Hi,
When using DS Cam on an Android device that doesn’t have Google Play Services installed it connects fine, but then throws the error: “DS cam won’t run without Google Play Services, which are not supported by your device”. If you just hit “OK” to this error (twice) the app runs fine, but you no longer receive event notifications and the Notifications tab isn’t displayed. I assume it’s because it uses the Google Play Services for its push notifications.
I’d like to know, if Google Play Services is used to transmit these DS Cam notifications, is personal data such as camera name, alert info, times and particularly the thumbnail images being routed through Google’s servers in any way? It seems almost certain that this is the case.
If so, this is a serious security breach in my opinion as Google would then have access to this very private information and it has already been revealed that Google is explicitly using notifications to spy on users for the US and other countries. As far as I’m concerned, the notification event should be processed on my NAS and sent directly to my phone with all information fully E2EE.
I’ve contacted Synology and asked them to investigate and comment on this, particularly about whether this notification feature can be updated to not require Google Play Services, but would also be interested to hear others experiences/opinions and maybe see if @SpaceRex could investigate it a bit too? Or at the very least ask his special Synology contacts this same question as it’d likely get a bit more attention.