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Android is still horrible until you can control background activity or at least background network traffic. There is no way to shut those off completely. I assume this is an intentional decision by google as it would severely limit the platform for analytics and marketing.

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A simple approach without root is using a fake VPN blocker such as Blokada (FOSS) https://blokada.org/

Scary to see all the hits. For complete - requires a lot of work and the custom ROM builders do not appear to be so interested.

I do use a fake VPN blocker, and that's how I found out that you can't do it. You can either block completely, or you have to allow background network. There needs to be a "only allow data while in foreground" but google is a sociopathic company (as are most public companies) and wouldn't do something like this that is user friendly but revenue unfriendly.

As you outline, only a partial blocking is possible when google services and applications are on the phone (today this includes most apps from the g-store).

A "pure" analytics service may be blocked when reaching to a known spyware server. Bundled spyware and telemetry (is that "google core") are unfortunately not blocked.

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