• Re: Windows 10 Phone App Link Info request

    From Wally J@21:1/5 to Paul on Thu Oct 12 13:25:25 2023
    XPost: comp.mobile.android, alt.comp.microsoft.windows

    Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote

    This machine has an MSA. I picked Win11Home for this experiment, so
    I would experience as many "rough edges" as possible. However, I don't
    do email on the machine, and "my address book is blank". Companies hate
    it, when that happens :-) There are supposed to be scraping processes
    on the machine, to harvest those.

    Connectivity between devices & privacy doing it are near & dear to me.

    Thanks for running tests and explaining a minimalist approach using LTW
    where it's refreshing that you're aware of the privacy implications of both email and contacts on a device - which is easily overcome - if we're smart.

    Contacts & email are super critically important for privacy reasons,
    where most people, in my humblest assessment, are sheep led to slaughter.

    With respect to email and contacts, on my Android, I would never use GMail because I know, like you do, what most people don't know - simply because I
    do what you do, which is empirical tests (most people are afraid of them).

    In my empirical tests, using the GMail app, for example, _creates_ an
    account on Android - which is a forbidden act so if I were to check my
    email (which I don't do on a phone because of the screen & typing issues),
    it would be using FairEmail, which has no problem with Google Accounts
    (and it does not need 2FA/2SV/MSV to connect - just the OAuth2 web req.).
    *FairEmail*, privacy aware email by Marcel Bokhorst, FairCode BV, FOSS
    Free, ad free, gsf free, 4.6 star, 24.3K reviews, 500K+ Downloads
    <https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.faircode.email>
    <https://email.faircode.eu/>
    <https://github.com/M66B/FairEmail/releases>
    <https://f-droid.org/en/packages/eu.faircode.email/>

    Also in my empirical tests, as Paul noted, the default contacts sqlite db
    is hoovered by just about every application that wants to know who you
    know, even the Google Maps app of all things.

    For that, I populate the default contacts sqlite db with garbage using this
    *Fake Contacts*
    Create fake phone contacts, that will be stored on your phone
    masquerading as your real contacts. The idea is to feed fake data
    to any apps or companies who are copying our private data to use
    or sell it. This is called data-poisoning.
    <https://f-droid.org/packages/me.billdietrich.fake_contacts/>
    <https://github.com/BillDietrich/fake_contacts>
    <https://archive.org/details/github.com-BillDietrich-fake_contacts_-_2021-01-31_19-04-27>
    <https://apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid/index/apk/me.billdietrich.fake_contacts?repo=main>

    And then I use only messaging/contacts/dialer apps which can import/export
    my personal contacts db (which is kept as a VCARD vcf & not as sqlite).
    This app saves contacts in its own database separate from default
    android contacts. This way no other app would be able to access
    your real contacts. It can even be used in place of your default
    phone (aka dialer) app. We can export/import contacts from Android
    contacts app into this app. Maintains call log as well with the
    name of the contact & shows the contact name when receiving calls.
    <https://f-droid.org/en/packages/opencontacts.open.com.opencontacts/>
    <https://github.com/sultanahamer/OpenContacts> (old github)
    <https://gitlab.com/sultanahamer/OpenContacts> (new gitlab)
    (aside: /What's the difference between github & gitlab?/)
    --
    The whole point of Usenet is to find people who know more than you do.
    And to add tribal knowledge to the newsgroup archives for others to find.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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