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mapleoin

Does anyone else use a special account for their Android phone that they don't use for anything else?

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I don't use a Google account on my android phone. Cyanogenmod sans google anything.

So I guess you don't have access to Google Play?

How do you get apps?

I use F-droid for many apps, but I also still use Google Play.

I've got a few crutches I'm not ready to give up so I'm on regular Android but I've been starting down the path of using F-Droid only apps so I can trasition more smoothly when I'm ready. The only app I've got left is Maps, OsmAnd is a little too tedious for me but I'll convince myself it's worth it eventually. I'm also concerned that I might not be able to get Project Fi working quite right.

I am using "Here WeGo" https://here.com/ (originally developed by Nokia), quite a good alternative to Google Maps. It does not need any Google services installed. Downloaded it directly from the Google Play store with Raccoon.

Hmm, that Raccoon thing seems ok but using something like that would be a bit of a sideways move for me. I'd rather move toward 100% libre software and not rely on proprietary software I'll need to hack around to maintain privacy.

Then I would suggest Neo900 https://neo900.org/ . Good presentation about the concept: https://neo900.org/stuff/cccamp15/ccc2015talk/talk.pdf

You can use Raccon http://www.onyxbits.de/raccoon : "Download apps directly from Google Play. Raccoon is the only APK Downloader that also supports paid and large apps."

F-Droid and apkmirror. You can use any app that doesn't run google services, including open source alternatives for apps like youtube and google maps. Can access many things from your web browser, as well.

Fdroid for what I use daily. Firefox Aurora direct from FF which auto updates. HumbleBundle for games because I like funding DRMFree + outside GPlay distribution methods.

I use raccoon to download from GPlay if I need to as a peer stated and know when to update with apktrack from fdroid, but really that's only for Slack since we use it at work. Slack uses Google Push Notifications like most apps, so it doesn't notify me about updates, but I check it periodically enough. I could go the microG route, but I prefer not having to interface with google servers at all if possible.

Edit: Maybe I can either convince my work to use something like Riot.im when it gets mature enough, or use a slack bridge for it and rid myself of this problem.

No gmail, gmaps, gphotos ? do you have replacements ?

pse: thanks all AP a lot for suggestions :)

K9Mail with Fastmail, AddressToGPS + OSMAnd, I back up my own photos with a home server and some rsync (Syncopoli). There is PhotoBackup which is kind of neat though.

We use Google Calendar for stuff at work, Google still has an old psuedo-deprecated-not-talked-about CalDav endpoint I hit with DavDroid that gives me all of that. These problems were solved with protocols long before gardens. I use offlineCalendar(Yes you need an app for that in Android) to create a calendar for myself locally, though I have a radiCAL server for things I need sync'd. Could have used Fastmail I guess.

Funny, I use exactly the same apps on my Cyanogenmod phone - K9 + Fastmail, OSMAnd. There arnt that many good alternatives to Google, apparently.

The only thing I'm still missing is public transit navigation.

I do have the Play Store installed though - through OpenGApps pico - I only have the Play Store, none of the other Google stuff - with a dummy gmail account.

My city has a transit app they maintain, but I'm afraid that'll stop if Google gets too ubiquitous in this area. It's really too bad that information that should be released as clean openData sets is so difficult to acquire and parse easily. Really should be some regulation around what, how and how often public information should be published and maintained.

BlueMail is fine for mail, Scout is good for driving directions (and uses OSM data).

I don't know gphotos and I don't really watch or show my photos on my phone.

There are alternative services for pretty much everything Google offers.

If you can handle the limitations this is a great way to keep an older or cheaper phone nice and responsive. Good effort.

that would really hurt the point of using an android phone for me.

Kind of.

I have a Google account created with a non-Gmail email address. I only use it for YouTube subscriptions (and I'm in the process of moving that to a basically RSS reader) and Google Play.

I have absolutely nothing work-related on my phone since I know that I can't update the system when a patch is submitted thanks to the shitty Android ecosystem. (And I'm still stuck at v5.0 and can't figure out a safe way to root my phone.)

Oh, and every single point of Google's tracking that I can turn off is turned off (like searches, YouTube history, location history etc).

Yes, a gmail address that I use for nothing other than to access the Play Store.

I don't use it to send or receive emails and I don't use any other google products or services.

Anything I actually sign up for uses one of my other three paid services.

At this point I'm tempted to start using Raccoon;

http://www.onyxbits.de/raccoon

That's a good idea! I may start doing that.

As an android phone owner for just over 30 hours.. at this point: yes. I grow less inclined to change that. OTOH, I never trusted my previous I-device with any significant data either, and any paid apps on there were gifted from a separate account on a desktop machine.

So you don't access your gmail from the phone?

Even though I sign into my phone using my Google account, I use gmail through IMAP in K-9 which isn't tied to the phone account at all.

I second this, I love K-9.

I'm not using gmail for my email.

Damn, should have thought of that. I assume it's not possible to transfer the few purchased apps I already have? I'd probably be willing to ditch them.

yup.

although that was mostly to separate out hangouts from what's on my phone.

Yes. It never occurred to me to connect my portable devices to any accounts that mattered. Who does that?

People who don't think with a security-first mindset or who prefer to gain the benefits of cloud-integration with their devices.

Is that what I have? A security-first mindset? Honestly it never even crossed my mind back in 2010 when I bought a Nexus S that the thing to do was put the keys to the kingdom on something that might fall out of a pocket somewhere... silly me; I just made a separate account and I don't use that account for signing up other accounts or whatnot; when that account gets compromised they'll find precious little of value.

It never occured to me that anything sent or received from a gmail account was private.

This is a good point. In a certain sense, all your webmail accounts are already compromised. It's just a question of "by whom"

[edit: substitute 'cloud' for 'webmail' to get an idea of the full range]

It's not. In fact, Google has the right to publish your private emails if it's for promotional purposes. The worldwide unrevokable license they grant themselves to everything you store on their service has no requirement that they don't publicize private information. Check their Terms of Service.

I take that as validation; the stuff that matters to me isn't on Google's systems and never has been.

I got down-modded pretty badly for my first comment; apparently that was terribly offensive. I don't really care much but it is very telling; the same folks that wail and moan endlessly about having their privacy compromised by Google et al. apparently don't hesitate to make it trivially simple to do so.

I don't see a '/s'. I'm pretty sure the majority of users on portable devices connect their primary accounts to it.

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