this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2023

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Privacy

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Magic Earth: Privacy friendly maps with turn-by-turn navigation, OpenStreetMap, Crowd-Sourced Traffic, 3D maps, Satellite maps, Offline maps and Transit. (www.magicearth.com)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 83 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (10 children)

Some perspective from a user who's been on Magic Earth for well over a year:

It works very well. With a few quirks, it's like 90-95% as useful as Google Maps for a majority of personas
It's a mature app, finds most addresses (with possible exception of recent changes like a business moving)
Does surprisingly well with being current on traffic conditions
While not FOSS, they seem to be open about what they sell of your information and it's in aggregate, so I'm much less worried about location data being tied to other online dossiers I've left in my digital paper trail.

I found that Organic Maps and OsmAnd+ just couldn't cut it at all for finding addresses, routing wasn't super great (or intuitive), and otherwise rated very low on family acceptance as a replacement for Google Maps. I used Acastus Photon for addresses and frankly it's not that much better and the workflow was janky and pretty useless when you want to plot route waypoints. Magic Earth was the bridge between fully de-googling and having a livable acceptance factor. So far I haven't seen them doing anything they don't claim (not getting in trouble privacy-wise), so I'm good.

I would say "privacy friendly" is accurate in the title - but this is not FOSS. Even so for those looking to de-google without losing utility, I recommend it and am glad it exists.

Edit: I wish some apps (looking at you Starbucks!) would use a default mapping engine like Magic Earth instead of expecing Google Maps on Android phones (Graphene, Lineage, Calyx)

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago

Thank you for your feedback

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (2 children)

somehow i got stuck on heads up display, and i cannot figure out how to disable it now!

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

I agree completely with your review of Magic Earth. I will say that I keep some maps on my phone in Organic Maps as well. They are easier for me to follow when hiking on forest trails. When we went trailblazing on snowshoes, it made finding our way back to the main route simple.

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[–] [email protected] 47 points 11 months ago (2 children)

It might be "privacy" focused, but it's not open source

[–] [email protected] 15 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Do we have any indication they are trustworthy?

[–] [email protected] 16 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (3 children)

We have an indication they aren’t — they make claims that are demonstrably untrue.

[edit] actually, the website is pretty clear about what they do and don’t do. It’s only the poster on here who’s overplaying the availability, OSS and privacy angles.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I don’t see a single thing that’s claims they are Open Sourced. Not sure how you or OP are coming to that conclusion.

They use open street maps and crowd source the traffic pattern just like the rest of the map apps.

Putting those together doesn’t mean they claimed to be open sourced.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

Could you elaborate, please?

The only other response of yours in the thread is that it's not available in Canada, which doesn't seem to contradict any of the claims in the thread title?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

I didn't say they were OSS (though I agree that it would be much better if it was), and I actually had no idea it wasn't available in the US app store, since I installed it a while back when it still was. Not sure what's going on there.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Can anyone point to the source code please? They claim it is "privacy friendly", so it cannot be proprietary, right? right? right?

[–] [email protected] 25 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Your comment got me curious so I had a look.

From their FAQ:

Will Magic Earth be Open Source?

No; since it is also used commercially (we have a paid Magic Earth SDK for business partners), we cannot make the code public.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

Oh ok so there is no way to independently verify its privacy or security. Doesn't belong in this community then IMO.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I think you have a wrong understanding of software auditing. Software can be closed source and 3rd party auditors can assess if it has good privacy and security implementations.

Being closed source doesn't necesarily mean it's bad (for privacy/security).

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

But then you have to trust, 1, the auditors (I assume by your comment you mean the people given closed door access to the code, reviews it, then publishes a statement saying their claims are valid, that kind of third party auditing?); 2, the code they disclosed to the auditors is the actual complete codebase; 3, that between the current version and the next they did not add anything fishy; and last but not least, 4, the binaries they give you is actually built from that codebase and nothing else, since you can't build it yourself if you're really that worried.

I don't fully disagree that you can have a private and secure proprietary app, sure you can, but I argue that there are some really big hurdles and you can never have 100% trust in it. Whether these things is a dealbreaker depends on your own values, opinions, and threat model, of course. If you're choosing between this and Google Maps, then this is almost certainly better in terms of privacy and security.

I suppose you can also decompile it and analyze it that way, but that's very difficult and compared to reviewing an open source app, pretty much no one is going to do it. You also don't have the same level of community attention and contribution on the code itself as an open source project would where people are forking it, implementing features they want and sending pull requests, and going through the codebase to learn how it's implemented in order to develop their own projects. All of which gives many opportunities for other developers, usually ones very concerned about privacy and security themselves, to notice and sound the alarm on unethical or insecure code in the app, basically getting tons of community driven audits all the time.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Proprietary.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

Not even joking, the fact that Magic Earth is still proprietary and comes bundled with /e/ is the main reason why I'm still not confident enough to use it as my ROM

[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago

FYI, from the FAQ:

Why is Magic Earth free? What is the business model?

Magic Earth is free for all our end-users but we also have a paid Magic Earth SDK for business partners. For instance Selectric.de (a supplier for navigation solutions for ambulances and fire trucks), Smarter AI (developing ADAS systems) or Absolute Cycling (using the platform on bicycles). For more info on the SDK, you can check magiclane.com.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Shoutout: we have a community here to on lemmy: [email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Not open source no thanks. I'll stick to Organic Maps.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Just get OrganicMaps

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Organic routing just isn't very good sadly. If it were I'd use it

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 11 months ago (2 children)

So, I have an issue with OrganicMaps and Magic Earth: maps are too old.

Is that true or am I crazy? I make a modification in OpenStreetMap and it shows up in Osmand in a few hours, but it takes months to show up elsewhere.

Am I doing something wrong or is this expected?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago

OrganicMaps only updates the maps monthly, so you will see your changes only on the next month. Also map updates are tied to app updates, so you have to update the app in your store first, then a button in the app will let you download the new map files. Related issues, more info about this:

In OsmAnd you can set up the map update frequency and you can even enable online maps, so you can set it the way you want.

I never used Magic Earth, so I don't know how it works.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Doesn't seem to be available for iOS in the US App Store.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

Can confirm, got a pop up saying same just now.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (6 children)

Ah that's strange, I wonder why that is. I installed it from the app store a while back before it was removed, which is why I still have it on my phone. Not sure why they did that.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago (2 children)

As soon as Organic Maps can route better, I'll switch back to it for driving. Magic Earth is my current tool. For routing and traffic shaping, it's as good as Waze. The driving / routing map (for me) is better than Waze or Google maps. I desperately want Organic Maps or OSM to work better.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

What problems have you faced with organic maps? I have used it have a dozen times and had no problems. Does it not find the best path?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Organic maps is OK and will get you to where you need to be, but routing is odd. It'll sit you in the worst traffic and doesn't know about road closures etc.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Usually an ~~Any~~ app that knows traffic situation, knows it from your (and other users) location, so it obviously doesn't know about traffic.

Edit: Magic Earth gets this data from a third party: https://lemm.ee/comment/1993667

In openstreetmap it's not recommended to map temporary things, and the map only updates once a month in OrganicMaps, so that's also expected.

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Good_practice#Don't_map_temporary_events_and_temporary_features

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

If I remember correctly Magic Earth claims to get its traffic information from public sources, without using user's locations like google. So no, location data is not strictly necessary for that.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

Organic Maps is nice, but working with GPX files is still very terrible. It has no direct way to import GPX files created on desktop, you can only open them from the disk, and they will look very strange, not like routes but like a bookmark. But as I see, Magic Earth has even worse capabilities for GPX.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Is there a way to download the official APK without relying on Google Play Store or Aurora Store?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

There are websites which scrape the play store, and let you download apks without login. The problem is you cannot be sure that you get the same apk as you would get from play store. (But actually you cannot be sure about anything on play store as well: the developers build the apks and upload it, e.g. an attacker impersonating the developer can publish a fake apk to play store.)

With these things in mind, you can download apks from apkpure without login to anything: https://apkpure.com/magic-earth-navigation-maps/com.generalmagic.magicearth Afaik they never had an incident where their apk was different from the one on play, but you cannot be sure when they change their mind.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Does it work with Android auto?

Project seems dubious based on other comments but I've yet to find anything that's good and respects privacy while also being on Android auto.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

It does yeah, the UI is very similar to Google Maps

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (2 children)

So what’s the catch? Not sure if the answer in the FAQ really answers the question why it’s free. “Magic Earth is free for all our end-users but we also have a paid Magic Earth SDK for business partners. For instance Selectric.de (a supplier for navigation solutions for ambulances and fire trucks), Smarter AI (developing ADAS systems) or Absolute Cycling (using the platform on bicycles).”

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

I assume the user data like traffic and OSM contributions adds value to their paid SDK.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

Currently using Magic Earth as its the default map application for /e/OS (mobile OS). Been liking it for the most part, but sometimes searches for a place comes up with results that are way far away.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (3 children)

It (ios app store) says not available in my region. does anyone know where I could find what region to spoof to get it? (also I know I should get android im working on it)

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

GMaps VW (android only) + Organic Maps is the best open source mapping solution imo.

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