De-Googling a phone, is it possible to live without Google on your Android device

[Redaktion]

As technology users, we either knowingly or unknowingly hand over our data to large tech companies on a daily basis. In an attempt to get away from the overwatch of Google, I decided to try running a de-Googled phone. This is how it went.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/De-Googling-a-phone-is-it-possible-to-live-without-Google-on-your-Android-device.855082.0.html

[wyx92]

A throw away Google account won't work as Google already knows what you look like and what you sound like, ever heard of a thing called camera or mic? If you have watched the Snowden documentary, you'd know they watch you when you don't know the camera is working.

[splus]

Hey @Notebookcheck - you guys really, really, REALLY need to fix your comment section and bring it to the 2020-ies if you want to increase the views and have more engagement from your readers. It's stuck in 1990-ies. The website as well needs a nice redesign, but the comment section is a complete dinosaur.

[A]

Been using Graphene OS for a while to get out of the GAFAM, so far so good.
Some native apps don't work, but I use the web version instead. Since I do everything through the web apps (banking, etc.) I don't have anything running in the background eating my battery and snooping on my data. I call it a win-win.

[NikoB]

A throw away Google account won't work as Google already knows what you look like and what you sound like, ever heard of a thing called camera or mic? If you have watched the Snowden documentary, you'd know they watch you when you don't know the camera is working.

On smartphones, everything is done deliberately so that there is a 100% opportunity to quietly spy on the owner.

There are not even indicators for turning on the cameras. There is no microphone activity indicator. Just like on corporate laptops.

And the worst thing is that there is no hardware switch that 100% disables all microphones and cameras, at the owner's request.

And Android itself is deliberately designed in such a way that it excludes reliable control by the owner of network connections and application access both to the network and to hardware and data on smartphones.

Google is an evil corporation. However, so does Apple.

If the authorities in developed countries were truly popular and civically responsible, state standards would have long been adopted in the form of minimum requirements for this type of computer equipment, in terms of security and maintaining the privacy of the owner's personal life and data. At a minimum, hardware mutes for microphones and cameras, a guaranteed level of firewall settings, as well as mandatory requirements for direct owner permission to access each smartphone device and access to different groups of data. And detection of violations immediately led to huge fines for manufacturers of both software and hardware.

Just an example - Android smartphones are a pure hole in the Internet when working via wi-fi, and access control to the network of system components is practically inaccessible to the owner, as are root access rights to everything. In fact, buyers of most smartphones are NOT their owners, because... their unrooted devices are secretly controlled by corporations.

This is only the first level of problems that can only be solved legislatively.

The second level is the deliberate criminal actions of hardware and software manufacturers to integrate secret modules for spying on clients. What can be revealed only through a thorough, high-quality and constant audit of the code every time it is changed. But this much more complex level of control of hardware and software developers requires extremely high qualifications of auditors (in reality, the level should be much HIGHER than that of software and hardware developers) and at the same time the presence of a constant resource of such auditors and the ability to re-audit code and hardware, which again, this is only possible at the state level, if citizens have trust in the bureaucratic machine, which is not the case today and has never been the case in any country in the world. Even in Switzerland or Norway.

But all these problems, which are turning into an avalanche, still need to be solved gradually.
At the civilian level, one can only try to massively increase the education of the population on the basic principles of personal safety. Unfortunately, the majority are so stupid that they consciously refuse to adhere to these basic principles (even when they are explained to them), in the presence of active resistance to the openly criminal actions of big business and the bureaucracy of states, which leads to the possibility of effectively ignoring or forcefully suppressing any attempts to curb criminal actions of corporations and government corrupt bureaucratic systems.

What is needed here is an integrated approach, both to improve the education of the stupid masses of the population, who are the majority on the planet, and to actively combat the deliberately criminal actions of corporations and corrupt officials who turn a blind eye to this.

So Assange, due to age and fatigue, gave up and admitted guilt, which in reality does not exist - because the criminal actions of the authorities and the publication of the crimes of officials and members of the government cannot in any way be recognized as "disclosure of secret data" or "high treason" in any way decent court, because the highest law is the Constitution. Everything was turned upside down. And the corrupt Biden refused to pardon Assange precisely because the blow was struck precisely at the system in which people like Biden thrive...

Thus, the obviously criminal US state machine demonstrated to the world that it will ostracize any civil activist, defiantly and brazenly, trampling on the US Constitution when it suffers a serious reputational blow and the likelihood of the revealed data developing into criminal cases against criminals in power and businesses affiliated with them.

[NikoB]

Or here's a simple example - the actual deliberate compulsion to leak customer data, by corporations and most consumer protection laws from the point of view of data hoarders.

An example is when the drive fails (for example, the SSD went into Read Only mode) or the controller fails altogether. Private customer data is stored on a failed drive and, especially in the "Read Only" mode, can simply be obtained by employees of service centers and sellers, as well as by manufacturers.

Most laws on consumer protection oblige the buyer, at the request of the manufacturer (seller/importer), to return the rejected product to them, in exchange for fulfilling the buyer's warranty claim - to return the money or replace the product. This procedure leads to an intentional leak of customer data for any device capable of storing customer data.

Find at least one consumer protection law on the planet in any country - which clearly OBLIGES, at the expense of the manufacturer or seller, to destroy the failed drive if the client cannot independently reliably delete all his data from the failed device. In the presence of the buyer or by his forces, for example, under video recording, if the refused goods need to be sent to another place outside the buyer's place of life, for example by mail. What could be simpler? Introduce into every law on the protection of consumer rights a requirement for the mandatory destruction of the device in such a case or refusal to return the product to the seller or manufacturer if it is impossible to delete data on the client's part, and the transfer of the failed drive to third parties may with a high probability (or 100% probability in the case of Read Only drive lock mode) lead to leakage of the citizen's private data.

If the product failed due to the fault of the manufacturer (the seller/importer, if it is impossible to obtain the legal entity of the manufacturer in a particular country through legal proceedings), then he will bear all the losses for the destruction of the device at the time of issuing a warranty claim from the buyer. Which will clearly encourage them to reduce the number of defects.

Remember how there was a public scandal with a Samsung SSD, when the buyer who bought it refused to return the product because... there was private data on it, but it was impossible to erase it? Only after the dispute was transferred to the public field did Samsung management back down and agreed that the buyer, under video recording, would physically destroy the disk and return the fragments to the manufacturer for the money paid or a replacement for a new one of the same product.

It is precisely this procedure that should have long been prescribed in all laws on the protection of consumer rights - but it does not exist in any country. Don't you find it strange that in this matter legislators pretend that there is no problem?

For example, many video/photo cameras do not encrypt the contents of the drive with the client key at all. Therefore, even the use of encryption methods (which must still be publicly and personally trusted) in these cases is impossible, but the same SD cards, laws on consumer protection, require that if they break, they must be returned to the manufacturer/seller at their request if the buyer wants a refund or replace a failed SD card under warranty.

[NikoB]

As this is not an experiment in security, the only requirement for a ROM is that it does not have Google Play services installed by default.

This automatically defeats the whole point of the article. The only difference (relative to the manufacturer's firmware) is that the smartphone components will not work as well as with the official firmware in most cases (and in almost 100% of cases in total, if we take all the nuances of the factory firmware) with alternative firmware.

I personally have owned a smartphone with alternative firmware for many years and am well aware of the risks and limitations. I also know well, based on the results of many contacts with developers, that the developers of most alternative firmware are NOT interested in effectively and quickly eliminating problems in them and consistently maintaining the status quo for already resolved problems, i.e. to exclude their reappearance, which is very stupid in a professional approach to the matter.

For them, such developers and teams, the process is more important than a good result, because... Through certain grants, they most often earn money in such teams. Because truly independent altruistic developers are INTERESTED in the stable preservation of resolved problems again in new versions, because they VALUE their personal time, unlike paid and self-interested developers of "alternative firmware". Always look at the root of the problem - who and what is behind a certain team and where this team gets its development resources and what is their true goal...

Therefore, the point of alternative firmware for the mass buyer is essentially minimal and, in general, an even more dangerous path in the area of ��personal safety. rather than with the manufacturer's firmware (on which, unlike such left-wing teams, the buyer at least has formal legal influence and the potential for punishment for miscalculations or outright criminal methods), if the buyer does not adequately understand (the majority of installers) the real associated risks and problems.