I recently got a degoogled phone and am struggling a little with a couple of apps. There’s an app called LINE that I used a lot on my old android phone, and would like to use it on my degoogled phone. It’s not available on F-Droid. Going to the LINE website, I can download the app, but it sure looks like I’d be going through the Play Store. My main purpose for getting this degoogled phone was to get away from google.
If I do download the LINE app through Play Store, would google have access to my phone?
I’m not paranoid. I’m not hiding from the police or anyone. I’ve simply become aware of the value of dodging these assholes who want to access our personal data, and are sharing our personal data with people I don’t trust.
Aurora store directly downloads application apks from google servers just as if it were the play store but can be used either with your google account or “anonymously” without the need for an account.
If you use a phone to which you don’t connect a google account and that doesn’t have play services installed (for example using a custom rom without installing neither gapps nor microg) i don’t think google has access to the phone. Or at least I hope since it’s my current phone configuration.
Man o man. On the one hand, I’m not surprised. On the other hand, there are some things here that I didn’t know that phone apps are doing. And, seeing all this in one read is sorta chilling, not to mention a little infuriating. Thanks for doing the check. This website is a useful tool.
