alt Hacker NewsI don't understand why internet access isn't opt-in for apps. Preventing exfiltration would prevent much of this harm, and most apps don't have any need to access the internet in the first place. Why am I creating a GE account to read my blood pressure? At least I know it's taking advantage of me. But this is clearly abusive behavior
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AOSP has network as a regular permission for apps, so on Lineage at least (idk about Graphene as I haven't used it) you can disable network for any app including google play services etc. I have no idea why most phone companies remove this permission from their roms but android itself supports it perfectly fine.
GrapheneOS lets you restrict the internet access of any app on install.
But yes, agreed it should be everywhere.
Better yet, a tool like Little Snitch should be built into the OS. Give me a detailed log of every network requests, to which domains, with what data.