[vidyesh]

Congrats on the launch!

Since this is on Google Play Store I want to ask why is it not viable with user's consent to just sync app data with your own(user's) Google account?

I understand (and support) the reluctance to register and save data in some third party server which likely will use or sell your data but isn't app data in your Google Account very safe?

Google App Backup is basically storing user data in their own Google Drive Account, and is more like a sqlite dump isn't it? https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/data/backup

And as many suggested, you should consider listing it on F-Droid too if your app requires no account at all.

Good luck!

[stormqueen]

Thanks! The backup feature is already on my roadmap to offer it as an optional feature - but since you can manually import and export your data, it's not a high priority yet. F-Droid may be an option - but for now the project is not open source. so I think that's not possible

[alimbada]

I may be wrong but I don't think your app needs to be open source to publish it on F-Droid.

Edit: Sorry, seems I was wrong [1] but you can host your own F-Droid repository which can be added to F-Droid by users to install your app from.

https://forum.f-droid.org/t/non-open-source-apps-are-allowed...

[freedomben]

Indeed, I think it used to be doable because I installed an app without source available from F-Droid a few years ago, but I don't believe it is anymore. Would be super cool if you did though! My wife is still using pen and paper to track because of privacy concerns, but my daughter finds this abhorrent and wants to use an app :-D

[earthling8118]

I'd argue that it's a falsehood to call a closed source application privacy friendly.

[UncleEntity]

This is why we can't have nice things...

[bee_rider]

You would? How?

[pitched]

The only proof we have of privacy is a claim made by an internet account. With source code, auditing that claim is a lot easier. “Trust but verify.”

[bee_rider]

I agree that it isn’t as easily verifiable that it is privacy-respecting without the source code but that’s a couple steps from saying that it is “a falsehood” to say it is.

What made me wonder about it is that this is very specific wording that indicates that they proactively know the author is lying, when it would be very easy to instead say something along the lines of what you said, that it is too hard to verify without access to the source code.

[pitched]

I agree that the language used wasn’t perfect, but… If a claim is not verifiable, it can only be taken on faith. Same as all the existing apps in the category that this one aims to replace. Is there a better word we can use to describe this sort of situation?

[GlumWoodpecker]

Presumably because there is no way to verify the claim.

[bee_rider]

I think that isn’t it, because it would be easy to say something like “we can’t verify the claim that it is privacy respecting so we should assume otherwise.” Which is a totally reasonable position to take.

I think it is important to be specific, clear, and to have evidence if one wants to call somebody a liar, though.

Or maybe it is something else, it could be interesting if they have some other definition of “privacy respecting” that precludes closed source apps, for example. That is, to “respect privacy” could be understood to actually be to provide users with verifiable evidence that their private info isn’t compromised. I think this isn’t the conventional definition definition of privacy respecting but I’m definitely ready to be pulled on-side if anybody starts pushing it.

[stormqueen]

There are ways to check what data is send trough the network...

[freedomben]

Not really, not anymore. Many apps are now using certificate pinning to make it impossible for the user to to modify the trust store. This means that unless it is open source, it is very difficult for people to verify, even when they know very well what they are doing.

[hruzgar]

What's the point in "privacy friendly" if you're backing up to google?

[vidyesh]

"privacy friendly" does not mean not relying on any service at all. Its about understanding when and where your privacy is respected.

If the user is already using a Google Account for the app (you need a google account to officially download apps from the Play store), they are okay with minimal use of the Google account.

Google might be evil in its ways but the google app data is far different than sharing your personal data with startups or other apps who use your data for other purposes when saved on their servers.

AFAIK, the google appdata does is like a data dump on the user's own google drive, its private to the user, and not used by Google or shared with anyone else, it only can be used and accessed by the app which saves it. Please do correct me if I am wrong about this.

[notpushkin]

> If the user is already using a Google Account for the app (you need a google account to officially download apps from the Play store), they are okay with minimal use of the Google account.

I'm using an unofficial Google Play client, Aurora Store, which can use anonymous accounts instead of your own account.

Anyway, giving the user an option to backup data in Google is better than no option at all, although I'd also add a simple export to file, too.

[tedivm]

> Its about understanding when and where your privacy is respected.

Then you certainly shouldn't be using Google (or any third party service that isn't encrypting customer data in an end-to-end way) for this, as Google is subject to law enforcement requests and right wing states have already tried to use this to access healthcare data. The whole point of this app seems to be to prevent that.