I am in need of a separate degoogled phone for some things that require high level of privacy (nothing illegal).
I have 2 phones that I can use. One of them is my business phone (it has my business number, apps, data and that sort of stuff) which is now running an OS with all the Google spyware because it’s necessary for the apps to work. I can reinstall everything on the second phone and use the first one as the secure device since it supports everything I need. The problem is that it has some issues on vanilla ROMs that I don’t really want to deal with and the reinstalling will take a lot of time.
The issue with the second phone is that it is rocking an old MTK chip and rooting instructions are let’s say a bit beyond my ability to understand. I still want to use it without Google if possible though. So can I degoogle its stock ROM with ADB or something? And is it worth trying or there will still be some vulnerabilities?
EDIT: to clear some possible misunderstandings, the reason of why I need a separate secure phone is that I am forced to use a very invasive proprietary app that I’d prefer just keeping on a separate device instead of trying to limit its spyware abilities with firewalls and that kind of stuff. I don’t trust the last solution much. Also I can’t use it in a VM because I need it to always be accessible wherever I am and yk carrying a PC is not an option
One thing you can do :
I don’t really trust such stuff. Once I tried disabling system apps via ADB (not deleting). They appeared as disabled but still could run in the background…
The point isn’t to stop them from running. It’s to stop them from talking to the internet, which is a lot simpler to achieve.
What I meant is that if we can’t disable them without root we probably can’t disable the network access either. I don’t have the knowledge and time to test outgoing packets and stuff like that
Android has built in support for VPNs. If there was a way for the OS to leak traffic, that would be a massive security vulnerability that would have corporations dumping all android company phones within a week.
Non root ad blockers work by creating a vpn within the phone that all network activity goes through, which then doesn’t allowed ad traffic.
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/google/android-leaks-some-traffic-even-when-always-on-vpn-is-enabled/
ew
But also benign. This isn’t a system app sending telemetry to google outside the VPN connection while it’s active. It’s the device checking whether a wifi access point provides internet to begin with, which if it does, the VPN connection will need to work, too.
The article is pointing out that the device doesn’t strictly need to do this, and that it is being done in a way the gives the wifi AP metadata. The device could instead just assume there is an internet connection on the wifi, and as such an option to disable this behaviour is warranted.
It’s fairly secure that it works, because it’s basically setting up a VPN connection that effectively blocks every network traffic outside of the tunnel.
But if you wanna be 100% sure you need to invest either the time or root your phone.
It’s okay to admit you don’t understand stuff, you don’t need to push conspiracy theories. None of us is omniscient…
I don’t push it and it’s not a theory. It’s just my assumption that I don’t have time to prove or destroy
Complete bullshit and utter speculation.
to my knowledge disabled apps do not run so you must have misunderstood something
System apps can appear disabled but still run. Yea, it’s fucked up.
Well it was on a Redmi phone. Everything is possible there. They have like 6 spyware apps installed by default
try deleting, disabling is not enough
I know and I tried. Deleting works fine I guess
it does :)
Interesting, I was using https://rethinkdns.com/ until now, I guess NetGuard is a more straightforward approach to blocking?
Up to you. Netguard does need a local VPN connection on the phone to work, so if you would need some VPN app to run there’s a problem. Netguard blocks network access per app (with choice for enabling/disabling WiFi and/or Mobile Data per app) which I think is cool. And it is an open source app available via F-Droid.
Rethink is very similar: uses a VPN connection too, and allows blocking per app, is available on F-Droid
Anyway, the interface of Netguard seems a bit easier to use
You can use wireguard configuration with rethink DNS