data.
It’s shit like this that makes me want to never use another Google app or service.
What possible justification is there for storing history of calculations in a calculator app?
At some point somewhere, someone is going to figure something out with what you typed into it and advertise something to you.
I’m not saying I agree with their justification but I could see why they might be collecting yet another data point: education level. If someone constantly uses a calculator for simple calculations they might have a low education level. People in that demographic will be served different ads than more educated people.
It sucks, but I could see Google doing that.
Because it’s Google’s proprietary garbage app. Use FOSS alternatives from F-Droid instead.
CalcYou seems great, and it’s on F-Droid.
I’ve been using OpenCalc, but CalcYou seems great too
I’d rather have a Foss project with a simple privacy policy that clearly says they store nothing than one that has no policy at all
A privacy policy is only legally required when you actually collect user data. Most devs don’t write a privacy policy for no reason, so seeing one can often be suspicious. Btw if you are worried about a FOSS app tracking you without disclosing it in their privacy policy, if this is the case, F-Droid would display it under the Anti-features section.
Its a good practice to have a policy, even if its not legally required
Privacy policies are BS anyway. Better to just not have an app that depends on a server or entity.
Do you happen to know a good alternative to Google’s Clock app on F-Droid?
Yes, I use and recommend Clock You: https://f-droid.org/packages/com.bnyro.clock/
+1 for the Minecraft Clock mentioned in another comment tho
https://f-droid.org/packages/com.xlythe.minecraftclock/
Because someone wants to know if you use the calculator to spell boobies (8008135)
scandalous
It just links to the overall Google privacy policy, in accordance with Play Store rules mandating privacy policy being easily accessible to users.
The calculator app doesn’t request any permissions which you can check in settings
Alas, no permissions doesn’t fully mean no privacy intrusion/violation. For example, system permissions are not needed to track how many times you calculate 8008135, and upload that statistic together with your IP address to a public website.
Technically the network permission is required
But basic internet permission is given to all apps without asking. Network permission allows things like talking on lan on other ports.
To send data home only the general internet permission that every app has is needed. E.g. you ‘download’ an ‘image’ from https://stupidcompany.com/userbob/8008137_210x_in_24h/alsoclearlynot1337
But it really shouldn’t be! And GrapheneOS, at least, always asks the user when installing apps that want network permission. If the user doesn’t plan on using any network-based features of the app, they can simply decline.
Quite so!
I’ve discovered on Lineage that even denying an app internet permission, the app can apparently know when the device is online. That also shouldn’t be possible, I think.
My recommendation: get rid of that app and go for a zero-tracker one:
Calc You
… or any other great FOSS calculator out there.
Oh nice. Thank you. Installed.