this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2024
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DeGoogle Yourself

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Who owns your shiny new Pixel 9 phone? You can’t say no to Google’s surveillance (cybernews.com)
submitted 4 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Google's latest flagship smartphone raises concerns about user privacy and security. It frequently transmits private user data to the tech giant before any app is installed. Moreover, the Cybernews research team has discovered that it potentially has remote management capabilities without user awareness or approval.

Cybernews researchers analyzed the new Pixel 9 Pro XL smartphone’s web traffic, focusing on what a new smartphone sends to Google.

“Every 15 minutes, Google Pixel 9 Pro XL sends a data packet to Google. The device shares location, email address, phone number, network status, and other telemetry. Even more concerning, the phone periodically attempts to download and run new code, potentially opening up security risks,” said Aras Nazarovas, a security researcher at Cybernews...

... “The amount of data transmitted and the potential for remote management casts doubt on who truly owns the device. Users may have paid for it, but the deep integration of surveillance systems in the ecosystem may leave users vulnerable to privacy violations,” Nazarovas said...

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (23 children)

Who truly owns the device is a question that has been answered ever since Android came into being.

Ask yourself: do you have root access to YOUR phone? No you don't: Google does.

It's the so-called "Android security model", which posits that the users are too dumb to take care of themselves, so Google unilaterally decides to administer their phone on their behalf without asking permission.

Which of course has nothing to do with saving the users from their own supposed stupidity and everything to do with controlling other people's private property to exfiltrate and monetize their data.

How this is even legal has been beyond me for 15 years.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 weeks ago

Weirdly, Pixels are actually the best Android phones for installing custom ROMs, at least out of the major manufacturers. So for me, there isn't another choice, because I can finance a Pixel, and I can't finance a Fairphone or something.

GrapheneOS is really the furthest away from Google you can get on an Android phone and it's mainly developed for Pixel.

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