I found out about the disturbing data trove Google has been keeping on me & everything I do on my Android phone. It's opted in to everything by default, of course. Not only search histories: every app I've used, how many times, every song I've listened to, recorded audio of every voice search. If you want to check/shut off/delete yours, it's at https://myactivity.google.com/
@RussSharek @melpsn This is why the Nexus 5X I repurposed as a tablet for the kids runs LineageOS with no Google apps at all.
@RussSharek @melpsn I haven't tried it as a daily driver. My current daily driver is a Pixel XL with vanilla Android. I bought it mostly for Daydream which I haven't found myself using much, but between the lack of traffic awareness in OSM-based nav apps and that I haven't been brave enough to make the jump yet.
@RussSharek @melpsn Yeah there are a ton of #OSM apps in #FDroid.
@melpsn There's also the super-annoying, can't-kill-them-no-matter-how-hard-you-try zombie apps (eg., Play, Gmail, et al) that just won't stay forced quit. Evil. All of it.
@melpsn also discovered that thanks to the 8-day data detox Mozilla recommended. I can recommend that one if you want to find out about more than Google's privacy settings.
@melpsn I have mine turned off. Assistant literally won't give me the time of day now. And Maps' functionality is dramatically reduced. It refuses to include locations in search even when they're saved locations that you've told Google about when you have location history &/or app & web activity turned off.
Hard not to attribute that to bad intentions.