
To see Google track you in real time, disable Play Services - mimixco
In an attempt to de-Google my life, I recently disabled Play Services. Now, my Pixel 2 XL complains every time it can&#x27;t &quot;phone home.&quot;<p>Google wants to contact Play Services (itself a rootkit) every time you receive a call. You&#x27;ll see the notification&#x2F;complaint several seconds <i>before</i> the phone rings.<p>While driving with Maps, Google attempts to track you each time you enter a destination or cancel one as well as at regular intervals during your drive.<p>Play Services also tries to track me at random times for no reason when I&#x27;m not using the phone.<p>It tries to track you while listening to voicemail and the notification&#x2F;complaint stops the voicemail playback every few seconds when it can&#x27;t.<p>But perhaps the worst offense is that it tracks you <i>as you scroll through your contacts.</i> God help if you look up a phone number because, every few seconds as you scroll through your contact list, Play Services attempts to report it to Google.<p>I find this behavior reprehensible and I&#x27;m sorely looking forward to getting a Puri.sm or &#x2F;e&#x2F; device.<p>Just for fun, try it for yourself by disabling the Play Services app and see how often Google is spying on <i>you.</i>
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freedomben
It would be really interesting to get a packet capture of what exactly they
are sending in the payload.

Some of it may not be tracking, but rather eager loading info. Like each time
a call comes in I bet they query the spam call database to see if the number
is spam so they can show their warning. I really like that feature. It would
be good to know what is really "tracking" and what is not.

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jesterson
I believe they encrypted it enough to hide from prying eyes like ours.

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angry_octet
It would be interesting to know if this was a pinned certificate. I'm guessing
it is. Probably have to run a debugger on the play store process.

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aqibgatoo
[https://microg.org/](https://microg.org/)

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nullwasamistake
Google maps also tries to get your location when the phone starts! You can
avoid all of this by running LineageOs and not installing Gapps. Or install
them, and use XPrivacyLua to lie every time play services asks.

I can't do this for my daily driver (stupid work apps don't allow root without
much fiddling), so I compulsively turn off location permission.

Google won't add a feature to spoof location or even block play services
because of obvious reasons. The best course of action if you don't want to be
tracked constantly is LineageOs or iPhone

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highhedgehog
Question from someone who does not know about LineageOS: is it secure? Where
do you get the apps from? What about the bank apps? Do you trust it?

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nullwasamistake
F-Droid is an open source app app store and it works really well. For other
apps you can sideload, the most secure way is by grabbing the APK from a
device that has play store.

Increasingly more apps won't work because Google tries to link everything to
their services. So that stock Android without Google's bs is useless.
Thankfully we have these things called websites I can use whenever the app
doesn't work.

I trust it more than I trust Google.

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imhoguy
> _For other apps you can sideload, the most secure way is by grabbing the APK
> from a device that has play store._

You can install Play Store apps with Yalp Store without any G account. It is
available on F-Droid.

I use it on kids' tablets to avoid logging into my account there.

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Paraesthetic
It vastly disappoints me that Google is allowed to get away with this sort of
thing without huge public outcry.

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jesterson
Vast majority of people are not concerned about their data until they see
possible repercussions of someone using it.

Judging from what I see, public awareness about privacy (and hence avoidance
of Google/Facebook and other services) is rising. Not as much as I would like
it to see, but it's slowly rising. Hope it's not only my experience.

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username444
The most offensive of all this to me, is the loading of your Google account
contacts into your phone.

My phone is for a small subset of friends and family, not every person I ever
emailed.

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dredmorbius
Try when G+ added all your social media contacts to Gmail. And gave them
Calendar access.

That went down poorly.

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yding
This is incorrect. Play Services is just a set of proprietary APIs that Google
enables for Android:
[https://developers.google.com/android/guides/overview](https://developers.google.com/android/guides/overview)
If you really want to see when data is being sent to Google, use Fiddler or
something similar to look at the actual packets.

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nullwasamistake
It's not really that far off the mark. Their "enhanced device positioning" bs,
if you have it turned on(almost everyone does, it's default), will report your
location to Google any time any app needs device location.

If you turn off "enhanced device positioning" you run into a ton of dark
patterns like Google maps asking you to turn it back on any time you use it.

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duckMuppet
That's true. Not only that, but google maps generally purges whatever query
you're searching for one you close the app, likely so they can put at the top
"tired of typing that? Sign in to let maps search from your history and..."

Terribly annoying

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kkarakk
well from a privacy focus wouldn't you want your app to not save state in ANY
way

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dTal
There's nothing wrong with the app saving state. It's strictly superior to the
alternative they're pushing, which is saving state on Google servers.

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digital_voodoo
I've tried many alternatives to Google Maps, and ultimately came back to it.

But for it to be so relevant, I think that a reasonable level of 'tracking',
even in real time, is necessary.

I am a privacy advocate, always trying new and open source alternatives (had
to learn command line in the process), but sometimes the overhead for having a
decent and sometimes quick service is not worth it.

My 2 cents...

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jumbopapa
I'm so conflicted about using Android and I haven't taken the time to fiddle
with LineageOS. I've switch a lot of services away from Google at this point
and I just don't see how I would be happier using a closed ecosystem like iOS
and I don't think Puri.sm will cut it as a daily driver.

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ng-user
> In an attempt to de-Google my life, I recently disabled Play Services. Now,
> my Pixel 2 XL complains every time it can't "phone home."

Wouldn't it be easier to get a new phone that isn't created by the (ad)
company you're trying to avoid?

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mimixco
OP here... I almost forgot. Play Services also tracks every single outgoing
phone call you make. You'll see the notification/complaint as soon as you hang
up.

