/tech/ - Technology★

Whenever you connect to a WiFi network all versions of Android (including Cyanogen et al) ping Google servers in order to determine whether or not it has internet access. In order to get rid of this you have to edit the URL out of the source and build the ROM yourself.

You are still being tracked by GSM towers.

>>1047821

That's dumb, why doesn't Cyanog, Lineag, Copprh, etc. run their own ping domains?

That's what most Linux distros do.

Even if AOSP has the option hidden away somewhere, how did they not bother to change it in all these years??

>>1047837

If you're gonna ping something that often, the phone should come with a list of top 1000 websites and ping a random 3 of them every time.

>>1047837

I guess pings aren't that big threat to privacy.

Google probably receives many of such pings every minute from same IP so they can hardly track you unless you have public IP.

Btw forget about copperhead, bad guys took over it and fired main dev, it is not safe anymore.

>>1047837

Android is fucking huge and infested with Google botnet, same shit as Chromium.

No, Android is fucked at the core, see permissions.

>>1047821

That is not a concern, pinging google is one of the best ways to check connectivity in fact.

>>1047837

why ping anything. its just a waste of resources and good way to spy the user because the latest ip and possibly other identifying data is always logged somewhere

>>1047821

You can block the host using hosts file and AdAway. LineageOS is also connecting to the time.android.com and even www.google.com, I think. I have 4 or 5 domains blocked which LineageOS tried to connect to in my first hour of using it, before installing any apps other than AdAway.

>>1048174

This. I've blocked the domain and my phone works just fine. It has an x and says "no internet" but I can live with that.

>>1048160

>pinging google is one of the best ways to check connectivity in fact.

It would be better if you could change the domain you're pinging to in the developer settings and the domain of the time sync service.

>>1047832

cryptos.im

Or find any sim provider from one of the many countries where ID isn't required for activation that has favorable international/roaming rates.

>>1048174

>why ping anything

Because it's part of the core Android network APIs. NetworkCapabilities#hasTransport

>>1048272

>time.android.com

NTP config is located at /frameworks/base/core/res/res/values/config.xml

<string> element with name: config_ntpServer

Change it and recompile.

And just block Google in your host file

/system/core/rootdir/etc/hosts

>>1048272

>It would be better if you could change the domain you're pinging to in the developer settings

The point of pinging google is that google has ridiculous uptime (so false negatives are rare), and that traffic to google is both enormous and spread out, so a few more pings don't make you stand out.

If you were to ping mydubmsite.com or something, you'd make yourself stand out by being one of the few people regularly pinging that site: the domain would still be visible over https too, to make things worse.

Being able to change the time sync is more reasonable.

>>1048365

What is a full list to add to the hosts file, besides google.com and gstatic.com

>>1048388

I can ping to my local site then. It's irrelevant, I'd rather ping something that isn't owned by a big and corrupted corporation.

>>1048160

Or just fucking ping whoever leased your device an address with DHCP or an address that you define.

>>1048405

>leased your device

The fuck am I reading? How is it your device if it's leased? Why'd you have LineageOS installed on a company/3rd party device?

>>1048411

Yer a fuckin tard m8

>>1048400

>I can ping to my local site then.

Local network might work while internet connection does not, so that's not acceptable.

>It's irrelevant, I'd rather ping something that isn't owned by a big and corrupted corporation.

You're pinging them, not giving them pageviews or money.

>>1048405

What's the advantage of doing that?

>>1048415

Pinging is metadata of your activity. Can be used against you.

>Local network might work

If you use a (((SIM))) card instead of WiFi then it's fine. If you host your site on a 2nd network or if you're away from home then it's fine. I don't see a disadvantage in picking a site to ping yourself.

>>1048414

>doesn't buy his phones

>calls other people tards

>>1048392

https://github.com/jmdugan/blocklists/blob/master/corporations/google/non_localized

You might want to comment out youtube.com, www.youtube.com and i.ytimg.com if you want newpipe to work

>>1048417

>Pinging is metadata of your activity. Can be used against you.

That's why you ping google (lots of people do it) instead of pinging a smaller site (very few people do it).

The biggest issue I can see is that now one more third party can figure out when you have internet access and when you don't, but your ISP can already do that and they're easier to get logs from.

>If you use a (((SIM))) card instead of WiFi then it's fine. If you host your site on a 2nd network or if you're away from home then it's fine.

Sure, you can work around it, but it's still a hacky solution that shouldn't go to production, and it also makes you a bit easier to track by anyone snooping on the path.

>>1048415

Ping cloudflare, you will connect to their servers eventually.

>>1048415

why would you even need to do that? i know when i have internet connectivity enabled and i can see it in the program if it cant connect to something. no need for tracking pings.

>>1048365

The default for the hosts editor I am using is /system/etc/hosts, which produces no result. Should I modify it to your path? I don't know. LineageOS

>>1048604

Adding that I am testing by attempting to access google.com in Icecat Mobile to see if it fails