How deeply "de-googled" is MuditaOS K?

Mudita Products
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Greetings everyone :slight_smile:

I am planning on buying a Mudita Kompakt, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that it runs an OS which is a “custom de-googled AOSP” (Android Open Source Project), and should thus be free of Google’s spyware. If you support Mudita you probably already know that smartphones do an enormous amount of hidden spying on users, and Google is a quite big actor. If this sounds new to you, or if you’re eager to learn more, I think this article on app advertisements is a great resource, albeit a bit technical.

So I was wondering whether Mudita OS K is free of every possible connection to Google which was hidden inside AOSP.

Hidden Google connections? What do you mean?

One of the most popular Android-based alternatives, LineageOS, actually “calls home” quite frequently. For example, it does so every time you connect to a Wi-Fi network, because it performs a connectivity check by contacting a Google server (!!!). This means that Google knows your approximate location every time you connect to a Wi-Fi network.
In order to change this and other similar behaviours, one needs to “root the device” (that is, gain administrative privileges) and tinker with advanced settings: this is explained for example in this 2019 reddit post, which was reportedly still up to date in 2023.

Moreover, as this excellent comparison webpage explains, many of the most famous Android-based alternatives for smartphones, such as LineageOS, /e/, and CalyxOS, are not totally google-free. They are of course better than “Stock” Android, but they still have some connections to Google servers or use some Google-related services under the hood, and some of these settings can’t be changed even with administrative privileges!

Questions

For the development team

  • Has the MuditaOS K development team acknowledged and removed/changed all the “hidden” connections to Google servers and Google-related services which were present in AOSP?
  • How well would MuditaOS K score in a comparison such as the one in the page linked above?
  • In case some hidden connections are still present, I’m afraid that they can’t be changed by a user: a dedicated Mudita support webpage clearly states that “It is technically possible for advanced users to access the phone’s bootloader and flash a different OS. However, we advise against doing so and will not provide any official support for such attempts” and that in case one decides to root the device “We won’t be providing the ROM for MuditaOS K”.
    So it seems that in the unfortunate case that Mudita OS K contains some unwanted connections to Google, we can’t do much to improve the situation as users.

For the community

  • Has anyone conducted a network analysis on the Mudita Kompakt?
  • Were you aware of the amount of data collection that goes on in smartphones and apps? What do you think about it?

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As a side note, I do believe in Mudita regardless of the outcome of my questions, and I hope that all my concerns are superfluous :slight_smile:

Thanks for your time!

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Community member here.

Has anyone conducted a network analysis on the Mudita Kompakt?

I ran a pcap on Wi-Fi with disabled mobile data and from what I remember it was only kissing Sentry from time to time, it’s some debugging analytics discussed in another thread here (Mudita kompakt constant rf). I can run it again for a longer while to see if I spot any Google stuff but it doesn’t seem so.

Were you aware of the amount of data collection that goes on in smartphones and apps? What do you think about it?

Debug-like diagnostics is mentioned in one of those policies you never read and always agree and people got a bit upset when it has been realized. Opt-out option is en route to satisfy MK user base.

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