Two years ago I repurposed an old Moto G6 Android phone to run LanAnnouncer for local voice announcements and also to use it's GPS as Tier 1 time server at my home. I also made sure the phone would never ever do updates to report back to the mother ship. I put in firewall rules to block it's access to the internet. It's been humming away ever since but then yesterday I kept getting the tone on my speakers that it was constantly reconnecting to wifi.
Well I thought being up an running for so long maybe it was time for a reboot and I rebooted it and it was doing the same thing, connecting and disconnecting from wifi. I would hate to lose my time source and the local text to speech announcements so I decided to allow the phone to connect to the Google mothership to see if there was any updates that would make any sense. The strange thing was once the phone saw it's mother in the cloud the issue stopped. I didn't do any software updates and then re-enabled my firewall rules and it's been quiet for 24 hours now.
One has to think that Google put some type of time bomb in the OS that would force the frenzied retry to check in. Just wondering if this will return in another two years.
Unlikely. That said, you could put a packet sniffer like wireshark on the network and see what info is being passed. Given that there isn't much on that phone I'm not sure exactly what information you're worried about getting sent to google.
Yep probably some cert and this was before Apple also changed their policy to 398 day certs also. This really tells me that being local after the apocalypse will probably not be possible. This will be due to having a signing authority provided by internet services. The ultimate time bomb is all the certs expiring and software shutting down.
I tried degoogling a while back, mostly out of boredom. And honestly, thats about the hardest thing I've ever done. I made it as far as changing email to proton mail and converting to firefox, but nothing really worked well enough so I gave up and went back. My life is pretty boring, monitor me all you want I guess. Lifes to short to worry about all this big brother stuff.
In re-reading this thread, I have another thought. One of my wall-mounted Amazon Fire tablets (de-Googled Android) that I forced the Google Play store onto is also running LanAnnouncer. Earlier this week, it was whining about needing approval to install some app updates from Google Play. The tablet also refused to run one app that it usually runs 24/7, even after a reboot.
Whether it was a Google Play update, certificate update, or LanAnnouncer update is unknown, but I'm thinking that both devices running LanAnnouncer and going flaky in the same week is more than a coincidence.....
No, you can't trust Google. You are the product, every connected device is used to cultivate and harvest you.
Not literally of course, we all know this on one level or another.. Just every detail about all of our lives, observed and recorded to create more value for their real customers. It's up to us to decide if the scales balance between the value they provide for invading every aspect of our lives. Google is an unchecked monopoly that can buy their way out of any trouble. How can anyone trust such an entity?
How'd that sound? Too preachy? I've been trying to tone down my outright revulsion for Alphabet. I probably need more work. Thank you for asking.
As most parts of the operating system are open source, everyone can (could) check the source code.
But if you are really overcautious, you can also use an alternative Android operating system; LineageOS, for example, is recommended.
If you then also use an alternative market such as F-Droid (only open source Apps, so 100% secure), you can reduce your connection to Google to 0%.
BTW: That's quite the opposite of Apple's iOS, where everything is a hidden secret and you have no control about your own device.
You mean in contrast to all the open source possibilities of Apple's iOS?
Oh wait...
As you can read in your linked (BTW: 8 year old!) article, on Android it's all your own choice: Use Google services - or even not!
But please don't blame Google for offering such great freedom!
If you’re a skilled IT professional (or hobbyist), you can probably work around many of the limitations Google has decided to impose on the use of their proprietary apps (which happen to be a core part of their OS experience for most users).
And I’ll bet you can even do it on hardware by a manufacturer that Google has locked into an agreement that effectively prevents them from ever offering a tablet that runs an Android fork.
But the overwhelming majority of consumers that use Android want a device that works out of the box with the Google apps they’re used to.
The article is old, but they acknowledge that in the editor’s note written when it was updated in 2018, and they point out that nothing has fundamentally changed about google’s approach to exerting more control over Android when it meets google’s interests to do so (despite it having an open source core, which is a genie that obviously can’t be put back in the bottle at this point).
Eh, I've said this in other forums, but the thought that "we are the product" is such a tired old trope.
Google provides services (very good ones in fact). Somewhere along the line, data collection became the currency. It's still the simple model of trading something of value for goods/services. The question is whether or not you trust a company to protect your data once they have it. IMO, they've done a good job of that.
They don't sell your data. They sell ad space based on that data. If they sold the data itself, no one would buy the ad space... they would be stupid to sell it.
It's all choices folks. If you want enterprise level email services, by all means, pay for MS Exchange and host it at home. Me? I'll deal with a few targeted ads in my eye line. (this extends to the other products as well)
Also relevant: I don't run ad blockers because I understand the relationship between "free" products and people needing to get paid.
Well I think we have gone beyond my initial post of Android as being a viable OS to run functionality without having it "checking in" or other functions such a certificate updates. It's great to see all these debates and such. I expect my firewalled LanAnnouncer solution will hit the issues again in a year or less if it was a expired certificate.
Tired and old.. but still true. They track you no matter if you opt out, they just "anonymize" the data and call you brand "x" and go on selling your identity under a pseudonym or advertising ID. They provide products, yes. I try to avoid them, it doesn't mater; they own close to half the add tracking software online. The rest is owned by Facebook and Amazon. Monopolies are bad; change my mind. Oh wait, you can't, because I'm old and stubborn. I loved my home phone in the 1970's, I could call my Grandparents 100 miles away for just a few dollars if I kept the call to a minutes or two. Break the monopoly and 30 years later we have cell phones and no longer pay by distance. Monopolies do suck. The internet has barely evolved in the last decade, it could be so much more if it weren't being steered by a single company.
Eh, I've had this same conversation with countless others. I'm far past trying to change minds.
That said, I do agree about monopolies, but less people are concerned about the monopolistic behavior than their perceived privacy. They also use the monopoly argument as an excuse to further the privacy argument from a different direction. It's a futile argument from either side.
I'm married, I don't need to do me... but I'm sick and tired of staying silent. If someone asks for an opinion on Google, or starts cheerleading for them; I will speak up. People by nature take silence as acquiescence. I don't expect to change anyone's mind. But, I want it to be known that not everyone thinks a personal spying device in their home or having their every moment surveilled is somehow ok so long as it's not the government. Heck, I'm sure there are people that would be ok with a government run smart speaker in the house.
We will never have privacy again if we don't fight for it.
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but I'm sick and tired of staying silent. If someone asks for an opinion on Google, or starts cheerleading for them; I will speak up. People by nature take silence as acquiescence. I don't expect to change anyone's mind. But, I want it to be known that not everyone thinks a personal spying device in their home or having their every moment surveilled is somehow ok so long as it's not the government. Heck, I'm sure there are people that would be ok with a government run smart speaker in the house.
