https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-09-28/google-user-data-is-police-s-top-shortcut-for-solving-crimes
Investigators increasingly use warrants to obtain location and search data from Google, even for nonviolent cases—and even for people who had nothing to do with the crime.
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Perhaps not, but your mobile carrier will! I use a Pixel 5 with LineageOS installed (and no google services), but I also needed to install Google Docs for a project (since the web interface refuses to load on Android) which means that Google is still able to access my IP address--but I think that's better than Google's "location history", or Play Protect on Android sending a list of all installed apps
I generally like being as close to mainline/AOSP as possible, and I used LineageOS for years on my Essential PH-1. That being said, it does look like the Pixel suffers from no lack of custom ROMs, so I may "distro hop" for a bit in the future
Who's your carrier? I've been considering a switch to lineage or graphene but I haven't pulled the trigger yet
Yup. The tracking stuff just makes it easier, but standard use of the phone sans tracking is still trackable.
I believe these are like the Chrome "private" mode. It might look private to you, but they are definitely still logging everything.
What works as a phone app instead of Google Maps? The only thing I've seen is Magic Maps, but that shares location data with third parties, so that seems like an awful solution.
There's OsmAnd and Organic Maps (and probably more). Both are open-source apps, use Openstreemap data, and work offline. You can get OsmAnd+ for free on F-Droid. If you want support the devs you can buy it in the Play Store. There's also a free but limited version there.
@float @canihasaccount I discovered OSMAnd+ just last week and it works pretty well - so far.