Comment by song | Hacker News Reader

Comment by song | Hacker News Reader

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See, that's a dilemma I grappling with right now. I am trying to decide between an iphone and an android phone. And while android does allow me to install any APKs I want which is great. It also seems to be supremely difficult not to share all of my contacts with google, not to share more information than I want with them and to not have my privacy completely invaded.

So, on one hand, android gives me freedom to install any app I want and to install a firewall like netguard, on the other hand, it destroys my privacy.

I'm really looking for a guide about how to properly secure and prevent data leaking an android phone beyond the basics that I've seen online but without that I'm leaning toward Apple despite finding it abhorrent that I cannot install what I want on my own device (I can obviously side load by using my dev certificate but that's still not something I'm happy with)

The only feasible way to avoid sharing data with Google is using a custom ROM like LineageOS, a Google framework replacement like microG, and XPrivacyLua (module for XPosed). Ideally you'd avoid using any Google services at all, but at least these steps largely prevent Google from freely taking whatever data they want if you do use the Play Store or whatever.

Problem with that is that unlocking the bootloader voids the warranty where I live... I think I'll still try to go down that road if I can't find any other solution...

> not to share all of my contacts with google

You can do this even using the Google Contacts app. Just go into the account settings and turn off contacts sync. To be extra sure, just use a different contacts app.

> not have my privacy completely invaded.

Android has strictly less privacy invasion than iOS, even on Google phones. You can set an offline maps app to be your default. Getting your GPS location doesn't have to send it to Google, while doing the same thing on iOS always sends it to Apple, no matter which app asked. You can install your own apps usably without telling Google who you are.

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