😮💨Play Integrity is the biggest Stranglehold Google has on Android, and it fucking sucks that so many (including my company) use it without asking any questions, regardless of bad reviews on the play store by users that use security focused OSes (like Graphene OS)
I HATE IT!
Lots will not leave play store reviews.
in the case of the apps my company do, there is a high volume of people in my country that use that app thus its very likely that peeps are leaving reviews.
Yes of course
Doesnt LineageOS have a way to block Play integrity entirely? Most apps dont care at all if you say you dont support it at all, rather than telling them the actual value
GrapheneOS does that
Check out RestlessOS maybe, though GSI so no kernel or firmware updates
Turn it off in MicroG. GrapheneOS isn’t John MicroG.
What?
GrapheneOS does that on per-app basis I guess as part of the sandbox not sure
That is an OS thing and not inside play services
Fuck your Play Integrity. Fortunately I use no app that needs that shit.
There is nothing to do with me about that. Fuck yourself, bro!
He was talking to Google, not you
He said “your”.
Does Google Play integrity belong to you?
No, that’s why I wonder why he is messing with me.
English is not your first language, I’m guessing? Or you have a diagnosis that you interpret things literally? They didn’t mean you as in “OP”, but a general “you”, or aimed at the “providers” of “play integrity”.
It’s fine, it wasn’t aimed at you, we promise.
It’s poorly worded, but a plausible interpretation is “The play integrity you’re talking about can go fuck itself.”
Lol. Classic internet discourse above… where the fuck did this conversation end up.
Lol I thought OP was making a joke. I have no idea how they could think I meant them
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_we
There’s also a “royal you” which is when you refer to the general populace or an object with ‘you’ like I did in this sentence. Or, like they did in theirs
uh, hi, google…?
No, u
He didn’t mean you. He’s just not good with words.
Whether you install a custom ROM or not:
Don’t use Google.
Correct. Lineage OS only, F-Droid only. Nothing G-related at all whatsoever. No need.
I have a Motorola I probably need to do this to, especially if Google is about to lock down against using F-Droid and stuff.
What a huge freaking inconvenience. When am I gonna find the time?
But I’m hoping there’s builds for something that will just work and not be like “Oh BTW the camera doesn’t work.” It seems a lot harder to find alternate ROMs these days if you’re not on a Samsung or Pixel.
It’s gotten so complicated too because they keep adding more and more anti-user layers. I like messing with stuff but I don’t want to be forced to hack my daily driver! Ugh.
Yeah, that’s one thing that kind of killed me. My One+has a great camera, but it’s mediocre with the stock camera on LOS. Thankfully open camera and libre camera help. Check them out in Fdroid first which is what I should’ve done.
I’m going to see it I can take the APKs for the One+ apps from APKPure and strip the need for Google out of them so they’ll work in my phone again. I suck at writing code, but reading and modding I can do better.
The only thing that you need play integrity for is banking apps.
I recommend buying a 50$ smartphone solely for banking and leaving it at home.Maybe a silly question, but can you not do it in a web browser? It’s what I’ve been doing.
Different countries have different systems. In Sweden, our “banking app” is not really for doing bank tasks, it’s everywhere in society as a 2FA app. Buying a bus ticket, booking a medical appointment, paying bills, logging in to various government and non-government web sites, signing a contract, etc. They all use the banking 2FA app. It’s really really difficult to have a normal life without this app.
It’s always hilarious when I see Europeans complaining about the U.S. government when their own does shit like this.
The U.K. doesn’t have jury trials anymore [for “less serious” crimes]…
As a swede not living in sweden (so I don’t have a Swedish bank account) it is literally bureaucracy hell to do anything in sweden for me.
And I live in France, with its insane bureaucracy.
It does not require Play Integrity though… yet.
True. I was more talking about “banking apps” being more than seeing the balance of my accounts in a web browser instead of using their app. BankID is used for much more than that.
This also works in abrowser. At least in Finland.
Then we have different systems. How do you prove that you are you online in Finland? Do you use usernames+passwords or some 2FA ID system?
The system works through a series of redirects. Say if I have to prove my identity to some government website, it offers different authentication methods, one of which is my bank. I 2F authenticate with my bank the way we agreed, then it redirects me back to the originating site.
Different banks offer different systems for 2FA. Most also offer an app. Google services are not always required. If you don’t want to use an app, there are ways; in addition to username/password, usually a SMS for strong auth, or some code from a database that I have for weak auth.
No app, OS-independent.
If my bank forced my to use an app that only works with google services, I’d change banks. As I did, actually.
That’s actually very similar to what we have, minus the option to change to a different bank, since all our banks are using the same 2FA app and there’s not really any other options or at least not better options. This is a very bad system, building our society on a proprietary app from a private company, but… that’s where we are unfortunately. Actually, recently our government has realized this and is developing a neutral state controlled 2FA app, but it will only run under android and iOS, so… yeah.
Also Kivra being the only way to get lönespecifikation from some communes (Skellefteå) unless accessing the intraservice from approved connection, then accessing the schedule app, then printing the lönespec
How exactly do you 2FA with the bank without the bank’s 2FA app?
Source, from Finland.
In finland there is also Mobile authentication that is as strong as bank authentication, though I’m not sure how exactly it works. You need to activate it with your operator
One of the two banks I use forces you to use their app for 2FA. I despise this practice but I’m also way too lazy to close those accounts. Luckily Scotiabank app doesn’t use Play Integrity or whatever and works on GrapheneOS. The other bank I just use web browser yep.
For most other stuff MicroG works. It’s still google but at arms length. I use it for Youtube Morphe modded adblock/sponsorblock app and stuff like that.
That way if your phone is stolen you’re locked out of your bank! Genius!
What if you contact them and tell them you’re not using a smartphone anymore? Surely they have another option for old people who don’t have smartphones.
Good question, I should try.
Unfortunately, at least in my country, it’s getting harder and harder to do banking through a plain old webbrowser. Apps are being pushed hard and afaik all of them use the Google Lock-In API in their Android app. Alternatively I could switch to iPhone, but having had the displeasure of experiencing their crappy hardware and even worse service I’d rather cut my balls off than ever dealing with Apple again.
Many banks nowadays at least try hard to push you to use some kind of app method to verify transactions, in place of other TAN methods. Though my main bank still lets me use an old-fashioned chip-TAN device, not all banks would do that.
I’m on Graphene OS, and luckily all my other banking apps work on there. I’ve got them isolated in another user profile, seperated from my daily use apps, so only the banking profile gets Google Play services enabled.
And that’s what we need more of, not appification.
The app is so much more convenient, but it’s something I’m wiling to sacrifice to avoid Google.
The app is so much more convenient, but it’s something I’m wiling to sacrifice to avoid Google.
Why leave at home? I have got a whole ass computer I can do banking on when at home.
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Not only banking. I cannot commute to work without it. The most convenient way of commuting is an app Mälardalstrafik, and it will not even show search results without play integrity.
On Fairphone you can re-lock the bootloader. I installed eOS and my banking apps from G**gle Play work perfectly
May be OS specific. I tried to re-lock the bootloader with LineageOS on my Fairphone 6+, and it failed with an error that the data was corrupted. It was my first time loading a custom ROM in probably 15+ years, so it definitely could have been user error, but not a guaranteed feature either way.
damn, i ve installed /e/os on my fp6 , setup all the apps and now apparently relocking thé boot loader will erase all data 😭
Try using the backup tool. Save the backup on an external storage. Relock the bootloader, restore the data.
Not sure it will restore 100% of the data, but it can help.
Yeah, it’s best to re-lock right after the installation. that’s the stuff you need to research before you install a new OS… :/
Wtf is play integrity and should I care if I use CalyxOS?
It’s a google API that apps can use to check if they’re running on a verified system, and unless google graciously allows, alternative OSs will always fail the check, which can make some apps unusable. For example many banking apps do this in the name of security.
I have no idea whether my phone passes it or not, everything seems to work.
I wish we could still adjust everything as easily as it once used to be. I just want access to the entire OS. I understand why they limit it. But they should leave an option for users to access it. I bought a Poco (Xiaomi) earlier this year and it absolutely horrible. The quick settings menu and the notification shade are separated and there’s no way to have them in one view. It also does this thing where it will wipe anything you don’t use for 2 seconds in an effort to conserve energy and memory. But you’re constantly restarting apps that way and using more energy while making it slow to use. Not to mention you can’t fill in forms while switching between apps. I also don’t understand why Google neutered the recents screen ( I know it’s been like this for around 10yrs). What’s the point of the recents screen if you can’t lock anything in it and you can only see four apps in it. And the horizontal not even stacked view is annoying as hell.
On rooted phone you can use modules like HMA-OSS, ReZygisk, PIF and other tweaks depending on your root method and it can be easily bypassed, I managed to bypass that on my Magisk rooted Pixel.
SafetyNet can be bypassed
Would MicroG help here?
