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Exodus-Privacy / exodus

Platform to audit trackers used by Android application
https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/
GNU Affero General Public License v3.0
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Enhancement: Propose more privacy-friendly alternatives #400

Open semiaddict opened 3 years ago

semiaddict commented 3 years ago

Would it be possible to propose more privacy-friendly alternatives to scanned apps? Maybe by comparing similar audited apps (by category for example) and proposing 2-3 apps with less trackers/permissions.

I think this could increase the usefulness of the platform by proposing solutions to the problems.

I haven't yet taken a look at the code, but would be happy to try and tackle this if it's something feasable and would be accepted via a pull request.

pnu-s commented 3 years ago

Hello there!

That's an interesting question, but unfortunately not that easy. The organization Exodus Privacy does not want to judge applications (or even trackers) by saying "this app is better than this one", because trackers and permissions are not all equal, it depends on context.

Integrating categories into exodus would be interesting, as it would let our users decide which app suits best their needs.

Such thing can be done currently using https://github.com/FacettsOpen/exodify but it requires an additional tool.

semiaddict commented 3 years ago

Thank you @pnu-s. I totally understand the organization's stand on the promotion of one app over another.

I wasn't aware of exodify. Looks like it can be promising, but has a CORS issue (see https://github.com/FacettsOpen/exodify/issues/8) making it unusable on Chrome at the moment (I only use Chrome to connect to google services). I will try to take some time to file a pull request there.

jawz101 commented 3 years ago

I'm not a fan of suggesting alternative apps. There are tons of people who do that already and most of these don't really have alternates. ex: if I have a shopping app for a particular website, there aren't alternatives to address the same thing.

ignoramous commented 1 year ago

I'm not a fan of suggesting alternative apps.

One of the suggested apps (Blokada) isn't even on F-Droid anymore, because the lead developer refused to remove user beacons and trackers, and even flamed F-Droid maintainers for it.