Privacy @lemmy.ml

11mo ago

New Advertisement and Internet connection permissions for Simple SMS Messenger on Google Play Store...

Title

158 comments

For everyone still using Simple Tools apps, switch to Fossify it's a fork that has all that crap removed
- So far I only see Gallery, File Manager, and Calendar on IzzyOnDroid. Hopefully SMS and Contacts will be added soon.
  
  dialer app is released too.
  
  https://github.com/FossifyOrg/SMS-Messenger
  https://github.com/FossifyOrg/Contacts
  They are still being worked on
  
  You can use Obtainium instead of F-droid. You can install Izzy, FD, or even better, direct from GitHub and other repos instead.
- Wait what happened I am lost? Are they bad apps now?
  
  Yea. They got bought by a bad company.
- Link for others:
  https://github.com/FossifyOrg

Guys.
Dont install FOSS apps from the Playstore. Use F-Droid (F-Droid Basic if you are on an updated OS)
Thanks.
- A personal recommendation is to use Droidify, it's just a great F-droid front-end.
  You can download the APK here: https://f-droid.org/packages/com.looker.droidify/
  
  Droidify is the best! Best performance and UI of all compatible clients, and even handles 3rd repos that wont load on others.
  
  Hey thanks for this! I used f droid for a while but was always meh on the UI and how clunky it is. I used this for a bit and I already like it waaaay more. Cheers!
  
  When I last used it it was somehow unstable. Maybe that has changed.
- You're welcome.
- deleted
  
  F-Droid basic uses modern Android Libraries and modern Apps can be updated without interaction.
  Thats because Android has a Package manager that uses APKSigner signatures to verify the app. That is Private/Public Key authentication, so its pretty sure the App comes from the developers.
  Only if the Signature matches the App gets an Update. So there is no danger in using automatic updates.
  Making F-Droid Basic "battery unrestricted" will help.
  
  Droidify can do both: Session Installer and Shizuku: https://github.com/Droid-ify/client
- Yeah. I usually go to the Playstore to buy out all the In-App purchases and support development, but this is really discouraging.
  
  True. But F-Droid has Donation links everywhere. I prefer that over buying, idk why.
  ~~Oh, found out at least F-Droid Basic doesnt display the links! Thats not nice~~ it has
- I agree that F-Droid is great!
  What I usually do is to buy the pro version on Google Play and install it later on F-Droid.
  On the other hand I don't see anything wrong for non tech people to install FOSS apps from the Play Store. The apps are still FOSS
  
  Not exactly. When building for play store release - google injects their tracking into the binary.

They were sold to ZippoApps, who specializes in adding crapware to apps.
What else would we expect anyway...

Hmm, this app is also in the F-Droid repository with its old outfit.

Luckily it got forked : https://github.com/FossifyOrg/SMS-Messenger
- There are a bunch of those "simple" apps on F-droid, such as Simple Contacts, Simple Calendar, and Simple Camera. I cannot find Simple Gallery in F-droid any more, it seems to have been replaced by its Fossify equivalent already.
  In light of this, it could be an idea to check if you have any of those apps installed and consider replacing them with an alternative. I was using Simple Contacts until now (only listed as "Contacts" in my apps), so I guess it's time to make some changes.
  
  try to install FossifyOrg gallery and dialer via obtainium who pulls releases directly off github.
  
  I have several of the apps installed. I went through and checked the permissions, and they're still pretty sparse. The play store didn't mention anything about updates, but a few of them, like Notes, seemed to be disabled.
  Am I just a version behind or something?
  
  Simple Gallery got removed when people found it had non-FOSS Google libraries linked in while checking the Fossify rebrand/rework, just export your preferences and import them on Fossify Gallery (BE AWARE: There's a bug in some launchers when an app uses custom icons like Simple Gallery and Fossify do, which breaks them, you'll notice it if you import the preferences and you can no longer launch the app and have to uninstall/reinstall it to be able to even launch it again, in that case edit the exported Simple Gallery preferences and remove the icon line)

Damn, how did I even manage to miss that Simple apps have been bought off? I've used them for years and am still subscribed to the reddit community...
Some people suggest the action could possibly be deemed illegal, by breaking the licence the project was made under.
https://github.com/SimpleMobileTools/General-Discussion/issues/241#issuecomment-1837452672 - the dev's explanation, and replies which discuss the legal issues
https://old.reddit.com/r/fossdroid/comments/1893j2p/simple_mobile_tools_is_about_to_be_acquired/
- Fossify has many of them, Gallery, Files and Calendar (the main ones) are already on F-Droid!
  sms: deku sms, way better
  phone: GrapheneOSses AOSP dialer, dont know if you get that seperately, or Welefon
  music: so many alternatives, Vanilla Music is nice
  keyboard: florisboard, openboard
  phone: lol Pixel with GrapheneOS
  Its sad that the community did not donate enough. People dont care...
  
  deku sms
  I haven't used this, but it seems to do way more than the average person know how to use for an SMS app
  Even in the readme, it says:
  The technical functionalities of the app are currently not user friendly, which would be updated with the help of PRs and issues. The reason for the lack of user friendliness is solely based on the app aiming to be as customizable as possible. Users should be able to configure the app to their custom cloud servers without being tied into using specific providers.
  
  To add to this, Fossify just released their phone app. It hasn't hit the repos yet, but it's on their github.
  
  fcitx on Android is a pretty good keyboard experience now too.

RIP Simple mobile apps. You were amazing while you lasted.
- there are forks of code before the sellout and the releases are already out. use fdroid or obtainium. https://github.com/fossifyorg/
  
  Yeee, I use the F-Droid version, so they're clean.
  Still a shame though...

"have full network access" BIG YIKES
- I mean it makes sense for error reporting. Lots of apps automatically report errors so that they can be detected easily, which would require internet access.
  
  that kinda makes me think google should to a log retrieval and storage api which can retrieve and send logs to developers.

I'm really curious about the amount of money exchanged. It must have been an enormous amount in order to do a "I'd even sell my mom for that" and don't feel dirty
- the developer, and this isnt exaggeration, does not understand gpl v3. he literally got confused when people told him he had no right to sell contributed code. you can see for yourself in the github discussions
  
  You can sell GPL code. Even if you aren't the author. What you must do is share the code with those customers though.
  
  I'm pretty sure what he sold was not the code but access to this play store account so that the new owner can push updated version to his current users.
- There were multiple reports about sleazy companies reaching out to developers of popular apps and Chrome addons and offering them money for their accounts. The money is really good but there's still a lot of devs that can say 'no'. They will just use to track some people, it's not a completely new business that will grow and earn them money like Instagram or something.

Throwback to when they announced releasing a simple phone. Fun times.
- That was amazing. Someone linked to alibaba where you could buy the same 4? Year old phone for something like $120USD. Someone else dredged up a weird eastern European connection for the 'FOSS' OS. And they promised support, which ended when you bought the pos.

It has begun
(ps install the fork versions of the simple mobile tools suite, its called fossify)

Wow, the new owners enshittified those apps really fast.

Play store version is already infected. There was a buyout of SMT apps.
- Oh, I see. They even stopped sponsoring Linux Mint, which is how I found SMT.
  Edit: They used to be a gold sponsor: https://web.archive.org/web/20220201203412/https://linuxmint.com/sponsors.php
  Which means $1,000/month.
  
  how could smt afford to donaye 1000 a month???

So it begins

i hope these zippo fucks get sued by everyone who contributed. bastards are doing dropshipping but with malware pretty much

sigh. Most people will just accept the new default permissions without blinking an eye. They're taking advantage of people's ignorance.
- You overestimate most peoples tech skills. They will never know because they have auto-updates activated.

Hopefully fossify will release fossify messenger soon. Fossify's a project forking all the simple apps

Yeah, not suspicious at all.

Oof, those permissions alone scream proprietary spyware. There's no more speculation here, it has officially become enshittified.
- that's because that's what happened. Simple mobile tools got bought out by a company known for exactly that: putting ads and spyware in apps
  thankfully since its open source, there's already a fork in the works called Fossify
  
  That's why I love open source

sounds like an uninstall

And here we go... 🪦

why would you want or need a separate SMS/MMS application on your phone in the first place?
- You don't like the Google app
  You don't want to use Google apps out of principle
  You're using a version of Android where Google apps are not installed by default, so you need to install something
  
  Well yeah, I didn't consider those points, especially the last with android distros not all come with gapps.
- Default app sucks.
- I use OpenContacts, it has its own database so nothing else can access it.
- You might want more control of how the app looks. Or maybe an app has some UI features you like.
  I used Textra for years, but did eventually switch back to the default android messenger when I started encountering issues.
  
  What issues? I have used for.. I don't even know. Feels like since my first smart phone. Never had issues.
- For Google photos/Contacts in particular, the gallery app was good because it would constantly ask to sync photos to the cloud.
- I was hoping more people would use RCS but I guess SMS will probably be the old fax machine in the future.

Did they forget to track the google maps history? someone should submit a PR

Tibor betrayed us and sold the Simple Apps suite to a sleazy adtech company a while ago, there were multiple posts on this suggesting replacements, then one of the most active devs forked it into Fossify, removing all the branding and references to the original, work is still ongoing on this, already some of the apps have been rereleased, here's a handy matrix of the progress on the rerelease from somebody on Github
- Wow, I never heard of that before. Is there any replacement for simple gallery, before they screw with it?
  
  Did you click on the link in the comment you replied to?

En-what-iffication everyone?

Simple Contacts and SMS were the only simple apps I've been using. Fortunately I've found Connect You, which does both. So goodbye simple
- Thanks! Needed a replacement for Simple Contacts after this, Connect You seems like a much better app anyway. :)
  
  Seconded, graphene's contacts app isn't the best, I'm gonna try this out.
- The Fossify forks of simple apps should be coming soon too, if you want to stick with something familiar. They've already released their calendar, gallery, and file manager, the rest should be ready pretty soon.
  
  Also the Phone app from Fossify has been released. Fossify Phone. Use Obtainium to download the Phone app.
- Does Connect You work for you? I can send messages, but if someone replies, the notification only shows their number instead of the name I saved them as, and the reply doesn't show up in the chat itself
  
  Yeah, it does seem to work for me perfectly. Neither of the issues are present for me

Will this be pushed to the F-droid version? Only downloaded from there.
- It seems F-droid won't accept the new versions, as the Suite has been acquired over a month ago and they haven't accepted any new versions, all Simple apps I've checked haven't been updated for 3-4 months; in fact, I can't find Simple Gallery there anymore at all.
  The ads are probably against F-droid's TOS.
  
  They probably removed gallery since fossify galery is on fdroid now
  
  I found simple gallery though. It even showed me that I had it installed as it should.
- I don't think so but might be though.
  
  Can't include any proprietary code, so using the google sdk would invalidate it I believe.

!softwaregore@lemmy.world

I'm just using the default GrapheneOS SMS app, but it's concerning seeing the number of these FOSS apps lately adding major privacy invasive permission changes. Are there a few big companies buying them up for a quick buck, or what?
- Yup, ZippoApps just bought this one. It’s a company that basically buys apps then pumps them full of invasive (bordering on spyware) bloat to capture the data from existing users. It’s a typical corporate strategy, where they buy a popular app, extract every single cent they can from it, then discard it once it’s a shell of its former self, for the next popular app.
- That's exactly what happened.
- I'm just speculating here, but I've seen where app developers pull in a framework for a feature and it comes with all sorts of hidden gems since the framework was developed by a large corporation. The small development team now needs to consider writing their own framework (an established anti-pattern), find another (that may have the same problems or be less mature, etc) or include the privacy invading code and plan to replace it in a future release (which never happens because users want new features and the privacy concerned users have left).
  
  Not even close. This has nothing to do with SimpleApps.
  A crappy company bought them from the original creator and maintainer. This company is well known for buying mildly popular apps and inserting ads in them for monetisation.
  People who downloaded them from F-Droid should be fine tho.

Absolutely Haram.

I hope the money was worth tanking the good will of the brand. I wish I could code successful apps and the undermine my principles for meager amounts of money and fuck off into the woods

Already migrated to Deku SMS

Shit, anyone have a good calendar on fdroid?
- Fossify Calendar, which is a fork of Simple.
  
  export settings and events from simple calendar, import settings and events to fossify and voilà.
- etar maybe?
  
  Etar is great!
  
  I'll check it out, thanks! I'm on fossify for now.
- Etar on f-droid

https://f-droid.org/packages/com.afkanerd.deku/

Not really the focus here, but Google could really improve those listings by providing some guidance as to what permissions are actually required for certain tasks.
I am not certain I would know if am SMS program needs full Internet access or not.
(I get in this instance everything added is bad.)
- strangely, you need "internet" for mms so, yes, sms app needs full internet access

ugh.
I think a good way to avoid this for any other app in the future is to just use alternativea found on fdroid.
... And disregard the rest :D
- A fork is currently being worked on, called fossify.
  For now we have fossify gallery and calendar

Hey op, how did u get that screenshot? My gplay didn't have the new tags 'new' 😥 http://0x0.st/H0pq.png
- Interesting, maybe it's because of the phone. I'm using pixel 6a with GrapheneOS
  
  Lol me too, I swear. Thanks for reply . I'm in the land of oz. So I assume ur in america. Different laws Im gonna assume.

I just went into Droidify to make sure all my simple apps stopped auto-updating and they all already had ignored new versions checked. Is this something I did or is this something Droidify did or is this something the f-droid repository did? If it's the one of the latter two that's pretty cool.

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.moez.QKSMS

When I saw some serious issues with Clock app (from Simple Apps), I deleted and never used it again. So many apps and so many bugs, lol.

158 comments