The new home of /r/Android on Lemmy and the Fediverse!
Android news, reviews, tips, and discussions about rooting, tutorials, and apps.
πUniversal Link: !android@lemdro.id
π‘Content Philosophy:
Content which benefits the community (news, rumours, and discussions) is generally allowed and is valued over content which benefits only the individual (technical questions, help buying/selling, rants, self-promotion, etc.) which will be removed if it's in violation of the rules.
Support, technical, or app related questions belong in: !askandroid@lemdro.id
For fresh communities, lemmy apps, and instance updates: !lemdroid@lemdro.id
π¬Matrix Chat
π°Our communities below
Stay on topic: All posts should be related to the Android OS or ecosystem.
No support questions, recommendation requests, rants, or bug reports: Posts must benefit the community rather than the individual. Please post to !askandroid@lemdro.id.
Describe images/videos, no memes: Please include a text description when sharing images or videos. Post memes to !androidmemes@lemdro.id.
No self-promotion spam: Active community members can post their apps if they answer any questions in the comments. Please do not post links to your own website, YouTube, blog content, or communities.
No reposts or rehosted content: Share only the original source of an article, unless it's not available in English or requires logging in (like Twitter). Avoid reposting the same topic from other sources.
No editorializing titles: You can add the author or website's name if helpful, but keep article titles unchanged.
No piracy or unverified APKs: Do not share links or direct people to pirated content or unverified APKs, which may contain malicious code.
No unauthorized polls, bots, or giveaways: Do not create polls, use bots, or organize giveaways without first contacting mods for approval.
No offensive or low-effort content: Don't post offensive or unhelpful content. Keep it civil and friendly!
No affiliate links: Posting affiliate links is not allowed.
Our Communities
Lemmy App List
Chat and More
Users who have already updated their phones to Android 16 can even tap into some system-level protection with the new βNetwork notificationsβ option
Wanna bet that feature will soon be cut by google? For your safety of course.
GrapheneOS my beloved
Only if they supported more devices
GrapheneOS is built from Android, right? Wouldn't subsequent versions of GrapheneOS lose this functionality as well?
Only if Google makes such sweeping changes to make forward-porting the feature impossible.
Must be frustrating to keep so many patch sets alive after a while. Any insight into how they do this in a scalable way?
They may ban it like how the Spanish government did in Catalonia π€‘
Police and government agencies can track phones even when they're connected to a genuine cell towers, via mobile operators. It's just slightly more convenient for them to use an ISMI catcher because they collect data without going through a third party.
Assume a mobile phone can be tracked if it's powered, regardless of iOS or Android version and settings.
Many are trackable when off, too. So, that just fantabulous.
Just out of curiosity, how?
They don't fully turn off. I don't remember the official name for it, but it's a low energy state. It's how Apple can track your stolen MacBook or iphone, even if the thief turned it off.
too bad android 16 also has the garbage "registered developers" and blocking apk installs insuring i'll never upgrade.
Good but it isn't the version of Android it is in Google Play Services. So however far back Google is pushing the current version for.
I'm using f-droid on 16 without issues (so far)
That's coming next year AFAIK, and I don't think staying on 15 will prevent it
that'll get pushed to you regardless of if you upgrade
android 16 has a secret weapon: google has already sold your data
Is there really any chance they don't have direct access to data from the cell towers and actually need to do tracking by other means? I figured this was just a parallel construction type of thing.
Time to tell on myself a bit, I was a 35N in the US army with experience adjacent to this subject. Stingrays are commercially available devices that pretty much anybody with big money can get their hands on and use. Private companies make various stingray-type devices and those private companies have salesmen who actively want to sell YOU on buying their equipment.
For law enforcement, getting a continuing agreement with telecommunication companies to have legal access to bulk USP data is a big nightmare with lots of red tape. Even if a police department were to get these agreements with the telecommunications company you're now introducing all of the inconvenience of dealing with AT&T customer support to get your data from them. This isn't a joke, pretty often you will still have to work with/through the telecommunications company you have an agreement with to get your data. And to be honest their techs and reps are dumb as bricks, they are so often a common pain point.
Setting up a stingray on the other hand gives the police department direct access to all the data themselves with no middle-men, and often they even have supplemental support from whichever company they bought their stingrays from. It's easier, faster, and more convenient data collection 99% of the time to not go through the genuine cell towers.
But we're talking about a federal agency here, not local law enforcement. It's been confirmed that systems they tried to keep secret exist for them to have direct access to traffic going through ISPs, so why wouldn't they have set up something similar for wireless networks, that would eliminate the need to go through any corporate bureaucracy? To me it seems reasonable to assume that such programs exist without being divulged because it would be basically similar to what else has been confirmed to exist, and there's a really obvious incentive.