Atemu

It's fine to as that sort of question; I wouldn't say it doesn't "belong in this community". That doesn't mean it makes sense to care about this which is what I wanted to point out.

That argument ignores that you need an account to upload pictures in most places (including here); you're already identified.

Ignoring that, while it is technically true that the Android version adds a data point and therefore identifying bits of information, you'd still be one of 10^5 - 10^6 people in the same time zone with the same device/version combo unless you're using some extremely uncommon device or are in an extremely unpopulated time zone. Compared to user agent and IP address, this is extremely little information and I'd argue quite useless without. If you need such strongly identifying data to even make any use of this, I don't think it's worth worrying about.

Besides, if you control a forum or other site that allows picture uploads and wanted to identify a user, there are so much better methods than any of this.

You linked FUD.

If you have the Mossad targetting you, that's an extreme edge-case which has no place in an argument about online privacy.

Not sure it's positive; given the US' asinine privacy laws, I don't see this going anywhere.

The software version doesn’t just say “Android 14” either. It looks very specific.

Yeah, it's likely a rather precise Android version.

So what? What does the Android version you use reveal about you? What part of your threat model does it violate?

Here, you can have the exact version of my phone: lineage_FP4-userdebug 13 TQ3A.230901.001 2023111915 test-keys. Can you identify me now?

(In my case, you theoretically actually could because my version is unique because I homebrew my Android but if you didn't know that, it'd look like any other FP4 with [email protected] on it which is why I'm not at all worried.)

No matter how you look at it, this is not an acceptable way for a device to behave, with no way to change it in settings.

Adding useful metadata that reveals no actual data about the user is a great feature and not worth adding a setting for; especially not in the UI.

I didn't know about this before but I'll look out for that whenever sends a bug report of a mobile app with screenshot as it might include the device and Android version used which is super useful info to have when troubleshooting.

Is this all the metadata it adds?

Because the information you've shown here is not at all sensitive. It's just the timestamp, Android version and time zone.

Sooo Indian authorities tried to reach out to PM directly, PM didn't comply because India has no authority whatsoever over a Swiss company and PM had to ask the Swiss authorities to go tell the Indian ones to use the proper channels instead?

If you're using containers for everything anyways, the distro you use doesn't much matter.

If Ubuntu works for you and switching away would mean significant effort, I see no reason to switch outside of curiosity.

What @[email protected] mentioned does not require a targetted attack.

The operating system is explicitly not virtualised with containers.

What you've described is closer to paravirtualisation where it's still a separate operating system in the guest but the hardware doesn't pretend to be physical anymore and is explicitly a software interface.

If you want to be anywhere near "reasonably anonymous" on the internet, you must use TOR browser.

A regular browser is so full of functionality and settings that make you stand out that using a VPN proxy or not hardly matters.