Talk:Android Data Collection

3p section

We need a section about third-party tracking.

• Here you can see how apps bypass play-store policies to enumerate almost all installed apps. Outside of play-store, there's no such policy, so QUERY_ALL_PACKAGES can be abused.
• The fact that INTERNET is not a "dangerous" permission, is no surprise because gluegle loves ads. This forces users to install apps such as NetGuard, which gluegle forbids from blocking host-names simply because it can be used to block ads

Apps like AIDA64 and AppManager can access a lot more info about the device, by default, which implies that other apps can abuse permissions to do excessive fingerprinting.

Rudxain (talk) 12:15, 13 November 2025 (UTC)

BTW, any app can bypass VPN-based firewalls (such as NetGuard) by simply using gluegle "Play Services" (or almost any other app with internet access) as a "middle-man", which allows them to do telemetry.

Neither of whatsapp or disbloat disclose their use of GPS/GMS, look at their privacy-policies:

• https://discord.com/privacy only mentions "Google" once, and only referring to its cloud hosting
• https://www.whatsapp.com/legal/privacy-policy only mentions its backup service

Those PPs are the only ones linked by their respective apps, so they're not "only for the web version", they also apply to their OS-specific apps, so they must disclose GMS Rudxain (talk) 15:34, 29 November 2025 (UTC)