✨Keep on shining

🚨 Google's app lockdown now has a date. From September 30 this year, Google starts blocking Android apps from developers who haven't registered their ID with Google. It kicks off in Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand, then rolls out to the rest of the world (including Australia 🇦🇺) through 2027. 📵 This hits every "certified" Android phone: Samsung, stock Pixel, Motorola, all of them. Even apps you install yourself outside the Play Store get checked. There will be an "advanced flow" for installing unverified apps, but it means enabling developer mode, restarting your phone and sitting through a forced one day waiting period. They're making it painful on purpose 🐌 ✅ Here's the good part: de-googled phones are completely outside this system. The verification only applies to Google-certified devices, so on GrapheneOS nothing changes. You install what you want, same as always 🕊 If you're still on a stock phone and this bothers you, now you have a deadline to work with ⏳ 📖 Straight from Google: https://developer.android.com/developer-verification

Our kindly website/IT volunteer, Kevin Tyre, who has generously been providing tech support for our beautiful website and server space, all these years (4+), also helps out Michael Gray Griffith on his 'Cafe Locked Out' website and community. He has put together some great privacy tech material and free mini courses for beginners, helping in the transition from BigTech surveillance platforms. Worthwhile checking the site and the community (predominantly Australian) Here ➡️ https://cafelockedout.com/social/community/courses

🚨 Every phone in Australia goes off Monday 27 July 2pm AEST, 1:30pm SA/NT, midday WA. It's the national test of AusAlert, the new emergency warning system, and there's a lot of privacy misinformation going around. The short version: How it actually works AusAlert uses cell broadcast. Authorities pick an area, every tower in it broadcasts the message, any phone in range picks it up. Like an FM station: the tower has no idea who's listening. No recipient list, no numbers, no location lookup, and your phone sends nothing back. The EFF reviewed this exact tech during the US test and found the same: there's no channel for it to send data about your phone anywhere. The old Emergency Alert system located your phone to SMS it. This one doesn't. Anyone claiming it tracks you has it backwards and i have the sources to back this up. The test itself It's a Critical Alert: siren and vibration for ~10 seconds, even on silent, and it can't be toggled off in settings. If any toggle in your alert settings is greyed out, that's the tier you can't disable. Don't want to hear it? Just turn your phone off or flick on aeroplane mode before test time and leave it that way for at least an hour. On de-Googled and older phones It may show up titled "Presidential Alert" or "Extreme Threat Alert". Nothing sinister, those devices just fall back to the US heading instead of the Australian one. Same message. ⚠️ The one real safety issue The silent override means hidden phones will sound too. If you or someone you know keeps one because of a DV situation, turn it off well before the test. Share that. After launch (October) Two tiers: Priority Alerts, which you can turn off in your phone's emergency alert settings, and Critical Alerts, which you can't. The top tier has no off-switch on any stock phone, only aeroplane mode. The one exception: GrapheneOS adds a toggle for even the highest alert class under Wireless emergency alerts, one more reason it's the gold standard for controlling yo

☕️ MySelf Reliance (MSR) First Meet & Greet | Brunswick, South West WA 📅 Saturday, 8th August 📍 Brunswick, South West WA (exact address on RSVP) This is our very first face-to-face gathering in the South West. A chance to meet the MySelf Reliance community in person, share a coffee, and start connecting with the people around you. MSR is Australia's Super Highway for Connecting of freedom communities. We are all about sharing skills, developing confidence in our future and creating leaders in self-reliance. It's time to find out: 🤝 Who will have your back 📚 Who you can learn from 🌱 Who you can teach Come along, bring your questions, and help us build the Brunswick Hub from the ground up. Saturday 8 August 2026 ⏰ 10:00am–12:00pm 📍 Brunswick rd Brunswick, Western Australia 📱 RSVP by text to Joyce: 0491 191 093 Joyce will provide the exact meeting location on Brunswick Rd https://www.myselfreliance.com.au/event-details/msr-western-australia-hub-inaugural-meet-up-south We'd love to see you there! 🌻