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
@eighthave hi ! what is the interest of split apk for confidentiality ?
@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 @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.
@elgregor @kriom clearly that is not the case I'm talking about. A device in Spanish in Spain tells the surveiller little. A device in Finnish in Kazakhstan might uniquely identify someone.