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Does anyone else use a special account for their Android phone that they don't use for anything else?
by mapleoin 10y ago
Does anyone else use a special account for their Android phone that they don't use for anything else?
- boredinballard 10y agoThat's a good idea! I may start doing that.
- 4rtemis 10y agoI don't use a Google account on my android phone. Cyanogenmod sans google anything.
- YCode 10y agoSo I guess you don't have access to Google Play? How do you get apps?
- undersuit 10y agoI use F-droid for many apps, but I also still use Google Play.
- jasonkostempski 10y agoI've got a few crutches I'm not ready to give up so I'm on regular Android but I've been starting down the path of using F-Droid only apps so I can trasition more smoothly when I'm ready. The only app I've got left is Maps, OsmAnd is a little too tedious for me but I'll convince myself it's worth it eventually. I'm also concerned that I might not be able to get Project Fi working quite right.
- deep_attention 10y agoI am using "Here WeGo" https://here.com/ https://here.com/ (originally developed by Nokia), quite a good alternative to Google Maps. It does not need any Google services installed. Downloaded it directly from the Google Play store with Raccoon.
- jasonkostempski 10y agoHmm, that Raccoon thing seems ok but using something like that would be a bit of a sideways move for me. I'd rather move toward 100% libre software and not rely on proprietary software I'll need to hack around to maintain privacy.
- deep_attention 10y agoThen I would suggest Neo900 https://neo900.org/ https://neo900.org/ . Good presentation about the concept: https://neo900.org/stuff/cccamp15/ccc2015talk/talk.pdf https://neo900.org/stuff/cccamp15/ccc2015talk/talk.pdf
- deep_attention 10y agoYou can use Raccon http://www.onyxbits.de/raccoon http://www.onyxbits.de/raccoon : "Download apps directly from Google Play. Raccoon is the only APK Downloader that also supports paid and large apps."
- siege_conform 10y agoF-Droid and apkmirror. You can use any app that doesn't run google services, including open source alternatives for apps like youtube and google maps. Can access many things from your web browser, as well.
- 4rtemis 10y agoFdroid for what I use daily. Firefox Aurora direct from FF which auto updates. HumbleBundle for games because I like funding DRMFree + outside GPlay distribution methods. I use raccoon to download from GPlay if I need to as a peer stated and know when to update with apktrack from fdroid, but really that's only for Slack since we use it at work. Slack uses Google Push Notifications like most apps, so it doesn't notify me about updates, but I check it periodically enough. I could go the microG route, but I prefer not having to interface with google servers at all if possible. Edit: Maybe I can either convince my work to use something like Riot.im when it gets mature enough, or use a slack bridge for it and rid myself of this problem.
- agumonkey 10y agoNo gmail, gmaps, gphotos ? do you have replacements ? pse: thanks all AP a lot for suggestions :)
- 4rtemis 10y agoK9Mail with Fastmail, AddressToGPS + OSMAnd, I back up my own photos with a home server and some rsync (Syncopoli). There is PhotoBackup which is kind of neat though. We use Google Calendar for stuff at work, Google still has an old psuedo-deprecated-not-talked-about CalDav endpoint I hit with DavDroid that gives me all of that. These problems were solved with protocols long before gardens. I use offlineCalendar(Yes you need an app for that in Android) to create a calendar for myself locally, though I have a radiCAL server for things I need sync'd. Could have used Fastmail I guess.
- greenshackle2 10y agoFunny, I use exactly the same apps on my Cyanogenmod phone - K9 + Fastmail, OSMAnd. There arnt that many good alternatives to Google, apparently. The only thing I'm still missing is public transit navigation. I do have the Play Store installed though - through OpenGApps pico - I only have the Play Store, none of the other Google stuff - with a dummy gmail account.
- 4rtemis 10y agoMy city has a transit app they maintain, but I'm afraid that'll stop if Google gets too ubiquitous in this area. It's really too bad that information that should be released as clean openData sets is so difficult to acquire and parse easily. Really should be some regulation around what, how and how often public information should be published and maintained.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- seszett 10y ago
- undersuit 10y agoIf you can handle the limitations this is a great way to keep an older or cheaper phone nice and responsive. Good effort.
- AdrianRossouw 10y agoyup. although that was mostly to separate out hangouts from what's on my phone.
- topspin 10y agoYes. It never occurred to me to connect my portable devices to any accounts that mattered. Who does that?
- istorical 10y agoPeople who don't think with a security-first mindset or who prefer to gain the benefits of cloud-integration with their devices.
- topspin 10y agoIs that what I have? A security-first mindset? Honestly it never even crossed my mind back in 2010 when I bought a Nexus S that the thing to do was put the keys to the kingdom on something that might fall out of a pocket somewhere... silly me; I just made a separate account and I don't use that account for signing up other accounts or whatnot; when that account gets compromised they'll find precious little of value.
- cm2187 10y agoIt never occured to me that anything sent or received from a gmail account was private.
- drvdevd 10y agoThis is a good point. In a certain sense, all your webmail accounts are already compromised. It's just a question of "by whom" [edit: substitute 'cloud' for 'webmail' to get an idea of the full range]
- ocdtrekkie 10y agoIt's not. In fact, Google has the right to publish your private emails if it's for promotional purposes. The worldwide unrevokable license they grant themselves to everything you store on their service has no requirement that they don't publicize private information. Check their Terms of Service.
- topspin 10y ago
- wnevets 10y agothat would really hurt the point of using an android phone for me.
- Quiark 10y agoSo you don't access your gmail from the phone?
- jasonkostempski 10y agoEven though I sign into my phone using my Google account, I use gmail through IMAP in K-9 which isn't tied to the phone account at all.
- StavrosK 10y agoI second this, I love K-9.
- mapleoin 10y agoI'm not using gmail for my email.
- jasonkostempski 10y agoDamn, should have thought of that. I assume it's not possible to transfer the few purchased apps I already have? I'd probably be willing to ditch them.
- r3bl 10y agoKind of. I have a Google account created with a non-Gmail email address. I only use it for YouTube subscriptions (and I'm in the process of moving that to a basically RSS reader) and Google Play. I have absolutely nothing work-related on my phone since I know that I can't update the system when a patch is submitted thanks to the shitty Android ecosystem. (And I'm still stuck at v5.0 and can't figure out a safe way to root my phone.) Oh, and every single point of Google's tracking that I can turn off is turned off (like searches, YouTube history, location history etc).
- ttctciyf 10y agoAs an android phone owner for just over 30 hours.. at this point: yes. I grow less inclined to change that. OTOH, I never trusted my previous I-device with any significant data either, and any paid apps on there were gifted from a separate account on a desktop machine.
- ionised 10y agoYes, a gmail address that I use for nothing other than to access the Play Store. I don't use it to send or receive emails and I don't use any other google products or services. Anything I actually sign up for uses one of my other three paid services. At this point I'm tempted to start using Raccoon; http://www.onyxbits.de/raccoon http://www.onyxbits.de/raccoon