Nobody could possibly have seen that coming.
this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2026
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Well they could and they did, but those people were delusional and paranoid, so, no need to pay them any mind.
This seams to be a good place to advertise for a dumb/minimal phone.
Or one that doesn't run one of the duopoly OS.
Kinda surprised they hadn't been doing this already.
I strongly recommend against using bluetooth connectivity unless completely necessary. Bluetooth is used for tracking, monitoring and detection. It is very precise. Your position can be triangulated with it and tracked in real spacetime using hardware that costs literally less than $5 without any warrant, license or restriction.
I strongly recommend getting USB-C adapter for headphones and opting out of smart wearables which rely on bluetooth.
Same for WiFi.
Even on Android/iOS these functionalities have big, friendly on/off switches in the status bar dropdown, but people are lazy.
And GPS (edit: "Location" to be more precise), but it will be harder to convince people to not constantly use it.
GPS is receive only, there’s no way to track you for using GPS, it’s only when you look up the coordinates that your device calculates that you could be identified.
Can always use one of those fully offline old Garmin car GPS maps too.
Thanks for pointing that out. However the duopoly OS lump it all together under "Location" and that does involve internetty stuff, too, so bidirectional.
Even if you are not connected to a WiFi network (so the toggle is off) background WiFi scans can still be used to track you by triangulating your position from nearby networks. This service is provided by Google for your convenience of course, so you don't even need to wait for GPS to pick up and they can track you without draining your battery too much.
When I used to run a degoogled phone I was able to swap that service with an equivalent one provided by Mozilla, but they stopped supporting it after a while.
We need someone like the EU to forbid bank apps to require Google's integrity checks so we can make modded Android great again.
Yes, it's better to use a phone OS and/or phone hardware that does not do that, or can be relied on that off means off. And yes, even then it's still possible that firmware blobs do nefarious things.
WRT Mozilla location services: I'm not 100% informed, but there's yet another alternative. Community-driven iirc.
My bank does not require Google integrity checks. Change your bank?
And yes, cell tower triangulation is always a thing even on dumb phones.
more than enough reason to use adblock now.
As if there wasn't enough already.
Tbh a huge technilogical leap forward. I'd rather if Google sent agents to shoot in the head than watch one of their ads.