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by Sephiroth87 2230 days ago
Firebase, seriously???
2 comments

Which they're using to track a couple of events, i.e. when the app fails to register with the API: https://github.com/nhsx/COVID-19-app-Android-BETA/blob/maste...

(Though that analytics platform itself does do device fingerprinting, inasmuch as detecting phone model, OS version etc -- I assume no individually identifying stuff like IMEIs, but who knows what a bad actor can do with sufficient entropy?)

They use firebase for push notifications. GCM (Google Cloud Messaging) has been moved to firebase, and it can now also do Apple notifications I think so it makes sense to just stick to one.
Except you don't need to import Firebase Analytics to use the messaging. And, same as the Facebook SDK situation earlier today, Firebase SDKs will do stuff when the app loads whether you reference them or not.
According to the repo [1] they're using: apply plugin: 'com.google.firebase.crashlytics' com.google.firebase:firebase-messaging

[1] https://github.com/nhsx/COVID-19-app-Android-BETA/search?p=1...

I assume crashlytics is for crash dumps only, could firebase-messaging pull in firebase-analytics?

Why are y'all aggressively judging the codebase when you don't even know how firebase analytics works on Android? Damn