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The popular automation app Macrodroid is now filled to the brim with trackers. (lemmy.world)

submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by DaddleDew@lemmy.world to c/privacy@lemmy.ca

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Macrodroid has been a favourite of mine for automating things on my phone. This is no longer the case.

It has been silently updated at some point to become a data mining and leaking nightmare. At the time of writing these lines, this app contains 30 trackers from various third party telemetry services according to the latest Exodus report. This is an extremely high number of trackers and there definitely weren’t that many a few years back. Even most junk free mobile games can’t manage to contain this many. It appears that the owner of the app has sold out and turned it into spyware to sell your data to as many companies as possible.

This is particularly worrying considering the level of access and permissions the app requires to function. If you are using the app still, I’m urging you to reconsider.

Spread the word.

Exodus report

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[–] Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe 8 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Sonofabitch.

I've used it for proba ly 10 years. Wtf.

[–] DaddleDew@lemmy.world 6 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

It wasn't always this bad. It never was perfect. It used to have a few crash reporting, analytics and ad trackers from the beginning. They snuck in more profiling trackers in 2023. Then back in June they added a fuckton of trackers in the version 5.55.9 update. I just noticed it now. This app is dead to me now.

[–] modular950@lemmy.zip 1 points 4 months ago

would something like rethinkDNS or some other firewall and / or DNS blocking tool be sufficient to cutting out all of this and still benefitting from the app locally?

[–] lurch@sh.itjust.works 6 points 4 months ago (2 children)

deleted my play store review.

an alternative would be Automate. How about that?

[–] DaddleDew@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

I gave the F-droid app Automation a try. It definitely lacks the functionality and refinement that Macrodroid has but it can work in a pinch.

Key Mapper on F-Droid fills in a few gaps as well for anything that uses button presses as a trigger.

[–] lurch@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 months ago

I had some F-Droid apps that couldn't be uninstalled, because they crashed the installer. After the factory reset of that phone, I stopped using F-Droid to avoid that.

[–] squaresinger@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I've been using Llamalab Automate a lot over the last few years. It' proper amazing.

The free version only allows flows with a total of 30 blocks running at the same time, which was enough for me for a very long time. I mostly got the full version because I wanted to support the developer. But now I do use bigger flows too.

It's very useful for all these little automation tasks that don't warrant a dedicated app for it.

The only downside of the app is the stupid name that makes it really hard to google anyting in regards to it unless you add "Llamalab" before it.

[–] xd0v3rdoz3@lemmy.wtf 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

I think that these trackers are for the free version of the app so they can show ads. They probably get disabled automatically if you buy the Pro version. They literally say it in their privacy policy

No user data or any other data related to MacroDroid will ever be sold or made available to third parties except where explicitly authorized by the user (on an opt-in basis), no such data sharing is currently enabled in the app. In such cases where a user explicitly grants use of their data to be made available to third parties, all data will be completely anonymous and in no way identify an individual user or device. Any data sharing service that has been enabled may be revoked at any time by the user. Upgrading to the pro version of the app will automatically disable any data sharing service that has previously been enabled.