We're starting to implement support for split APKs in #FDroid. #Google wants to gather as much data about its users as possible, so trying to hide info about language, country, device specs was not a design concern for them. It is central for us. We want the official client to leak as little data as possible to any server, be it ours, mirrors, or custom repos. We welcome input:
https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroidclient/-/issues/2963
#Android #APK #privacy #DataEfficiency #efficiency #technology #data #metadata
@kriom I'm not sure I quite understand the question. One thing we could implement is letting the client download the whole package, so the server cannot see the metadata from the split APKs. Then locally, it would only install the split APKs that the device needs. This would keep the benefit of less disk space usage, but it would use all the bandwidth still.
@eighthave Ok, thank you, I think I understand. With split APKs, Google can tell which language is being used on your device because the client installer app will only download the split APK specific to that language, isn't it?) ?
@kriom yes, exactly. It is even in the file name, e.g. config.de.apk
@eighthave @kriom Most of the time language will be heavily correlated with IP address, so I'm not sure how much sense it makes to hide it when you can deduce it from IP.
@eighthave Epic. 🎉
@eighthave The privacy questions do look tricky here. Downloading the split you want plus some random number of additional randomly chosen ones is my first thought but to be honest I'm not too sure how best to approach the tradeoffs.
@eighthave hi ! what is the interest of split apk for confidentiality ?