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Google Play Services is not easy to rip out, and it installs itself as a "better" location service provider for the device, meaning that app requests for locati
by titzer 4y ago
Google Play Services is not easy to rip out, and it installs itself as a "better" location service provider for the device, meaning that app requests for location go through it. And it can and does upload "anonymized"[1] data of all these types constantly as part of its normal operations. You can withhold consent to uploading "anonymized" data by paying careful attention to click-through agreements[2] and explicitly turning off "high location accuracy"[3] in your Android settings.
[1] The technical details of how this data are anonymized, nor how it is analyzed and used to "improve products" are not public.
[2] The implications of each click-through agreement are, as usual, non-obvious.
[3] The name of this mechanism keeps changing and it is harder and harder to find and disable.
- kornhole 4y agoWithin a few minutes I can deactivate Google Play Services on an Android phone using ADB. The universal android debloater available on Github makes it easier. The better solution is a custom OS forked from Android, but what is possible depends on the device.
- KennyBlanken 4y agoDisabling Google Play Services isn't the problem. The problem is that a huge number of apps will not run without Google Play Services, because Google puts all their fun/useful APIs and toolkits in it so they can be closed-source.
- kornhole 4y agoYes if you are dependent on Google or Google integrated apps, simply deactivating it on a standard OS may not be a fit option for you. Graphene has built shims to make most apps work, but you might have a problem with another OS. I deleted my Google account many years ago and have not had Google Play on my devices since then. I use very few proprietary apps anyways.
- MacsHeadroom 4y agoGrapheneOS has no Google Play Services. OpenStreetMap works great without it. Google Maps in the mobile Tor browser works well too.