What are everyone’s recommendations on making android more private? Given Google’s recent behavior around tracking and the like, I’m not really comfortable with then having all of my data. I’ve even contemplated going to iOS, since apple doesn’t have a vested interest in me having less privacy… But I just don’t like their OS lol.
I’ve tried GrapheneOS, and it’s not awful. For usability, I did have to add Google apps back in, but at least they are sandboxes.
For the moment though, my daily driver is a Samsung S21. What can I do to make I more private?
So far, I have:
- Switched to Samsung browser with adblock.
- Started using duckduck go.
- Installed duckduck go’s app tracking protection. That was an eye opener.
- Restricted location history in Google maps.
What else? I know Graphene is typically the gold standard, but I’m trying to see what I can do short of that.
Signal is bad for privacy. You need to enter your phone number and it has centralized server
I use Matrix. It requires only email and is decentralized
This is a very informative post, thanks for sharing. Although Signal is still way better than SMS and probably also closed source apps like WhatsApp, the leakage of metadata on a centralized server is a problem that needs to be addressed.
That being said, there is some evidence that Signal isn’t collecting metadata based on the fact that it has published its responses to subpoenas and did not provide that information.