Don't understand how Blokada blocks trackers in apps

Support
1

I have Blokada 5 on Android 12.

As an example I installed Telegram-FOSS from F-Droid. Per the Exodus privacy app, it shows this tracker in the Telegram-FOSS app: “Google Firebase Analytics”. So, I thought, if I start up Telegram-FOSS while Blokada is running, I would see that “Google Firebase Analytics” is being blocked. (For this test, I decided to use these lists: Energized [Basic], DuckDuckGo Tracker Radar, and Exodus Provacy, all at the same time.) After starting up Telegram-FOSS, I looked at Blokada’s list of stuff it blocked or allowed. Expecting to see “Google Firebase Analytics” somewhere in that list, I did a search on the list based on the word “firebase”. But I didn’t see that anywhere on the list. I DID find something called “firebase-settings.crashlytics.com” was blocked, but I don’t think that is the same thing as the trackers in Telegram-FOSS, both because of the different name, and because “firebase-settings.crashlytics.com” was last blocked four hours before I started Telegram-FOSS for this test.

So, my questions: Is my thinking on this correct, am I correctly understanding how this should work? Why am I not seeing this tracker in the Telegram-FOSS app appear in the Blokada list?

2

The firebase crashlytics you found, is the tracker listed for Telegram. It’s quite common in other apps too, so not unusual to see it already beforehand.

3

Ok, thanks.

How did you know that “firebase-settings.crashlytics.com” is the same as “Google Firebase Analytics”?

I’m asking this because I don’t know how to go from the trackers the Exodus Privacy app finds to what I should be blocking in Blokada.

4

I only knew because Firebase is pretty much everywhere in android and Google apps.

I think there is a website that lists what trackers are and what they do. Here we are: whotracks.me

5

Here’s more on how blokada works generally: