Weaning myself off Google (personal stuff, not work)

[LeMarchand]

Who's turning off their phone anyway?

 

Me: cinema, theatre. Meetings with my handler.

[enjay]

Who's turning off their phone anyway?

 

Me. My work phone when I leave work and my personal one when I go to sleep. I think I receive more wrong numbers, pocket dials and automated sales calls than I receive emergency calls from hospitals, so I prefer to turn the phone off when I'm asleep.

[vimagoes]

Sorry @vimagoes but linking an article explaining how a phone which is turned on can be tracked doesn't prove an off phone can also be tracked.

That article is to support that is true a phone can be tracked using your battery info.

So, NSA can apparently do it.

This article is to support that it can be done even with your phone off.

And malicious apps may be able to replace the power off sequence on my phone so it seems off when it isn't. I would notice the power drain though, and the battery reporting would show the phone being on all the time, plus the malicious app would need to accurately repeat the boot-up sequence when I go to turn it back on, including my calendar widget being slow to load. That's pretty unlikely in itself, plus I am confident none of the apps I have on my phone are doing that (that's about knowing and trusting the app source). I suppose Google could have coded Android to wake up invisibly, triangulate itself, report back and turn off again but personally I'm not buying that.

I am sure you would notice your phone is behaving weird but not everyone would.

So, I don't think I'm victim to the second one, and I very much doubt the NSA care where I am either.

I am not trying to say that NSA is spying on us, I just tried to say that it can be done, that's all, of course we won't be a NSA target or whatever, but it can be done.

I think we're right to be security-conscious, but I also think we should remember Spooks and Homeland are TV shows not documentaries.

I am not supporting my statement on a film, I am supporting it on experts' articles, if they are not enough to convince you that's fine but it doesn't come from TV shows.https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/02/battery-status-indicators-tracking-onlineNow, two security researchers from Princeton University have shown that the battery status indicator really is being used in the wild to track users. By running a specially modified browser, Steve Engelhard and Arvind Narayanan found two tracking scripts that used the API to “fingerprint” a specific device, allowing them to continuously identify it across multiple contexts.http://randomwalker.info/publications/OpenWPM_1_million_site_tracking_measurement.pdf

[enjay]

Expert articles could convince me. So far, we've had @DGardiner 's one about NSA (a risk I'm willing to live with, personally) and lots from you about non-governmental methods which use a phone which is TURNED ON...

 

Also, presumably any phone can be tracked in this way, even "stupid phones", so it doesn't really help in the weaning ourselves off Google as we'd have to give up mobile phones altogether.

[DGardiner]

Expert articles could convince me. So far, we've had @DGardiner 's one about NSA (a risk I'm willing to live with, personally) and lots from you about non-governmental methods which use a phone which is TURNED ON...

 

Also, presumably any phone can be tracked in this way, even "stupid phones", so it doesn't really help in the weaning ourselves off Google as we'd have to give up mobile phones altogether.

 

i wasnt really vouching for it like, the article is age old... from the symbian days. security is a bit better now so likely a non issue for most phones

[mavhc]

I just put mine on silent.

 

You can't track a phone that's off, you can make a phone look like it's off though. Probably best to replace the battery with one that lies about its %age when it's "off" though

[vimagoes]

i wasnt really vouching for it like, the article is age old... from the symbian days. security is a bit better now so likely a non issue for most phones

 

Yes, It's old stuff but although the security in those days was way worse than now, the tracking techniques were too.

 

Expert articles could convince me. So far, we've had @DGardiner 's one about NSA (a risk I'm willing to live with, personally) and lots from you about non-governmental methods which use a phone which is TURNED ON...Also, presumably any phone can be tracked in this way, even "stupid phones", so it doesn't really help in the weaning ourselves off Google as we'd have to give up mobile phones altogether.

 

0k , I am not able to give you a more convincing source of information.

 

Anyway we were sharing our vision about trying to avoid being tracked giving up on some features (Android or others). I still believe that this is not possible unless you disconnect completely your persona from the actual world. We are not talking about just phones or browser, your info is shared everywhere, your bank account, your contracts, your mortgage, your taxes, your issues subscriptions, everywhere...

 

 

 

 

[jthompson]

I've been trying out different Android keyboards lately. Google's Gboard is lovely to type on, as the swipe typing works really well. However, I've gravitated towards Hacker's Keyboard (from the F-Droid app repository). Back to old-fashioned, slow, vanilla typing, but at least I don't have to worry about data gathering at all (Gboard gives option there, but who really knows). Also tried AnySoftKeyboard, but I couldn't find a way to remove the voice button, and the layouts aren't as good as Hacker's. Also trying to get into the habit of using the special keyboard in Keepass2Android, rather than using the clipboard to input passwords (although that's more a security thing than a privacy thing).

[mavhc]

Swyping is the best thing to be invented in the touch screen era

[enjay]

Swyping is the best thing to be invented in the touch screen era

 

I'm not such a fan myself, but the keyboard I use (Swiftkey) has very good predictive text which learns how I write, so often I only need to type a few letters and then tap on the suggested word to write the rest of my sentence.

[jthompson]

Pleased to discover that Android lets you change the default assistant (Settings -> Apps -> Configure Apps -> Assist & voice input -> Assist app). A long press of the home button would normally bring up the Google Assistant, which is a pain when it's something you don't actually want to use, but you can change that to bring up something else, or nothing at all, instead. The DuckDuckGo app can be assigned, which is nice.

[jthompson]

I came across this last night - https://haystack.mobi/

It's quite an interesting exercise to run it on my phone.

[TTG_Alice]

I use Lastpass for passwords.

http://www.ecosia.org for web searching (they plant a tree for every search too)

Waze for maps and routes.

I'm fully involved with Gmail tools though - docs, sheets etc. So I'm open to other cloud online programs suggestions? But I find it so useful with the shared lived document.

I have just found out about a sheet program called Airtable that some are raving about.

If you have something to hide, just go to the dark side

[LeMarchand]

Waze for maps and routes.

 

Bought out by Google a while back. Once they owned it they crippled functionality and stopped development for Windows phones.

[mavhc]

Bought out by Google a while back. Once they owned it they crippled functionality and stopped development for Windows phones.

 

To be fair, so did Microsoft