This is what I hate most about Google and Facebook. If you want to choose to let them gather all of your data, fine. I disagree with it but it is ultimately your choice.
But as someone who has made every effort to remove both of these companies from my life as much as possible, if I communicate with someone who uses Android or someone who allows Facebook complete access to their contacts and other data... those companies still get MY data without my consent.
Somehow it has become legal for these companies to allow someone else to consent for them to get my data.
> I disagree with it but it is ultimately your choice.
Is it? If you want a modern smartphone experience (I don't mean one from 2005) you only get to choose which option you find 'less bad' between Apple and Google.
> If you want a modern smartphone experience (I don't mean one from 2005) you only
> get to choose which option you find 'less bad' between Apple and Google.
This is a market failure, is it not? I would perfectly happy to pay twice what I paid for my Samsung Note 10 to another company that provides me with:
- A useful stylus
- A useful contacts suite and dialer that can sync CardDav (I use True Phone).
- A useful calendar that can sync CalDav (I use Business Calendar 2).
- Runs an Anki implementation (I use Ankidroid)
- Can sync text files with a desktop computer (I sync .org and .md files via ADB)
- Has a voice recorder
However, nobody makes such a phone. And this model of Note is not supported by e.g. LineageOS, though I suppose that I could buy an older Note. The real problem is the stylus, no other phone has one.
Curious as to what the basis for this is? As I understood it much if not most of Apple's OS and software is a pandoras box so we have no real idea as to what it tracks and/or sends back to Apple.
Apple is in the business to sell me devices (and now services but with those devices). So while they may collect data about me, the value to them is ultimately different.
Where Google's entire business is advertising. So they benefit from getting as much data from me not only directly from my device but from browsing or any other source of data they can find. And then mining that data to sell me to the people paying for ads.
I have gotten to the point that I am... accepting... data collection as something that I can just not get away from. I do what I can to limit it. But there is a limit to what I can realistically do about it. So what I care about is limiting how much of that data is in a single place as well as what those place's business model is and what they might be doing with that data.
Apple collects less data, but they definitely still collect a lot. They're also extremely user-hostile (you can't choose what you want to install, only what Apple wants you to install).
In fact, the author of the present study published an article on the former topic last year:
> We investigate what data iOS on an iPhone shares with Apple and what data Google Android on a Pixel phone shares with Google. We find that even when minimally configured and the handset is idle both iOS and Google Android share data with Apple/Google on average every 4.5 mins. The phone IMEI, hardware serial number, SIM serial number and IMSI, handset phone number etc are shared with Apple and Google. Both iOS and Google Android transmit telemetry, despite the user explicitly opting out of this. When a SIM is inserted both iOS and Google Android send details to Apple/Google. iOS sends the MAC addresses of nearby devices, e.g. other handsets and the home gateway, to Apple together with their GPS location. Users have no opt out from this and currently there are few, if any, realistic options for preventing this data sharing.
But as someone who has made every effort to remove both of these companies from my life as much as possible, if I communicate with someone who uses Android or someone who allows Facebook complete access to their contacts and other data... those companies still get MY data without my consent.
Somehow it has become legal for these companies to allow someone else to consent for them to get my data.