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ICE buys tool to monitor millions of smartphones. Experts say it’s dangerous
(www.independent.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2025
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I'm well aware of this, the reason I bring up GOS is because it fully disables your phone's radios when you turn them off, meaning cell tower triangulation and GPS do not work at all unless explicitly enabled.
This as opposed to a typical phone, which leaves GPS on even when location is off and pings towers periodically even when service is inactive.
I personally leave my phone in airplane mode with location/camera/microphone disabled at all times unless I explicitly need them. I use wifi calling so I can still use it as a typical phone and per-connection MAC address randomization (+ a VPN on public wifi) so my device isn't easy to track via IP.
GOS is great for this because I can be reasonably assured that apps are not bypassing my permission settings without my knowledge and consent. (That and I can de-google which in and of itself goes a long way in decreasing trackability)
Isn't GPS only one way? Is the phone then sending the data to the carrier?
I'm a bit confused by your question...~~GPS definitely requires communication between your phone and a satellite (i.e. can't track you if your GPS unit is off - maybe you're thinking of satellite imaging?).~~ EDIT: This is actually incorrect, see comments below
With wifi calling, yes, data is being sent to the carrier, but not via a signal that can be triangulated, so the most accurate location data they can gather is your IP address, which a VPN can easily hide.
Or do you mean in terms of generalized location tracking? In which case yes, highly accurate location data is shared by your phone with your carrier by default, just by way of how cellular networks function; no GPS required.
My understanding of GPS is your phone uses satellite positions to figure out it's location. The satellites are not receiving info from your phone/Garmin.
iirc phones supplement satellite GPS with other indicators to be more accurate and reliable, maybe distance from cell towers is one of those
I think the problem is that once your phone knows its location from GPS, google and apps can access this data. The data is then shared with advertisers and also, you know, government agencies.
Unfortunately, even just the names of nearby WiFi networks and Bluetooth connections can be used to determine location. If apps and google services have access to this info, they still have location data on you, even with your cell and GPS radios disabled.
Supposedly GOS doesn't allow google or apps to access the location data unless you allow it, which is nice.
This isn't an issue if you don't install gapps and if you deny apps location data
I think the point was that its an issue on phones with a standard android setup.
Gapps isn't installed by default when you install Android.
I'm definitely not an expert here and it sounds like you probably know more about this than I do. In my experience, android phones I've bought come with google play already installed and cell carrier bloatware. When you turn on the phone for the first time, one of the first steps is setting up your Google account.
If your point is that you can get around all this with stock android and you don't specifically need grapheneOS, you're probably right.
Not just Graphene. Install any Android OS on your phone, and it won't have gapps.
It requires a manual step to install the google proprietary spyware crap. By default it's excluded.
I think most IT departments strip off the OS that comes with laptops, due to spyware and bloatware that comes stock from the OEM install. I'll never understand why its normalized to reinstall the OS on laptops but not for mobile. I always wipe and reinstall as soon as I open the box. It's best practice.
Pretty sure that is accurate