Cross-platform apps and privacy

Posted by MadaboutDana
Dec 6, 2024 at 09:41 AM

Slightly scrappy post that may be of interest to some:

Inspired by the Google-free version of Android currently being developed by Dutch company e-Foundation (together with Murena), I’ve been reexamining Android alongside my current Apple-based IT environment. At the same time, I’ve been checking out knowledge management and in particular task/project management apps that run on a broad range of platforms.

My particular focus has been on end-to-end encryption. This is, it seems to me, increasingly desirable, but only a limited number of apps offer it.

So I’ve been experimenting with:

acreom (a project/task management app, available on most platforms and on the web, recently open-sourced – excellent on desktop, good on iOS, not great on Android)
Justnote (also open-source, uses an unusual distributed server approach – still very new, very elegant, but search function a bit hit-and-miss)
Notesnook (proprietary, but with a generous free tier – nice, well-developed app, but with a lot of internal advertising urging upgrades to “Pro”)

At the same time, I’ve also been experimenting with two of my most used apps, Obsidian and NotesHub. I have no particular desire to tie myself into an annual subscription for Obsidian (although I may yet decide to do so, simply because it’s so flexible), so I use both of them with GitHub (using an Obsidian plug-in called “Fit”, which works very well). NotesHub’s management of GitHub is exemplary – way ahead of most other apps.

Now that I’m experimenting with Android, I’ve also invested in a cheap and cheerful Android tablet (Ulefone Tab a11 Pro, for those interested), and I’ve been impressed by the overall fit and finish of both tablet and operating system. But wow, Android is so open to abuse: I run DuckDuckGo as my browser on Android 14, and it also acts as a tracker screen. The number of trackers blocked by DuckDuckGo runs into the thousands over the course of 3-4 days – most of them Google trackers, or trackers used by software performance monitors, but the details of what they track are positively horrifying in the sense that they are super-personal. Apple’s protestations of respect for privacy are also, of course, highly suspect, as anyone who’s run a tracker monitor on a Mac computer will have discovered (hundreds of calls back to the mothership made every day). What to do?

Now, even acreom and NotesHub use trackers (Google, primarily), because Google trackers appear to be embedded in almost all Android apps. But then, so do so many other services, whether TIckTick or Microsoft Outlook (well duh, Microsoft!). So the attempts by e-Foundation and others to create a deGoogled version of Android are very welcome – as are calls to create a new version of Linux that is wholly independent of Silicon Valley. There’s a huge potential niche here for a completely new approach to operating systems (especially now that Microsoft is toying with including ads in Windows – what a lovely thought!). Linux has always been a resort for those searching for neutrality – Cory Doctorow is a regular and highly capable advocate of privacy-focused software.

Obsidian, incidentally, doesn’t appear to use trackers in its Android guise… just saying! But neither is it end-to-end encrypted.

It’s time to start thinking laterally! I’d point out that e-Foundation have just realised a Google-free version of Android for the relatively new CMF Phone 1, a very nice and affordable smartphone from Nothing. Their version of Android is also available for the Fairphone (which is designed to be user-repairable, with removable batteries and everything!) and various models of Google Pixel (amusingly enough!)