[Android Apps and Games] GalaxyA325G:
This is straying from the realm of Fair Email, where Fair Email is just one of many PRIVACY steps I have taken (and you should too, IMHO)... where I'm not as fatalistic as most people seem to be... in that I disable every Google Service I can get away with disabling.

It's easy to do... you just disable one Google Service per day, and then wait to see if anything breaks, and if too much breaks, you re-enable it (which you only must do for very few Google Services.

A key point of using Fair Email is to garner a bit of privacy from Google, along with better functionality than the GMail app provides.

Suffice to say that any server you log into, such as any mail server, will track your IP address (where Google hates VPN... ask me how I know this).

The whole reason I'm using Fair EMail is that I care about privacy and I'm not as fatalistic as most people seem to be in that I've always put Google in the Goolag simply by being intelligent about setup.

For example, I've always periodically reset my Advertising ID (until recently when I've just permanently zeroed it out).

I also strive to periodically reset my Android ID and my GSF ID, where I have a separate thread on each for those who want more information.

And I always run on mock location settings, to spoof my GPS location (unless I actually need my actual location for routing), and when I route, I use offline maps (and yes, you can get traffic in real time without logging into anything).

In addition, my Wi-Fi is set up for privacy, which takes a ton of little things (such as randomizing the MAC address for every connection, not just for every access point, and not reconnecting to the hidden access points, and naming access points to not only stay out of Google/Mozilla public servers but which themselves are named to stay out of nefarious WPA2/PSK rainbow tables and to be NOT uploaded to the sneaky Kismet/Wigle servers which don't respect the _nomap & _optout_ naming conventions)... all of which is easy to do (if you know how to do it of course).

And I don't install apps that link in the GSF (Google Services Framework) APIs if I can help it (and, true to privacy, Fair Email does NOT use GSF as far as I know).

Just as I use Fair Email for privacy, I do probably a score or two of many tiny little things to make sure that statement is not correct, e.g., I am well aware that Google Maps runs a sneaky Android Activity that turns on a DIFFERENT (i.e., more sinister) set of location settings than does the normal location Android Activity that ALL other (non-Google) apps have to use!

As an example, this is the Google-apps-only Activity, as far as I know.

ACTION: "android.lintent.action.MAIN"

PACKAGE: "com.google.android.gms"

CLASS: "com.google.android.gms.location.settings.LocationAccuracyActivity"

Notice it's similar but different from the Android Activity for accuracy.

ACTION: "android.intent.action.MAIN"

PACKAGE: "com.android.settings"

CLASS: "com.android.settings.Settings$ScanningSettingsActivity"

As an example of where I agree with you that Google is sinister in sprinkling sneaky settings about, I, for one, make sure I NEVER allow that location accuracy setting Android Activity to be set - but - to your point - I suspect most people are completely unaware that two DIFFERENT location accuracy Android Activities exist to turn on your GPS radio receiver!

I even disable the Google Location History service, among others.

Regarding the bluetooth and wi-fi scanning, rest assured I have all that stuff turned off also (including NFC, Firebase, cache, cellular & data networks, etc.) but I could always learn more from you and from people like you, as Google is pervasive in almost everything Android.

Yes. I agree. Even with the Fair Email privacy features, I am well aware that Google scans your email stored on its servers. Not only are the headers analyzed, but the body is scanned for receipts.

The problem is you only have two choices here:

a. Don't use email

b. Use email

The problem with the second choice above is you only have two choices:

A. Use Google email servers

B. Use someone elses email servers

If you could name a BETTER public mail server than Google, then please do so (rest assured I've tried most of them though, e.g., protonmail, yahoo, microsoft, aol, tutanoa, gmx.net, etc.).

That's one reason we are using Fair Email instead of the Google GMail app, where I agree with you fully & completely, which is why I disabled every Google Service on my phone that I could that didn't adversely affect the phone, and why I disabled native Google apps such as YouTube, Chromium, GMail, Google Play Store, Google Search, Messages, Phone, Files, etc.

All my replacement apps are privacy aware, such as Ungoogled Chromium, NewPipe, Aurora Store, Fair Mail, NetGuard, etc. Heck, even my pedometer is a privacy aware pedometer and I can't think of a single app that I own that requires a login to a mothership account.

Certainly there's no credit card or banking information on my phone, and what is personal is encrypted in a Veracrypt/Truecrypt format that is the same as what works on the PC.

Even my privacy aware contacts, SMS/MMS, and phone apps work WITHOUT a contacts.db sqlite database on Android (they each import/export a contacts database that is OUTSIDE the Android default sqlite contacts database - as mine is empty).

That means even WhatsApp has to be work without any Android contacts.db sqlite database, which is easy to do once you know how.

About the only Google service I use is the text-to-speech capability because my fat fingers require that, where I WISH there was an offline text to speech engine that will do emails, SMS, etc. (note there are plenty of offline text-to-speech engines - but none that I know of integrate with your email and text app).

Do you know of any offline text-to-speech engines that interface with Fair Email for example?

While I can use Fair Email without rooting, I can't root my free phone because T-Mobile still owns it technically, and as far as I know from the XDA forums, nobody else has figured out how to do it, so de-googling, for me, has to be what any average Android user can do.

I'm always all ears if you have ideas for privacy that I haven't thought of, but for the purpose of this thread, my idea of privacy is:

a. Use Fair Email instead of Google GMail

b. Use web-OAUth instead of 2SV/2FV or account-OAuth

c. Set it up to sync manually, on demand, instead of constantly

Anything else you (or others) suggest to help stay private when using Fair Email with Google public mail servers?