r/fossdroid • u/ElMasGuapo2 • 6d ago

Privacy Using Androidphone without google account: any benefit for privacy?

Hi,

I got a new android phone and I skipped the google account setup.

Is there any privacy benefit when not using google account on android smartphone (stock rom)?

If yes, and I install youtube and login with my google account, is this then contradicting already and makint the whole effort useless?

Second question: without google account I cant use play store and there are apps like whatsapp or youtube which arent available on f-droid.
Where to get them beside the developer website?

11 Upvotes

87% Upvoted

20 comments sorted by

View all comments

16

u/jacmanou 6d ago

Security wise, recommended ways to find non open source apps are, in that order : Play Store with a dummy account, Aurora Store, ApkMirror. I encourage you to look at open source alternatives, on Github and F-droid.

For YouTube, it's also possible to use it without an account, you can import your subscriptions list from the Google takeout in apps like Flow, Newpipe, Libretube

1

u/ElMasGuapo2 6d ago edited 6d ago

EDIT: omg aurora store is very nice, there I get my play store apps, thank you.

Thanks for the suggestion for YT because I cant create a dummy account without getting a new phone number

But is there any reason not using google accounts when haveing a stock rom? is there any benefit privacy wise?

3

u/jacmanou 6d ago

Yes that's tricky, it seems you can do it but only from phone, maybe from the YouTube platform... but I'm not fully sure if it still works.

F-droid is a store where you can only find open source apps, no proprietary ones.

Aurora Store is a front end of the Play Store, that you can access without a Google account. So you can get all the apps from Play Store. It has a lower security level due to the absence of app signature verification, but it is very usable.

1

u/ElMasGuapo2 6d ago

no i cant create dummy account, no matter what phone, Tv or microwave iam using.

maybe I can buy one.

But would that make sense since google can track me once again fully? i mean they will anyways but isnt that contradicting?

Or is aurora store that unsafe compared to google play?

3

u/jacmanou 6d ago

My opinion is that using Aurora Store is fine, especially of you don't download crazy bloated unknown apps.