[General Questions and Answers] Lusty Rugnuts:
Experimenting with your phone is kind of a "do it and see what happens" sort of deal... sometimes you change something, and it breaks something else which prevents you from changing the first something back.

I just ran into such an occurrence... I made a change, and somehow it affected the ability of Settings to open, so I couldn't change it back.

It was an easy fix:

adb shell pm clear com.android.settings

---------- Post added at 02:37 AM ---------- Previous post was at 02:35 AM ----------

Boot a LiveCD such as ReactOS... it'll run the Windows version of SP Flash Tools, and since it's a LiveCD, it won't make any changes on your system... but you can still store the files you're going to flash on your system's drives, and access them from SP Flash Tools running within ReactOS.

---------- Post added at 03:03 AM ---------- Previous post was at 02:37 AM ----------

Hmmmm.... I think I uncovered yet another instance of Google being sleazy, this time having to do with tracking and Ad ID.

If you go into Settings > Google > Ads, you can reset your Ad ID, right? Well, not so fast... my setting in Settings > Google > Ads is showing NO Advertising ID. Yet I still have an Advertising ID.

How did I do this?

Go to /data/data/com.google.android.gms/shared_prefs/adid_settings.xml

You'll see a string named "adid_key"... that's your REAL Ad ID, the one Google never changes (it's never changed on my phone since I bought it, even though I've clicked the "Reset advertising ID" option in Settings > Google > Ads several times since then.

So why is my Settings > Google > Ads 'advertising ID' showing as blank?

Because I've edited that .xml file... specifically the setting with a string name of "fake_adid_key".

Google is setting a fake Ad ID key and showing you that. It'll reset when you want, but that's not the real Ad ID key, it's not the one Google is using... hence the name "fake_adid_key".

This is a blatant violation of user trust and privacy. Google is lying to us, tracking us, stealing our personal and personally-identifying data and using it to make money. No wonder they got rid of their "Don't Be Evil" condition in their charter.

I've reset my "adid_key" setting to something which I'm sure will get the point across should any Google engineer read the Ad ID server logs at Google.... as a hint (because it's not family-friendly), it's F***_Y**_GOOGLE without the stars.

And now that it's been set, those Google engineers will just have to live with me spamming their Ad ID logs with my custom message... because the REAL Ad ID key never changes. ;)

I encourage everyone to reset their /data/data/com.google.android.gms/shared_prefs/adid_settings.xml "adid_key" to the same... it's our way of fighting back against Google crawling into every nook and cranny of our phones so they can use them as data-collection and monetization tools.

If all Google sees in its AdID cache on their servers is "F***_Y**_GOOGLE" from nearly every user, their advertising program becomes ineffective, and they'll be forced to clean up their act.

{UPDATE}

That "F***_Y**_GOOGLE" string I entered in the real adid_key also gets put into /data/data/com.android.vending/shared_prefs/finsky.xml

<string name="adid-cached-value">F***_Y**_GOOGLE</string>

That's one of the configuration files Google Play Store uses when you're checking for updates.

So Google is tracking you with a Globally Unique ID (GUID) that doesn't change, and presents to the user a "fake_adid_key" that changes when the user presses the 'Reset Advertising ID' button, but otherwise does absolutely nothing.

Were this not so, then the "fake_adid_key" content (the one that changes when the user presses the 'Reset Advertising ID' button) would be placed into finsky.xml instead of the content of 'adid_key' (which never changes).

{/UPDATE}

{UPDATE2}

And further evidence that Google is showing users a 'fake_adid_key' that they can reset, but which does nothing else, while actually using 'adid_key' as their GUID (Globally Unique ID) to track users:

/data/user/0/com.teslacoilsw.launcher/shared_prefs/com.crashlytics.prefs.xml

<string name="crashlytics.advertising.id">F***_Y**_GOOGLE</string>

That's a third-party app, using the hidden and unchanging 'adid_key' content... if 'fake_adid_key' did anything other than trick users into believing they're not being tracked, then the content of 'fake_adid_key' would have been placed into that third-party app's advertising.id string.

{/UPDATE2}

{UPDATE3}

And even further evidence that Google is showing users a 'fake_adid_key' that they can reset, but which does nothing else, while actually using 'adid_key' as their GUID (Globally Unique ID) to track users:

data/user/0/com.oasisfeng.greenify/shared_prefs/com.crashlytics.prefs.xml

<string name="crashlytics.advertising.id">F***_Y**_GOOGLE</string>

That's another third-party app, using the hidden and unchanging 'adid_key' content... if 'fake_adid_key' did anything other than trick users into believing they're not being tracked, then the content of 'fake_adid_key' would have been placed into that third-party app's advertising.id string.

{/UPDATE3}