metinkale38 / prayer-times-android

A useful Application with a set of tools needed by every muslim.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.metinkale.prayer
Apache License 2.0
239 stars 105 forks source link

Drop google tracking from the app #186

Open Saldef opened 2 years ago

Saldef commented 2 years ago

I like this app because unlike Muslim Pro app, it is open source. The reason I would never install an app like Muslim Pro is its heavy tracking and recently the selling of its users data, along with other numerous issues (ads, buisness model, privacy policy, dark patterns...etc)

I noticed that this app is also using Google Analytics (according to this report) which is worrying, especially for this kind of app. So I am suggesting dropping the use of such tracking tools especially from Google. If you want an alternative analytics tool, that is privacy-friendly and open-source check out Plausible or Matomo.

metinkale38 commented 2 years ago

Actually i was using Crashlytics even before Google bought it, not to sell any data or track user habits etc, but only get informed about information about crashes, to improve the application and fix issues. The App is open source, so you can exactly check, where that is used und what is tracked. Addiotionally it is anonym, so the data which is sent can not refer to a real person at all.

Furthermore you do not enter any personal information in the app, its actually only a city, which you select. Its useless to talk about data privacy, when there is no data at all!

Yes, there are some permissions like Calender, Location and Storage, but the App works perfectly without these. There are only needed for some features, before which you get informed about the reason, why the permission would be used, so you can decide to use or not use that particular feature.

Lastly the reporting is only in the play store version. If you already have a google bloated phone, i am sure, google will already track all possible kinds of data. The F-Droid Version (which is unfortunately quite outdatet), does not have any kind of tracking.

I understand that it you feel uncomfortable about that, but it is really difficult to build a Google-free Android App, because a lot of libraries and features rely on google dependencies. Even if i remove Analytics, some other features like Qibla Map will still use Google.

I might change it some time in the future, but currently i am happy if i find time to drop an update with some bugfixes.