> And judging by the other comments in this thread ATM (with one possible exception), nobody seems to care...
I know this sounds defeatist, but I've gotten to the point where I don't think it's possible in modern technological life in a developed country these days to avoid being tracked to some extent. At least not without dropping most (if not all) of the conveniences I care about too much in day-to-day life. And yeah, that's on me for becoming so accustomed to those things that I'd feel worse not having them.
It's a sad state of affairs, really. But I don't think this will change without some heavy-duty privacy-focused legislation (with massive, tightly-enforced penalties for non-compliance) that forces companies to prioritize user privacy. Part of me would like to believe that sort of thing is coming within the next decade. But the more cynical part of me thinks it won't come, because governments benefit from companies tracking their users, as they can buy that tracking data even when their own laws say they cannot collect it themselves.
First of all, I said it's not possible currently. Which is what I'm interested in. Not that it might not be possible in the future if enough pressure is applied (that might be interesting for activists, which I am not and have no interest in being).
Second, it's not mine or EFF's responsibility to police what Google does. Let's make it very clear that the current situation is Google's responsibility and nobody else's.
Third, it doesn't matter whether I stop using Google services because other people using those services will track me anyway.
And fourth, what does it say about a company that you can only use its services if you agree to be tracked and agree to track everyone on the planet without their explicit consent?
I mean, let's be clear here. This is not "I'm tracking a pseudonymous ID across websites". This is literally tracking the physical location of someone whose real ID Google can easily find out, through a wide variety of means.
> Second, it's not mine or EFF's responsibility to police what Google does. Let's make it very clear that the current situation is Google's responsibility and nobody else's.
That's not how society works, though. There's no such thing as "natural human rights". If you want rights -- like privacy, or the requirement that you can control all aspects of your devices -- you have to fight for them sometimes. Millennia of human history is littered with examples, and plenty of people in power would prefer you didn't have any rights.
Companies are in some ways sorta just agnostic: they often don't care if you have rights or not, but if you don't, they're going to exploit that situation for their own financial gain. It's lame, but that's the system and society we live in. Ignoring that doesn't make it go away. Organizations like the EFF exist precisely because this sort of thing is our collective responsibility.
So I 100% reject your assertion here. We are all responsible for our collective situation, even if often it feels like we are powerless to change things. Ultimately we aren't actually powerless, but it's hard (and sometimes risky, depending on the issue at hand) to work to band together to form a large enough power base to change things, collectively.
If you don't want to be an activist, that's fine. But complaining about your rights then feels a little hollow and lazy.
These seems like the most interesting thing to come from the post and every time you refresh the comments you will see more people asking about this feature.
I don’t think you can. Your other options are to either use older Android phones, or switch to a libre-focused phone such as Fairphone 5.
Unfortunately this is the way things are now. I wish there were good open source phone contenders but they have yet to catch up to the feature parity and quality of iOS and Android.
Ah, sorry good point. I was thinking of the Librem 5 [1], but it is hardly comparable to an iPhone or Pixel in terms of software quality, battery life, and feature parity.
I use these with my car key fobs because my neighbors teenagers discovered key fob amplification attacks.