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An idle Android smartphone sends user data back to Google servers nearly ten times more frequently as an Apple device sends data back to Apple servers.
This is just one of the many findings of a 55-page research paper [pdf] published this week by research agency Digital Content Next. The research looked at what type of data is sent back to Google servers from idle Android devices.
The overall conclusion of the research is that Google tracks its users more often and collects more information about their movements and behavior when compared to Apple or to Google's ability to track users on Apple devices.
[...] For starters, researchers said that while a user interacts with a phone, 46% of all communications sent to Google servers were to Google's publisher and advertiser products, such as Google Analytics, DoubleClick, AdWords, and AdSense.
"Magnitude wise, Google's servers communicated 11.6 MB of data per day (or 0.35 GB/month) with the Android device," researchers said. "This experiment suggests that even if a user does not interact with any key Google applications, Google is still able to collect considerable information through its advertiser and publisher products."
[...] Moreover, even if most of the data Google collects about users is anonymized, researchers said that there are various details that Google accumulates from the same device that can deanonymize users.
For example, researchers said that advertising identifiers such as DoubleClick cookie IDs allow Google to track a user across web pages and apps, and associate "anonymous users" with known Google accounts.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Tuesday August 28 2018, @04:25AM (1 child)
I just bought some new Android phones... and they are driving me batty.
Any hints of where I should start? ( You are right, I do not want to break my shiny new toy, but I am damned close to either shipping the things back, or going ahead and risking breaking them for the experience of learning how to re-image the ROM image in them... ).
BLU Grand XL ( $60 cheapie from Amazon ). Cyanogenmod? ( does not look like they have an image for this particular phone... will other images for other BLU phones maybe work? ), F-Droid?
I have just about resigned myself that I am going to have to learn how to do this, or tolerate all the crap I am being bombarded with. And I really hate it when companies fling crap at me this way. I will take just so much of it before it becomes worth my while to learn crap avoidance and ducking techniques.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 4, Informative) by pTamok on Tuesday August 28 2018, @06:30AM
Cyanogenmod [wikipedia.org] is no longer developed. there is a story behind that, but what you need to know is that the idea was continued in LineageOS [wikipedia.org]. LineageOS is built upon the open Android source (AOSP [wikipedia.org]). People are working on building other, non-Android operating systems for mobile phones - obviously Apple, but also several small hobbiest attempts, as well as business, such as Jolla with their Sailfish OS [wikipedia.org], and Microsoft..
As for your BLU Grand XL, it doesn't appear on the list of devices that you can run LineageOS on [lineageos.org], so you don't appear to have many options.
F-Droid is the 'App Store' that has only free and open source applications in it. It is not an Operating System.