[APP][5.0+] FairEmail - Fully featured, open source, privacy oriented email app

[DenyDarko]

@M66B it needs a lot of nerves and patience to escalate things and escape from the 1st level support stupidity.

 

[Oswald Boelcke]

Wouldn't it be better to remove @Dr-Bob as a whole. Dr-Bob was clearly created yesterday with the sole purpose to escalate this situation and to get on Marcels nervs. It reminds me off this Mr kouch, Chef koch character(i don't remember the exact name) in the XprivacyLua thread a couple off years ago. I wouldn't be surprised if it's the same person.

He will open a new account and it would continue. I mean really, only ignoring helps.

They did

Thanks very much for your concerns. As much as @M66B Marcel is and has always been friendly and polite, we don't want to appear like a "XDA police". We don't censor XDA but we evaluate every post we become aware of against the forum rules and only against these rules; if a post violates the rules it gets partially or completely removed. And our policies task us to more mediate than to moderate i.e. we start with a friendly conversation, friendly and polite like Marcel, to give everybody a chance to be a valuable member on XDA. Most of the times we succeed with this approach but sometimes we don't achieve this objective. And it's different from case to case, how quickly we do realise that this objective will never been achieve.

 

[gvamp]

I use this Mail Client since a year or so as free version and it's a giant. I rated a 5* today and hope this helps a little bit. Regarding the 3 or less star receptions, I have to say that these are very rare and most times from simple people, you can't avoid this. The rating is at 4.8 and HELL, this is fantastic. I don't know, if any other app with many ratings and such a good sum exist anyway. Please, @M66B , don't make so much pressure for yourself. All the best to your girlfriend and you. Have a nice day. YOUR APP IS AWESOME !!!

 

[sqwrl]

@M66B Thank you for your excellent software. Bought Pro on FairEmail only a week ago after having used it for years, just to say thanks. Glad now I did. I would be very happy to support you via non Google means going forwards if that is what you choose.

 

[Donislawdev]

The few euros I receive in return for what's being offered and the fun of developing things are no compensation for the thousands of questions I answer every month, for unfair Play store reviews and for stress about unclear Google requirements.

Hello, I would like to thank you a lot for your great work, I got the PRO version of NetGuard + FairEmail, and they are both great apps, thank you a lot for developing them, and support.

I think you should just stop caring about Play store reviews, there will always be someone unhappy, that's normal. But I know it's hard. Remember that the apps are 100% open source/free (no ads/IAP, there is only paid PRO version), so you don't need to keep up with the user's support, you got your own life, and developing apps just takes a lot of time, when support consume probably a lot more time :-}


If you need a break you should take it, I know it can be hard, but you are a great developer, which had given Android users are a lot of awesome apps, I hope you will stay with us :-}

 

[M66B]

This is the message I just received from Google:

As previously advised, your app, FairEmail, privacy aware email (eu.faircode.email) on open testing track for APK version 1898 is uploading users' Contact List information:

• without posting a privacy policy in both the designated field in the Play Console and from within the Play distributed app itself
• without an adequate prominent disclosure

Please kindly note that a valid privacy policy must be posted in both sections; the designated field in the Play Console and from within the app as well. Your privacy policy must disclose the types of personal and sensitive data the app accesses, collects, uses, and shares; and any parties with which any personal or sensitive user data is shared (e.g: users' contact list information).

Prior to the collection and transmission, you must provide an in-app disclosure that prominently highlight how the user data will be used, describe the type of data being collected and have the user provide affirmative consent for such use. Please include the uploading of users' Contact List information in your prominent disclosure to fix this issue.

Please make sure to deactivate the non-compliant APK version 1898 (open testing track) and increment the version number of APK before resubmitting your app for further review. Kindly note that all active versions of your app must be compliant with our policies including all release types (e.g. Internal test, Closed, Open).

You may read this article that describes the best practices for providing prominent disclosure. You can learn more about prominent disclosure and privacy policy requirements in the Developer Policy Center or in this video. You can also read through the personal or sensitive user data page for more details.

As much as I'd like to help, I’m not able to provide any more detail or a better answer to your question. In our previous email, I made sure to include all the information available to me.

If you have a different question about the Developer Program Policies, please let me know. Thanks for your continued support of Google Play.

The bigger font was in the original message highlighted.

 

[nadir husain]

I thought a human had contacted u and set up a call for Tuesday. Does this message supercede the call?

 

[M66B]

I thought a human had contacted u and set up a call for Tuesday. Does this message supercede the call?

The email "conversation" is the "official" developer communication channel and the human who will be calling me (Policy and Privacy department) is an out of band channel. The purpose of the call is to "answer any questions you may have". So, what that will bring remains a question mark for now.

 

[nadir husain]

The email "conversation" is the "official" developer communication channel and the human who will be calling me (Policy and Privacy department) is an out of band channel. The purpose of the call is to "answer any questions you may have". So, what that will bring remains a question mark for now.

 

[mkasimd]

@M66B it needs a lot of nerves and patience to escalate things and escape from the 1st level support stupidity.

That one depends on the company. But in large corporates, that's the case unfortunately.

I'm glad it's totally different at my workplace. The first level guys are required to say "sorry, I don't know the answer to this. I'll redirect your request and we will get back to you shortly". Because that one action makes the difference between trying to solve an issue (customer's problem) or trying to get rid of the issue (the customer himself).

It's tiring when a company thinks of the customer as an issue to get rid of instead of looking into the problem the customer faces as the issue to solve. And corporates tend to act so.

That's among the reasons I prefer SMBs (small/medium businesses) over corporates whenever alternatives exist. Even if the SMB alternative costs slightly more. If you get better service, it's worth every penny. Too bad, Google has a de-facto monopoly over the Android Apps store business.. I'll refrain from any too political statement, but there's a lot politics (especially on EU level) could do to ensure customer rights are upheld in such situations..

I hope your phone call on Tuesday works better, @M66B. Talking to a real person on the phone makes a huge difference compared to writing letters. But you should prepare a cheat sheet with several keywords and key arguments on it before the call. Because trust me, Google will be prepared to face you and you will need to argue well even if put under some form of pressure or if the person on the phone tries to control the flow of your conversation. I wish you good luck and thanks for doing this!

 

[M66B]

...

I hope your phone call on Tuesday works better, @M66B. Talking to a real person on the phone makes a huge difference compared to writing letters. But you should prepare a cheat sheet with several keywords and key arguments on it before the call. Because trust me, Google will be prepared to face you and you will need to argue well even if put under some form of pressure or if the person on the phone tries to control the flow of your conversation. I wish you good luck and thanks for doing this!

I am prepared, I only want answer to three simple questions:

1. Which contact info is being sent?
2. When is it being sent?
3. To where is it being sent?

I am not going to argue or pressure anyone and just see where this goes.

 

[M66B]

After 5 similar answers from Google, I think replying again will only result in a new similar message.

 

[nadir husain]

After 5 similar answers from Google, I think replying again will only result in a new similar message.

Did they invent * copy/paste*?

 

[yasd4711]

@M66B Hi Marcel, thank you very much for providing such a great email app. A while ago I was looking for an email app that supports S/MIME certificates. FairEmail was the only app that I've found. And I was impressed by the privacy features. The need to acknowledge the URL when clicking on a link. The automatic suppression of tracking images. I let me feel more safe using email at all.

It's extremely bitter that Google accuses this very app to be spyware.

I absolutely do understand your frustration. About this accusation, Googles non-handling of it, and about unqualified and rude user comments, too. And about the permanently changing intransparent policies, of course. Not to mention the high-frequent API updates from one beta stuff to the next alpha version, and so on. Plus vendors producing their own device-dependent botch (e.g. battery optimization).

Android's success is primarily grounded on the work of "small" developers that produced tons of apps for free. And, yes, pro-features for roundabout 5 € are even for free IMHO - it's not "paid" or "bought" (most people cannot even image how much work it is to write an app). Now, that their job is done, Google is going to get rid of them. All these policy changes, API updates, vendor quirks and legalese cannot be handled by a single person or a small team, especially not in their spare time.

IMHO nowadays your app and team must be big enough to get whitelisted within Android to work correctly. Very sad.

I'm sadly missing a real open-source operating system for smartphones, or even better an open-source smartphone. Maybe it's time to return to a dumb phone.

Once again, thanks for your effort and all the best to your girl-friend and you.

P.S.: I've dropped a very, very small but appreciated app for similar reasons, too. After withdrawing it from the store I wanted to delete my developer account and had to learn that it's not possible. Contacting Google was a similar loop of policy repetition. It seems to be unlawful to me that I cannot delete my account but it's not worth the effort to prove it. The reasoning by Google that the account cannot be deleted because users may sill reload the app technically doesn't make sense to me. I think it could be solved differently if they wanted.

 

[M66B]

App läuft einfach / sehr gut. Der Winamp unter den Mail Clients. ...was soll das, die app aus Trotz gegenüber Google, aus dem Playstore zu nehmen? Ich habe für den E-MAIL Client Geld bezahlt und würde ihn auch gerne weiterhin auf dem nächsten Smartphone nutzen. Sollte ich in Zukunft nur noch den anderen Softwareschrott benutzen dürfen, gehe ich weg aus dem Android - Ökosystem. Das ist doch echt KINDERGARTEN hier.

Link

This is after I have explained the situation :-(

 

[upD8R]

Link

This is after I have explained the situation :-(

Text has changed in the meantime, and it is actually a 5 star review

 

[M66B]

For your voting pleasure:

Link

 

[chris122380]

I have been rather friendly and offered my help, so why this blind hate?
In any case your response clearly illustrates one of the reasons why I stopped supporting all my projects.

Just remember Dr-bob doesn't speak for all of us in fact I doubt he speaks for even the 1%.

 

[Itcouldbeyou]

I am prepared, I only want answer to three simple questions:

1. Which contact info is being sent?
2. When is it being sent?
3. To where is it being sent?

I am not going to argue or pressure anyone and just see where this goes.

Maybe it is a dumb question. But did Google properly understand that you don't think you violate their Code? Maybe you should sprinkle an "allegedly" into your 3 points. Sure it would make no sense to ask Google where, when and what is sent if "you coded the malicious feature". But the people responding are probably not the best paid people. And I think they have to answer to a lot of dumb and malicious people.

 

[truephoenix]

Hello,

I am also a (so far) very satisfied user of FairEmail. After suddenly not finding FairEmail in the Google Playstore anymore, I came across the Golem news article and forum here.

Just an amateur assessment from me (I can of course also be completely wrong!):

It seems to me that Google and M66B are "talking past each other". As I understand it, Google only complains that there is no privacy policy or that it does not contain all the relevant information. This is probably necessary as soon as the app sends any data (which every email app does). Not to mention favicons, third party services or pro versions linked to an account / email.

- without posting a privacy policy in both the designated field in the Play Console and from within the Play distributed app itself

- without an adequate prominent disclosure

Source: https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/...vacy-oriented-email-app.3824168/post-86923901

And at least I think FairEmail's privacy policy is really a bit "short":

FairEmail/PRIVACY.md at master · M66B/FairEmail

Fully featured, open source, privacy friendly email app for Android - FairEmail/PRIVACY.md at master · M66B/FairEmail

github.com

For comparison, the very detailed privacy policy from Aqua Mail

https://www.aqua-mail.com/privacy-policy/

Perhaps you can compare the two privacy policies (including the areas of payment and third-party services) and see what else FairEmail needs to do to satisfy Google.