Re: What can't you do on Android WITHOUT a Google Account set up in the OS?

Newyana2,

I could imagine using an open-source or freeware map app in which you can
locally(!) record the path you've walked (and calculate/estimate the
total length of that path) ?

>
  Or people could go back to just taking a walk and stop trying
to document "ptogress" in all things. Tracking steps is about as
pitiful as it gets.

Although I agree with you, dropping all the measurement taking is probaly a
step too far for FitBit users.   You'll hve to wean them off of it one step
at a time.

Than again, all our sports (and often working lives too) are based on being
the better/faster/etc. one than all the others, so I can understand the
competitive part of it.

I have a TracFone with no Google account,

[snip]

I replaced android with graphene OS.  The phone is switched off unless I
need it (when traveling).  Its main app is OsmAND, a map program.

I'm amazed that these companies are allowed, legally, to exert such
control over a device I paid for.

I hope you're not running Win10/11, which has become nothing more than a
thick ethernet client and doubling as an advertising platform. :-)

But I think Arlen is missing the point, anyway.

That sounds like Arlen alright.

Cellphone under surveillance is a lifestyle. If people use apps, gmail,
maps, Waze, dating, Fitbit, DoorDash, Uber, shopping apps....
That's all spyware. Most of it is tracking location.

Yup.  And we have next to zero control about what those apps are allowed to
do - nor any way to even look at what they are doing.   IOW, a smartphone
(running googles android) is, in regard to spamming and tracking, a big
companies wet dream.

Even just leaving the cellphone turned on means you're being tracked.

True, but thats by a local phone company, not some faceless conglomerate
thats located outside the country, and as such almost untouchable.   Being
able to use the internet to connect to servers all over the world has its up
sides, but this is one of its down sides.

If you care about that then you don't live on a cellphone...

Ageed.

It's a choice. So many people want to know the best method for
maintaining privacy while telling 6 dozen corporations their
every move.

I don't think that most people know about that, or, as they have not yet
bumped into problems with it, they don't care that it happens.

Funny though that my country has laws forbidding stalking and that people
will blow their casket when discovering when it happens to them - including
involvement of police - but have zero problems when their phone is doing it.
Weird, if you think about it.

Regards,
Rudy Wieser