SimplyTranslate Mobile is not privacy-friendly anymore

[droidfan]

Hi,
a friendly reminder to privacy-conscious people using SimplyTranslate Mobile:

Starting with version 1.4.0, this translation app contacts translate.google.com directly, undermining all previous privacy efforts, which had used separate SimplyTranslate proxy instances before.

Despite the drastic change, there hasn’t been any announcement. Its developer doesn’t seem to have any interest in making this more public. A clear explanation for the change is missing up to this point.

See issue This app is no longer doing what it should do #230 for more details. Thanks to user @ Ftonans for the info.

[marcdw1289]

The last response from the dev does mention his reasons and the changelog he referenced does indeed mention the change to using Google.

Release 1.4.0 · ManeraKai/simplytranslate_mobile · GitHub

Granted his reasons for not putting that info upfront may result in some but hopefully he will fix things as he mentioned.

I guess issue #229 (no instances to choose) is also a result. Too bad.

[droidfan]

@marcdw1289

The last response from the dev does mention his reasons and the changelog he referenced does indeed mention the change to using Google.

Hi, do you mean this dev’s comment? All given reasons really don’t make any sense to me, which honestly raises doubts. Personally I did only notice, because my DNS blocker filtered access to the google domain.

@marcdw1289

Granted his reasons for not putting that info upfront may result in some but hopefully he will fix things as he mentioned.

Yeah, let’s hope for clarifications. But certain level of trust is already lost with this move.

[Licaon_Kter]

https://github.com/ManeraKai/simplytranslate_mobile/blob/main/fastlane/metadata/android/en-US/full_description.txt so next update will have the info…