this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2025
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Privacy
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This comes from Android Smart Reply, not GBoard: https://developers.google.com/ml-kit/language/smart-reply
It's on-device local processing using AI and it integrates with notifications (not the keyboard). GBoard has no access to your messages
As far as we know. Gboard comes from Google and I don't trust them even if they put it down on paper
You can use GBoard and block telemetry behind a firewall or not giving the app internet access if your OS support that feature. Personnaly I prefer using FOSS such as HeliBoard !
The only realtime active firewall I can find for Android is NetGuard, but because of the way Android works it uses a VPN connection.
I guess what I am saying is that running an active firewall 24/7 on an Android device isn't practical for most people, and blocking connections at the router level only works until you leave home, unless you set up your phone to automatically VPN back to your house when your phone disconnects from your home wi-fi.
But yeah, FUTO and Heliboard are both excellent!
GrapheneOS let you disable internet access permission before installing an app. I think you can disable it on OnePlus too but after installing the app. Probably other manufacters has this feature in their Android flavors. But yes running NetGuard isn't ideal in many scenarios.
Oh right! And I forgot that an app called AfWall+ also blocks network connections on a per-app basis and can be active all the time. There's even a magisk module called 'afwall boot antileak' so that nothing gets network access before AfWall does.
Rethink DNS is both a firewall and a VPN
although, it is kinda buggy, my Mullvad VPN wireguard config in Rethink DNS app failed for some reason and it defaulted to passing the traffic through my real ip 🤦♂️
Futo. It has the best suggestions for me, even if (all) miss some deep customizations
Feel free to decompile them - it's all there in the APK, you don't have to live in doubt.
Applications like that obfuscate the already almost unreadable decompiled code
Obfuscation only makes the effort of decompilation take a bit longer - fundamentally, they are going to be executing the bytecode on your device, and that cannot be hidden from you.
I'm speaking from experience here - I've decompiled multiple APKs before, all containing bytecode that has been obfuscated by ProGuard. It's a bit harder than reading source code, but with some practice it's always possible to figure out what's going on in the end.
You know, assuming they have a background with years of coding experience and have the necessary knowledge to decompile a program and the necessary free time to reverse engineer the gibberish the decompiler spits out only for it all to be for nothing before they even finish because a new version was released.
Who cares ¯_(ツ)_/¯ I'm using a foss keyboard
Thank you! This must be it.
I don't have message content in my notifications, so I don't think it can read any data from there. Maybe Signal just supplies it to this service directly?
Even if message content is hidden from the user, Smart Reply can access it