How can you make stock Android as private as possible? (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by unicornBro@sh.itjust.works to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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I know that stock Android itself is spyware.

What tips about setting up my stock Android phone would you give me? It's not factory unlocked so I'm sticking with Google Android.

Things I've done:

Stopped and disabled all apps that I don't use or need.
Replaced all apps that I can with FOSS alternatives from github using Obtainium.
Not installed things that I can just check on my laptop like email.

Is there anything else that I can do? Thanks in advance

Edit I've also:

Changed my DNS to Mullvad DNS
Restricted app permissions to only what they need
Not signed into the phone. I don't even have Gmail account.

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[-] spinning_disk_engineer@lemmy.ca 1 points 5 days ago

To the extent that you still need to use standard apps, consider disabling your advertising ID. EFF has a guide to this at https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/05/how-disable-ad-id-tracking-ios-and-android-and-why-you-should-do-it-now

This won't stop google of course. You should probably also install a firewall, like other people here have suggested. And keep in mind, disabling features entirely is different from not using them. For example, if location services is turned off, then even google maps doesn't know your location (in theory anyway), whereas if it is merely unused then google will still check periodically.

this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2025

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