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Comment by wineisfine | Hacker News Reader

This is the reason why I am reluctant to dive into the android ecosystem. And i wonder why not more people are?

Your phone becomes basically a giant google-keylogger, with geo capabilities.

I think, generally, people are of the mindset, "Yes, I give all my data to Google, and I don't mind it because they power awesome services with it in return".

F-Droid has OsmAnd~ for free for you, it's really good and worth recommending. No tracking, offline maps, offline searches, compatible with µG location services, save and browse POIs... plenty of options that GM or Apple won't offer.

https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=net.osmand.plus

It's a good application, but having used it I found that it was often very difficult or even impossible to locate my destination and when navigating it often had some funny ideas about what route to take; Google offered much better routing and searching. I ended up saving all the locations I wanted to visit before setting out just to make sure that I could get to them easily.

And all of the USA's OSM data in just 5 GB on your SD card if you want.

+1 for OSM and OsmAnd. Often much better data than Google and it works offline. Although the UI can lag a bit at times.

Worth donating to OSM if you use it: https://donate.openstreetmap.org

Are you saying you use Apple's products for privacy reasons?

Not parent, but this is one of the reasons I prefer Apple. They have a better track record. Also, they sell hardware, your data is not the primary product.

> they sell hardware Not always: http://appleinsider.com/articles/14/01/17/massachusetts-laws...

Also, you cant know how much Apple stores about you.

I'm almost annoyed Apple doesn't use more of my data: it would probably make many of their services better.

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