Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

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156

Smart android keyboard respecting privacy? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

103 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Hello, could someone recommended a keyboard for android that is a bit smart in predictive typing? I used to like swiftkeybefore it was bought by microsoft. Not that swiftkey itself was much better but I was not so privy conscious at that time.

I recall swiftkey would require access to your texts and emails to train itself to your predictions.

Is there some similar foss keyboard where all the data then remains local?

I know swiftkey has an incognito mode, but then it stops learning from your typing.

(page 2) 50 comments

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (5 children)

If your phone is rooted you can use any standalone keyboard app you like as long as you block it's internet access

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (12 children)

Not rooted for once in a long time, but I'll think about it. How do you restrict an app's access?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

If you do not have an LSposed framework or similar (formerly knows as Xposed Framework) you can either use Adaway for blocking the phone from reaching websites (keep in mind that this is globally, though) or e.g. AFWall+ for preventing single Apps to connect to the internet (Apps that don't try to get internet access are not shown is the list provided by AFWall+).

If you have LSposed or similar I believe it is possible to install XprivacyLua. This was/is(?) a very powerful tool to manage every single access an app is trying to get. Why would a sketchy chinese calculator app need access to the contacts and the internet even though this was never allowed in the system settings?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

OP can't use adaway or AFWall+ without root.

I'm in the same boat as OP (I have a device without root for the first time in a long time) and I miss both apps. I do use a pihole+VPN for what adaway does. But there's no real replacement for AFWall/iptables without root. As pointed out, though, you can block individual apps in some modern versions of android. Fortunately, I have that.