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movq
www.uninformativ.de
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Another thing that doesn’t work anymore after blocking network traffic from my Android phone: Some push notifications.

I run a Matrix server for our family. I use “FluffyChat” on my phone. Traffic from the phone to my Matrix server is allowed and chatting in FluffyChat works.

But I don’t get any notifications anymore on new messages.

So, what’s going on here? Does FluffyChat, which only really needs to talk to my own server, rely on some cloud service *for notifications*? Seriously? 🤔 How does that work, does this cloud service see all my notifications or what?

Anyone around who did app development on Android? Can you shed some light on this?
movq
www.uninformativ.de
View Thread
Another thing that doesn’t work anymore after blocking network traffic from my Android phone: Some push notifications.

I run a Matrix server for our family. I use “FluffyChat” on my phone. Traffic from the phone to my Matrix server is allowed and chatting in FluffyChat works.

But I don’t get any notifications anymore on new messages.

So, what’s going on here? Does FluffyChat, which only really needs to talk to my own server, rely on some cloud service *for notifications*? Seriously? 🤔 How does that work, does this cloud service see all my notifications or what?

Anyone around who did app development on Android? Can you shed some light on this?
movq
www.uninformativ.de
View Thread
Another thing that doesn’t work anymore after blocking network traffic from my Android phone: Some push notifications.

I run a Matrix server for our family. I use “FluffyChat” on my phone. Traffic from the phone to my Matrix server is allowed and chatting in FluffyChat works.

But I don’t get any notifications anymore on new messages.

So, what’s going on here? Does FluffyChat, which only really needs to talk to my own server, rely on some cloud service *for notifications*? Seriously? 🤔 How does that work, does this cloud service see all my notifications or what?

Anyone around who did app development on Android? Can you shed some light on this?
movq
www.uninformativ.de
View Thread
Another thing that doesn’t work anymore after blocking network traffic from my Android phone: Some push notifications.

I run a Matrix server for our family. I use “FluffyChat” on my phone. Traffic from the phone to my Matrix server is allowed and chatting in FluffyChat works.

But I don’t get any notifications anymore on new messages.

So, what’s going on here? Does FluffyChat, which only really needs to talk to my own server, rely on some cloud service *for notifications*? Seriously? 🤔 How does that work, does this cloud service see all my notifications or what?

Anyone around who did app development on Android? Can you shed some light on this?
aelaraji
aelaraji.com
View Thread
@movq can't Ntfy help with that? That's how I get my signal notifications (I think).

This guide may me of help...
Good luck!
movq
www.uninformativ.de
View Thread
@aelaraji It would appear so. 🤔 (I’m too lazy to set that up, though, I rather just don’t use notifications. They’re not *that* important in this case.)

I was not aware that I needed a cloud service for something as (seemingly) simple as local app notifications. 😳
movq
www.uninformativ.de
View Thread
@aelaraji It would appear so. 🤔 (I’m too lazy to set that up, though, I rather just don’t use notifications. They’re not *that* important in this case.)

I was not aware that I needed a cloud service for something as (seemingly) simple as local app notifications. 😳
movq
www.uninformativ.de
View Thread
@aelaraji It would appear so. 🤔 (I’m too lazy to set that up, though, I rather just don’t use notifications. They’re not *that* important in this case.)

I was not aware that I needed a cloud service for something as (seemingly) simple as local app notifications. 😳
movq
www.uninformativ.de
View Thread
@aelaraji It would appear so. 🤔 (I’m too lazy to set that up, though, I rather just don’t use notifications. They’re not *that* important in this case.)

I was not aware that I needed a cloud service for something as (seemingly) simple as local app notifications. 😳
aelaraji
aelaraji.com
View Thread
@movq I'm personally using the android app as is. Didn't set up my own notifications server, the default one works just fine _I guess_.
mckinley
twtxt.net
View Thread
@movq I haven't done any app development, but I know notifications on phones are indeed dependent on cloud services run by the OS vendor which talk to servers run by the app vendor on your behalf. This is supposedly better on battery life, but it conveniently lets your OS vendor read all your notifications.

Mobile XMPP clients usually implement notifications using XEP-0537 and it goes like this:


Your XMPP server -> Client vendor's notification server -> Client OS notification server -> User's device


It's not end-to-end encrypted so servers will usually just send a dummy message through (You received a message from juliet@capulet.lit!) so you have to open the app to see the (hopefully) encrypted message.
It's a similar flow on both iOS and Android and I assume Matrix clients work the same way.
mckinley
twtxt.net
View Thread
It looks like ntfy.sh can work either through the OS's notification service or by maintaining its own connection to the server in the background. For privacy, you definitely want to use "Instant Delivery" and self-host the server.

https://docs.ntfy.sh/faq/#how-much-battery-does-the-android-app-use
https://docs.ntfy.sh/faq/#what-is-instant-delivery
mckinley
twtxt.net
View Thread
Actually, it looks like notifications using Google's service *can* be encrypted end-to-end. I don't know if this is used much in practice or if you can tell if the notifications on *your* device are encrypted. There seems to be some conflicting information out there.

Even if the content is encrypted, though, you're still giving quite a bit of metadata to Google by using their notification service.
movq
www.uninformativ.de
View Thread
@mckinley Thanks for the info. 🤔

This is quite bizarre. Why are we accepting this? 🤔 I guess it just doesn’t matter to people when they use Google for everything anyway (mail, Google Drive, …) … 😒 Bah.

It’s extra “funny” in my case, because I run that Matrix server myself, so I assumed that data is only sent between that server and the clients. But no, of course not, lots of things still get shoved through Google and Apple. 😂😭 How silly.
movq
www.uninformativ.de
View Thread
@mckinley Thanks for the info. 🤔

This is quite bizarre. Why are we accepting this? 🤔 I guess it just doesn’t matter to people when they use Google for everything anyway (mail, Google Drive, …) … 😒 Bah.

It’s extra “funny” in my case, because I run that Matrix server myself, so I assumed that data is only sent between that server and the clients. But no, of course not, lots of things still get shoved through Google and Apple. 😂😭 How silly.
movq
www.uninformativ.de
View Thread
@mckinley Thanks for the info. 🤔

This is quite bizarre. Why are we accepting this? 🤔 I guess it just doesn’t matter to people when they use Google for everything anyway (mail, Google Drive, …) … 😒 Bah.

It’s extra “funny” in my case, because I run that Matrix server myself, so I assumed that data is only sent between that server and the clients. But no, of course not, lots of things still get shoved through Google and Apple. 😂😭 How silly.
movq
www.uninformativ.de
View Thread
@mckinley Thanks for the info. 🤔

This is quite bizarre. Why are we accepting this? 🤔 I guess it just doesn’t matter to people when they use Google for everything anyway (mail, Google Drive, …) … 😒 Bah.

It’s extra “funny” in my case, because I run that Matrix server myself, so I assumed that data is only sent between that server and the clients. But no, of course not, lots of things still get shoved through Google and Apple. 😂😭 How silly.
mckinley
twtxt.net
View Thread
@movq People just don't ask these questions. It's really a serious privacy issue, and I don't see it brought up very often. Not even in privacy-minded circles. If you're using a proprietary operating system on any Internet-connected device, you need to assume that the vendor can see everything you do on it and maybe even what you do on other devices as well..
mckinley
twtxt.net
View Thread
@movq People just don't think about these questions. It's really a serious privacy issue, and I don't see it brought up very often. Not even in privacy-minded circles. If you're using a proprietary operating system on any Internet-connected device, you need to assume that the vendor can see everything you do on it and maybe even what you do on other devices as well..
movq
www.uninformativ.de
View Thread
@mckinley Aaaaaaaahhhhhhh! 🙈🙈🙈 What a mess …
movq
www.uninformativ.de
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@mckinley Aaaaaaaahhhhhhh! 🙈🙈🙈 What a mess …
movq
www.uninformativ.de
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@mckinley Aaaaaaaahhhhhhh! 🙈🙈🙈 What a mess …
movq
www.uninformativ.de
View Thread
@mckinley Aaaaaaaahhhhhhh! 🙈🙈🙈 What a mess …
movq
www.uninformativ.de
View Thread
I’m (just) old enough to have experienced the German Democratic Republic first hand and if they had had *any* of these capabilities … 🙈🙈🙈
movq
www.uninformativ.de
View Thread
I’m (just) old enough to have experienced the German Democratic Republic first hand and if they had had *any* of these capabilities … 🙈🙈🙈
movq
www.uninformativ.de
View Thread
I’m (just) old enough to have experienced the German Democratic Republic first hand and if they had had *any* of these capabilities … 🙈🙈🙈
movq
www.uninformativ.de
View Thread
I’m (just) old enough to have experienced the German Democratic Republic first hand and if they had had *any* of these capabilities … 🙈🙈🙈
lyse
lyse.isobeef.org
View Thread
@movq That's what I always think of with a shake of my head, too. Nowadays people voluntarily and actively feeding Stasi with all their information.