Why you should #degoogle! : degoogle

[–] [email protected] 41 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I agree that these should be blocked for privacy, but the amount of these requests is really completely meaningless. The reason there are so many is because they are blocked, not despite it. It will keep trying over and over on failure.

[–] Zeroc00l 10 points 9 months ago

Yep, it's the same with Plex analytics on my server. Every minute or so it's reaching out to the void. I've disabled it on my accounts privacy settings page but it still tries.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 9 months ago (1 children)

[–] [email protected] 18 points 9 months ago (1 children)

They're just too much, seriously. He's getting a Pixel 6 Pro to put GraphenOS on it. I have the 7Pro and have been on Graphene or Calyx for about 2 years now. No regrets.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Tell him to make sure to change the Connectivity check domains to GrapheneOS ones. Plenty of people im this thread explained you about those. In theory, ypu could disable it, but the main OS will assume you have no connection, despite actually able to connect, and some apps may break.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Haven't had any issues with it breaking. Some apps maybe need google play services to unfortunately I do use that since not everybody uses Unified Push

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

It's really on more specific cases. I had it happen with a couple of apps that prevented me even trying to connect to it. I think the entire system should be fine working despite the connectivity check being entirely disabled.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Yup, that's how I have mine as well. Good tip for all of us.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Is GrapheneOS server not the default?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Don't know how where to check to verify that. Hence me still recommending it to double check that.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

there are hundreds because they got blocked.
android phones actively retry connectivity checks every 3 seconds until a successful connection is achieved, then it ramps down to a check every 5 minutes, and the default server is google's. (this functionality is used for the little exclamation mark next to the wifi icon if there's no internet connection)
no data is sent along that request (it's just a GET request), not even useragent etc (the only thing google gets is the source of the request, aka the ip address, which is basically meaningless if it's not associated with any other data)
you should actually be able to point that domain to any ip that responds with empty body + http 204 code to /generate_204 and it should work as expected

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

Oh, cool. I'll look into redirecting these to a 204. That should be a pretty interesting experiment for me. Thank you.

[–] ZombiFrancis 24 points 9 months ago

Bro its just one more connectivity check bro just another connectivity check bro its just a connectivity check bro

[+] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago

It's less work than you think. It has a decent default setup and then you just unblock whatever you need when you realize something is dropping.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago

To be fair, I do agree the connectivity check should not be there. It should just let you connect to the network, and if it doesn't have internet, then so be it. You'll figure that out the second you try to load something. Plus, it makes it really annoying to set up a new Wi-Fi router or something without internet because you have to disable data and then turn on Wi-Fi and connect to the network to force it to stay on the network and not switch over to mobile data.

[+] invisiblegorilla 6 points 9 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

I hear you. He has maybe 7 devices total in his house, whereas I have upwards of 150. I'd have to basically kill all my VLANs, create a temporary WiFi network just for this, and test, only to return everything back to normal afterwards. That'd be the easiest and fastest route for my infrastructure.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Un-de- the English languange from Latin influence. Ungoogle yourself!

[–] loaExMachina 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

language

influence

Why do you keep using French words then?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

?

[–] [email protected] -2 points 9 months ago (3 children)

English is comes from the proto-Germanic family of languages. It was later when the Normans invaded the British Isles did the language begin to see Latin & French influences (which is one of the sources for English having terrible spelling rules). “de-” is of Latin etymology. “un-” is Germanic in origin. In many cases “un-” prefixes can be substituted. See: ungoogled-chromium.

[–] loaExMachina 3 points 9 months ago

family

invaded

Isles

Origins

substituted

Idk, sounds pretty latin bro...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (2 children)

The complete disregard for "purity" is what made English flexible enough to become the defacto default common language of most of the world. Your pursuit of language purity is in fact very un-English.

[–] the_crotch 2 points 9 months ago

England colonizing every piece of land they could get their grubby hands on made English the defacto default common language of most of the world

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

It is it de-English?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

so wait why the preference for de

[+] [email protected] -17 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Ohhhh no, his phone checked to see if it was connected to the Internet! The horrors!

[–] [email protected] 16 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (5 children)

If you're OK with that, good for you. I certainly dont want any of my devices hitting any server I didn't explicitly approve of, especially not 100s of times in a few minutes. To each his own. You evidently don't know what that means, enjoy.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago

It's only happening that many times because you are blocking it, so it thinks it is disconnected and is checking to see if it managed to reconnect.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

What does it mean?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

I think it means op didn't want replies out of their bubble and took that comment personally, hence 'to each his own'

Or they're a smug prick

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I, too, would like to know what it means

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

What it means is that your devices and browsers are constantly pinging Google under the guise of "serving static content to speed up connection". This is where each of us needs to determine what makes sense and what doesn't. If I'm hitting sites not owned by Google, why does Google have to know about it? And even if they "need to know", which they dont, why do you have to check so many times in a row in such short periods of time? Its all about knowing what you're doing at all times, which comes with the added stress of them using up your data if limited, and slowing down your connection, however slightly it may be. Therefore, to each his own. I dont like that, so I block it. You dont mind? Fine, have at it, that's your right. What I will certainly keep doing is trying to steer people away from just letting Big Tech do whatever they want, and that's done by informing what these companies do, how and how often. Some people will care, and maybe even do something about it, others won't and maybe even try to convince others that there's nothing wrong with that. Again, to each his own.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Looking at how often requests happen is a red herring though. Your phone could be collecting data on you for a week and then send a single request with all of it. But I see lots people going "look how many requests" as if it was indicating anything. It's bad that the requests are happening in the first place, but it doesn't mean much that there are 10 requests at once or 1 request per hour.

In fact most analytics SDKs for mobile apps cache the events locally and send them in batches at some larger interval of time. And these single rarer requests are much more damaging to your privacy then lots of connectivity checks that don't actually send any significant data.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

That actually makes sense. Not that I'm happy with the constant phoning home of these a-holes, but it stands to reason that they would do that instead its way less conspicuous, so would be harder to point out as a trend.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

To each his own, sure, but for most people that includes push notifications, and that's how they work.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

There are plenty of ways to get push notifications. Maybe they are not as convenient as letting Google do everything for you in exchange of your privacy, but certainly doable. Ironically enough, just google how to do it and you'll find a few ways, lol.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

If you did that though, wouldn't you get pretty similar activity to what you've posted here? Just to servers other than Google's

I'm not meaning to be contrarian to your point about this being a reason why you should de-google, just absent of context someone reading this post might be compelled to do so without understanding that is going to compromise functions of their device they're likely accustomed to

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

You make a good point. I will try to start commenting and posting with more context moving forward. The fact remains that, as long as we're using addresses not controlled by us (namely not self-hosted) we need to decide how much we trust any address and server we interact with. Maybe because of Google's size and noise, I am completely against them, the same as I'm against Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Twitter, Amazon and a whole suite of others.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Agreed! Personally, my willingness to trust a service is generally a function of the utility I get from the service. My data has value, but I certainly wouldn't consider it priceless!

[–] [email protected] -1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

I certainly dont want any of my devices hitting any server I didn't explicitly approve of,

Then you can't really browse the web lol. You will never have that much control.

Better to anonymize the traffic as much as possible

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I can browse just fine, and I have plenty of sites and addresses blocked (4 million + last I checked). Yes, some sites and functionalities do break, but that's the trade off, and we each have to decide what we want to live with and what we can live without. What works for me won't necessarily work for you, and vice versa.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Work I agree with you. The point I'm trying to make is just asking for Google.com for example, could give you a different server between two requests.

You can control domains, but you cannot control servers, you can only trust that a domain doesn't resolve to something malicious.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

That's one of the biggest issues. A domain that points somewhere right now could point to an entirely different server later, and we have no way of knowing until its too late. But we have become too dependent on this hyper-conectivity to easily move away from this. Its a challenge, for sure, but I enjoy the fight against these companies and the trolls they insert everywhere. Apparently this is the new way to have fun for me 🤪

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I agree it's definitely fun to see how far we can push it as consumers.

Long term. I do think the more sustainable solution is for people to run their own "Personal Clouds".

It's the 2nd "PC" revolution 🙂

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

I've been degoogled for so long that I can't imagine ever going back to anything other than self-hosting. Sure, starting is not easy, buy once I got used to it, I could not be happier.

DeGoogle Yourself

Rules

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