this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2023
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Privacy
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What is your justification for this claim?
I use F-Droid as my main app store, and while I trust most of the apps on there and haven't found any asking for permissions they don't need, I wouldn't claim any Android app store is more secure than the Play Store. This post goes into technical detail comparing the two: https://privsec.dev/posts/android/f-droid-security-issues/ - Note: emphasis in the conclusion mentioning that these criticisms may or may not really matter, depending on your threat model. (as an aside - if anyone here doesn't know what a threat model is, determine yours before participating in any privacy community or you'll just end up with useless paranoia)
That said, I would guess that Play Store may have a higher risk of malicious apps only due to the fact that there are far, far, far, far more potential victims, and being the default app store, victims less likely to be technically experienced enough to notice false apps. So, almost all attackers will probably aim for the most targets and only bother targeting the Play Store, despite the extra challenges.
[tagging @[email protected] ]
You should make up your own mind. Don't be a puppet to some guy online who wrote an article
I did make up my mind, and both I and the article both explicitly emphasise people to apply the facts it presents to their own circumstances. What you just wrote is very condescending and insulting.
Well my intention was not to offend you. However, I still firmly believe that using a proprietary app store run by google is not as good as a app store that takes libre software as a priority.
Sorry if you interpreted as a insult. I just don't like when people blindly follow others. I am not sure if that's some you are doing but its something I see a lot of. I'm not perfect either and I probably should work on my wording to make it less harsh.
It's alright, and just to be clear, I do use and support F-Droid because I personally think it is better and suits my privacy goals. I didn't mean to sound as if I wasn't supporting it, just that it's a bit more nuanced when talking about the security side: like almost everything in security, it's more complex than one took being universally better than another.