this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2025
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Was curious so Iooked up the app's site.
Apparently the devs claim they can't release it on Android because "There's no way to be anonymous on the play store", but it's even more impossible to be anonymous on the platform they've released. That's how you know the developer is incredibly stupid and/or shady as hell- because they've never even heard of Fdroid?
Makes me think the app is a troll/trojan horse (not as in infection, trojan horse as in it has alterior motives)
The Drumpf crew "losing it" over the app just makes it more questionable. They love to create a firestorm so people talk about the thing "they definitely don't want you to use!!" to get people to do things...
they mentioned that its because push notifications require device id and that would make it easy to be tracked if aubpoenaed.
https://bsky.app/profile/iceblock.app/post/3lmzykc7rb42d
edit: for the record i don't agree; i'm just saying what they said on bsky
I'm not sure if this guy is just dumb or it's a honeypot.
As mentioned elsewhere, they don't use device ID
Android is the only platform that supports alternative push methods
Apple knows everyone who downloads this app, which is subject to subpoena
The gov has been collecting push notification data from both Apple and Google for a long time. It would be as simple as knowing when notifications went out and then comparing timestamps to figure out who is using the app.
The app is closed-source
It would take significantly more mental energy on the part of the user but it would be far safer (which is extremely important in this specific case, as the dev agrees) to distribute through F-Droid and then use some other UnifiedPush implementation, as many Android apps already do. Anyone using this app is painting a huge target on their backs for the current authoritarian state.
Interesting, especially with GrapheneOS people shooting it down immediately to call them out on their baloney.
Push notifications though GMS don't use the device ID; they use a generated GCM registration ID that occasionally rotates. Who knows what Google uses internally to associate GCM reg IDs to users, but to overly state that it uses device IDs is simply not correct.
I'm not suggesting push notifications are inherently secure because it's impossible to make that determination from the outside. But their assessment is incorrect and the same privacy concerns apply to Apple.
I'm pretty certain push notifications have been shown to be grossly insecure actually...
This is a really good comment
Thanks. Remember to always question everything. Especially when that -something- sounds like BS.
Aurora store.
I was quoting them but you're right-or Fdroid ofc