[General Questions and Answers] GalaxyA325G:
All good information. Thank you for your helpful advice.

How do you "turn firebase off" because I've turned off and disabled everything I can that has anything to do with Google but I don't even know HOW to turn off Firebase. No matter what I do, it saves an index. And uploads it somewhere (I don't know where it goes).

View attachment 6082188

On my unrootable A32-5G the first thing I did when I set it up was NOT add a Google Account to the phone.

View attachment 6082190

Then I pretty much disabled or deleted (often using adb) everything that I could get away with that had anything to do with Google.

View attachment 6082192

Yeah, I ran into Factory Reset Protection recently over here when I tried to turn one of my kid's old Android 7 phones into a dedicated crittercam.

View attachment 6082197

What bothered me is none of the tutorials I had found said you have to first remove the Google Account from the device before you can factory reset it.

But I don't have a Google Account on any Android phone nowadays.

I agree with you. I disable way more than just those three!

Basically I disable every package that says "google" in it (that doesn't destroy things).

The Google Play Store, for example, doesn't exist on my unrootable Galaxy.

View attachment 6082198

Hmmm... What is "backup transport"?

I have Android 13 packages with either name in them, but not both.

View attachment 6082199

There is no reason to keep the GMail app on your phone when it does two things you don't want (for privacy reasons), one of which is the instant you log into the GMail app, it creates an Android Account on the phone, which you don't want (for privacy reasons).

The second thing logging into the GMail app does that you don't want is it uploads your default contacts sqlite database, whether you want it to or not, because you don't get the chance to change the default actions (because Google created the Android Google Account the instant you logged into your Internet Google Account using the Gmail app on the phone!). You can turn that off, but it's already too late.

A better mail user agent (MUA) is FairEmail by Marcel Bokhorst.

*FairEmail*, privacy aware email by Marcel Bokhorst, FairCode BV, FOSS

Free, ad free, gsf free, 4.6 star, 24.3K reviews, 500K+ Downloads

<https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.faircode.email>

<https://email.faircode.eu/>

<https://github.com/M66B/FairEmail/releases>

<https://f-droid.org/en/packages/eu.faircode.email/>

<https://www.xda-developers.com/fairemail-email-app-privacy-conscious-android/>

<https://www.xda-developers.com/fairemail-open-source-privacy-friendly-email/>

The problem with location is that Google has rigged Android such that it forces apps to ask for location (e.g., wi-fi debuggers) even though they don't need it.

Plus I use mock location if I must use those wi-fi debuggers but it's foiled by "precise location" which uses the neighbor's Wi-Fi (as my access points are all set to _nomap and to not broadcast the SSID).

View attachment 6082218

Also, as of recently, Google Maps now forces "precise location" even though it never needed it.

View attachment 6082202

I keep a folder of one-tap shortcuts on my dock, each of which kills each and every nasty privacy-denying settings that Google sets (that I am aware of), but Google keeps adding new ones, such as this advertising privacy invasion that Google added specifically in Android 13.

View attachment 6082203

Wow. I did not know that there was an ADB AppControl app for the PC.

I will check that out. Thanks for the pointer as I use adb from the command line.

I wish I could compile the open source local android debug bridge (LADB) code, but I've used the pre-compiled ladb but the local adb is a PITA to get working compared to regular adb on a PC (IMHO).

View attachment 6082205

But I do delete almost every non-essential Samsung, T-Mobile & Google apps on my unrootable Samsung using the adb commands from the Windows command line, which work just fine to delete all Google apps from my user partition.

View attachment 6082206

In summary, since this was long, can you help me better understand...

How did you disable Firebase?

(I can't find how to disable it.)

How did you disable "Backup Transport"

(I don't know how to do that either)?