I am in need of a separate degoogled phone for some things that require high level of privacy (nothing illegal).
I have 2 phones that I can use. One of them is my business phone (it has my business number, apps, data and that sort of stuff) which is now running an OS with all the Google spyware because it’s necessary for the apps to work. I can reinstall everything on the second phone and use the first one as the secure device since it supports everything I need. The problem is that it has some issues on vanilla ROMs that I don’t really want to deal with and the reinstalling will take a lot of time.
The issue with the second phone is that it is rocking an old MTK chip and rooting instructions are let’s say a bit beyond my ability to understand. I still want to use it without Google if possible though. So can I degoogle its stock ROM with ADB or something? And is it worth trying or there will still be some vulnerabilities?
EDIT: to clear some possible misunderstandings, the reason of why I need a separate secure phone is that I am forced to use a very invasive proprietary app that I’d prefer just keeping on a separate device instead of trying to limit its spyware abilities with firewalls and that kind of stuff. I don’t trust the last solution much. Also I can’t use it in a VM because I need it to always be accessible wherever I am and yk carrying a PC is not an option
You can try uninstalling as much Google crap as possible using the Universal Android Debloater
Then perhaps use a firewall like NetGuard in whitelist mode, to only allow selected apps to access the internet
As an additional layer of security, you can use NextDNS with the No Google blocklist, and block all connections to Google servers in DNS. If you need to access specific things like YouTube, you can whitelist them.
Mister/miss, I have no idea how to use advanced DNS stuff and firewalls (like at all). It’s faster to reinstall everything on a different phone than learning all of that. Still thank you for replying
Time to start learning…
I don’t want to share sensitive medical and other personal data. I’ll just say I have reasons not to do it now
NextDNS is very easy to use, you can check out this video: https://youtu.be/WUG57ynLb8I
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/WUG57ynLb8I
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
just gonna say , rethink combines both a firewall and a DNS blocker .
Interesting, I was using https://rethinkdns.com/ until now, I guess NetGuard is a more straightforward approach to blocking?
if I understand correctly the rethink app does also work as a firewall , so no . I’ve also found netguard to be less intuitive and to have a less readable UI .
if you are just using rethink as a DNS provider however then netguard (or the rethink app) can allow you to have more granular control over specific apps .
I see, thanks