Those little popups may reveal location, device details, IP address, and more

“App developers can encrypt these messages when they’re stored (in transit they’re protected by TLS) but the associated metadata – the app receiving the notification, the time stamp, and network details – is not encrypted.”

  • @GolfNovemberUniform
    0•2 months ago

    In my opinion there’s absolutely no point in sending notifications through Google. It can be done differently and in a much less overengineered way. Unification doesn’t make sense here. The additional features don’t work in half of the apps now anyways

    • @Fisch
      1•2 months ago

      If you have a better way to do this, I’d really like to hear it. Also, what additional features are you talking about?

      • @GolfNovemberUniform
        1•2 months ago
        1. I’m not a very advanced Android programmer but I know it’s possible to make something like universal instructions and dependency lists (if you want unification which I personally don’t support). Linux has push notifications for years and on Android they work too if the app is running in the background. In my opinion the app should control the contact with its servers. Just make a daemon or something like that so the whole app doesn’t have to stay in memory. Yes it’s messy and battery life will be worse but monopolizing is always bad. Federating Firebase is a good idea too but I personally prefer the other method because it gives more flexibility
        2. Video/music progress bar on Firefox for example
        • @Fisch
          2•2 months ago

          Apps running in the background was how it was done before but it drained a lot of battery, which is why it’s done this way now. Even KDE is implementing UnifiedPush. Things like the Firefox progress bar notification also don’t use this system at all.

          • @GolfNovemberUniform
            1•2 months ago

            Well here it’s a matter of personal preference. For me privacy is more important than battery life and I consider Firebase extremely immoral. It can be different for other people. And thank you for telling about Firefox

            • @Fisch
              2•2 months ago

              But that’s why UnifiedPush exists, an open standard where you can choose what server to use or selfhost it

              • @GolfNovemberUniform
                1•2 months ago

                As I said earlier, this idea is good too. Open push standards are generally the best for efficiency but they can become proprietary or die (usually after getting bought by a big tech company) and even if a fork emerges it may be difficult to switch to it since it’s an important component and 100% compatibility with the previous standard is not always possible. That’s the main problem with unification and monopolization. The open standards can run into severe issues and then everything may collapse. When apps control the notifications, such risk is almost completely mitigated. Even though the described scenario is generally unlike to happen, push notifications have always been very “interesting” for big tech which rises the concerns about the stability of open push standards. Fortunately it’s possible to make an app that can work in both push and standalone modes (e.g. Telegram) which is good I guess

                • @Fisch
                  1•2 months ago

                  The UnifiedPush standard is actually so simple, I don’t think a company could even make that proprietary if they wanted to. You need to keep in mind that it’s not sending the notification contents but just that there is a notification for a specific app.

                  I definitely agree that it’s best when apps support all methods, so UnifiedPush, running in the background and Firebase (that one just for the Google Play build). That way you can use whatever is best for you.