1304
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 10 May 2026
1304 points (98.2% liked)
Privacy
48775 readers
486 users here now
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
GrapheneOS user here! Not sure about websites but there are certain apps that don't work properly without Google Play Services, but Graphene's app store has a sandboxed version of it, so I just installed that and revoked all it's permissions. Then if an app needs it, I just turn on the relevant permission, do the thing and then turn permissions off again. It's a bit of a pain at first but I'm used to it now.
Note that some apps will say that they won't work without GPS, but actually will if you give it a try.
some of them are now straight up refusing to run without the play store.
Then they don't deserve your business
Man, I want a phone with physical kill switches for things like Wifi, GPS, Bluetooth, because a lot of things seem to detect when these things are turned 'off' by software. Wonder how they'd react if in software, GPS is enabled, but the actual hardware is not powered at all
They most likely won't work. Just speculation, but I would imagine most software that "needs" information like GPS don't care that its on or off, they care that they try to pull data and there is none.
pine phone
I'd say making a 2nd user for the apps that need Play Services (like banking and Uber/Lyft) is the move. This only allows Play Services to run when the 2nd user is on and also fully seperates it from the main user!
Oh yeah that's something I've been meaning to look into!
I'm a grapheneOS user and I don't have any google services installed. I havecyetvto hit any major issues with any apps or websites I use. Lucky, maybe?
The main ones for me are the RBC app, Skip the Dishes and Communauto. But I think those might all be Canadian?
I am Canadian. I don't use the rbc app, I use a different bank and use their website. I alao use the skip website when I order there, but I've never heard of the third one.