• SMillerNL@lemmy.world
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        15 hours ago

        This is IOS only owing to Android play store collecting a device identifier; the creator wanted complete anonymity

        Quote from some other place people were discussing it. Unfortunately no source on it.

        EDIT: https://www.iceblock.app/android

        • vala@lemmy.world
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          16 hours ago

          It’s 1000% possible to use android apps without involving Google in any way.

          • SirQuack@feddit.nl
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            1 day ago

            It’s not about the store, it’s about the notification.

            As mentioned in the Time article:

            the app is not available on Android because it “requires a device ID in order to send push notifications, which requires a user account and a password.”

            • TFO Winder@lemmy.ml
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              1 day ago

              Its totally possible to send notification without having user account, see firebase.

            • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world
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              1 day ago

              You don’t need a user account or password to receive a push notification.

              You just need to have the app installed. The app can be configured by the developer to receive push notifications.

                • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world
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                  15 hours ago

                  How do you suppose APNS knows which device to deliver the notification to?

                  Something that… links it to the device? Like, a unique ID that Apple can identify?

                  It sounds like he thinks HE has to store this information, which is simply incorrect. It will obviously be stored by Google in Firebase, and by Apple wherever that gets stored, but HE does not have to store it.

                  I write apps for a living. I have users subscribe and unsubscribe to channels, and at no point is there a user account with password involved in either iOS or Android. If you want the memory of which channels they have subscribed to to persist across uninstall/reinstalls or different devices, then yes, but for an app like this you don’t need to persist those settings.

                  At any point the government could subpoena who’s received pushes (or at least, who’s registered to) from both Google and Apple.

                  • SMillerNL@lemmy.world
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                    15 hours ago

                    I’m not the developer, but I do also write app backends for a living so I know there is some nuance that you’re skipping over in your response. But if you have a way to do this completely anonymous on android I’d suggest offering help to the developer who made this.

                    Something that… links it to the device? Like, a unique ID that Apple can identify?

                    APNS tokens are linked to the app install and renew on a certain timeline. Already making them not exactly the same as a device identifier.

          • SMillerNL@lemmy.world
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            1 day ago

            Thanks, but I’m not the developer of the app so that’s not really relevant for me.

            • The Quuuuuill@slrpnk.net
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              1 day ago

              i don’t think this other commenter was calling you out. i think they were just bringing up a point of discussion that’s relevant to the point you brought up

              • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
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                1 day ago

                It has to do with receiving notifications from the app in a privacy-preserving way. Unless the app is running with a server connection 24/7 (RIP battery life) you need to rely on the OS to deliver notifications.

                • Ghoelian@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                  1 day ago

                  You don’t, there’s privacy respecting ways of delivering notifications in android.

                  Also, a 24/7 connection to a server isn’t nearly as bad as you might think.

                  The connection isn’t active the whole time, it only uses any significant amount of battery if there’s actually data being sent or received. You likely already have quite a few of them anyway, how do you think systems normally listen for push notifications?

                  Besides all that, I read in other comments that the privacy issue was the device id firebase needs. Obviously apple also needs some kind of device id, otherwise how do they know where the notifications are going?

                  Did some searching, yup apple also needs a unique identifier:

                  When it’s time to send a notification, you generate a request that contains the notification data and a unique identifier for the user’s device.

                  From https://developer.apple.com/documentation/usernotifications/setting-up-a-remote-notification-server

                  • SMillerNL@lemmy.world
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                    15 hours ago

                    Apple notification identifiers are unique to an app install and regularly change though, so it’s hardly a device identifier.