An amazing bit of digital detective work here. Seems like Linux mobile is your only off ramp from being exhaustively tracked

    • mrvictory1@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Use a custom DNS and/or hosts file. You can cut them off the grid by blocking data upload to SSP. Don’t install many apps, for games that can be played offline, play them offline. EDIT: AdGuard DNS doesn’t block the 1st URL (o.isx…) in the page. 2nd URL is blocked.

    • MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      2 days ago

      Using firefox in strict mode with ublock origin, cookie auto-delete, and a VPN to change your IP every now and then should stop location tracking and cross-site tracking. Sites will still know you’ve visited them and what pages you’ve been to in that session, but that is impossible to stop.

      The main thing is don’t use apps, they can collect tons of data and tie it directly to your physical device, and run in the background while not actively using it.

      Using a web browser is really the safest option I can think of because you have control over almost everything.

      • hendrik@palaver.p3x.de
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        3 days ago

        I think it’s more: “Don’t use a smartphone”. It’ll send those requests through any internet connection. No matter if it’s a VPN or Tor.

        • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1 day ago

          Google hardcodes DNS into their hardware appliances…
          So you’d need to block outgoing DNS requests except for your DNS server and god forbid you change location with a smartphone.

          • hendrik@palaver.p3x.de
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            1 day ago

            I think this is about apps and not the operating system. But yeah, the stock ROMs also phone home to Google. You’d need to patch that. For example like custom ROMs like GrapheneOS do. I don’t see another viable alternative. But that still leaves you with the issues with the apps mentioned in the article.

            • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              7 hours ago

              I wouldnt be surprised if Google hardcoded DNS servers even if you override it with a “private dns”

              • hendrik@palaver.p3x.de
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                4 hours ago

                I think it’s unlikely that they mess with people’s DNS settings. That would just break lots of stuff and internet would stop working for a small amount of people. But there are things like certificate pinning and probably similar things for DNS. We nowadays often circumvent DNS servers and use DOH on an application level. Plus there are things like connectivity checks (made for public wifi portals etc), AGPS… that all connect to Google servers… Well, unless you have that changed, as I said. But that’s not something the user can change. You need the whole operating system re-built with different servers in place.

          • hendrik@palaver.p3x.de
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            2 days ago

            Same, same. But the occasional app refusing to work due to missing Play services, all the Instagram posts everyone except me took notice of, and all the hoops I have to jump through, kind of remind me of that regularly.

              • hendrik@palaver.p3x.de
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                12 hours ago

                Just comes with the downside that I can’t take part in every day life, talk to my friends, stay connected with old friends, borrow an electric bicycle, transfer money easily… I have to drive to a shop only to see it’s closed and they posted that on Instagram… I mean there’s a whole world out there which I don’t just want to disconnect from and become some sort of hermit…

    • BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      I imagine an ad blocker could prevent this data going out, unless the hosts were generic and the game/app simply won’t work without allowing those connections. I’ve never seen an app be [obviously] broken from my ad blocker but I am interested in running a similar experiment to see just how much data is going out.