I’ll second the recommendation for GrapheneOS. One of the available options I use is to keep mic, camera, and location off at all times until I need them. That simple toggle ability changes your privacy stance greatly.

Hotspots work well. They are hotspots though, so you have trade offs. For instance, you probably don’t want to leave it on all day (because it won’t last all day, probably 8 hours). You can set it to turn off if there’s no connected devices for x minutes to save battery. When you turn it on you need to wait for it to actually turn on and connect, then have your phone connect. It takes a while, relatively speaking (not long but longer than turning on your phone).

The Mifi X Pro also has an Ethernet port which is convenient for hard wiring a laptop.

The service is solid. Overall there’s no issues. I’ve had issues in hotels, but it’s a T-Mobile network so I’d presume a standard sim card would equally have issues.

Privacy is an interesting take. I’ll go ahead and trust them to not share my data (which you can sign up anonymously if you wish). The number is still trackable though, and I’d suspect stands out more because it’s in a specific spectrum range. But the sim isn’t in your phone, so it’s not technically tracking your phone (and a side benefit is you can’t get sim jacked) and I use a VPN to connect to it as well. I don’t think the sim card tracks the same way because there’s no GPS in the hotspot, but of course it still calls out to cell towers. I don’t know if it does this when off like a phone does (I’ve always presumed it does).

Overall my experience has been a positive one. Choosing a phone service has been a harder issue for me. But that’s another story.

Absolutely. And particularly it was is “batches” especially as you get to Shadow.

Collecting stuff as you go along playing is fine (I mean, I’d argue not because it’s lazy game making but its normal). But going along and hitting a village that has 50 side quests in it just interrupts flow.

Plus, they made nested fetch quests so I felt trapped in a loop. OK I’ll just do this one quest…“hey, now that I see that you are good at fetching arbitrary items, I want you to go get this for me too”

The presumption is that the brick and mortar store is not bad. Yes, they are bad too. Maybe just as bad, maybe not as bad, but they are no saints.

Options are limited for shopping, so we don’t have much choice. The reason I buy from Amazon is that essentially I didn’t want to shop at any local store any longer, they have bad polices AND they treat me like crap - not a valued customer.

Along came Amazon and I started buying from them. Then there was a big boo-hoo that ecommerce was killing their brick and mortar store sales. No sir, you were killing the sales but now I have somewhere else to go.

Amazon is horrible for many reasons, but pricing and customer service is not one of them. There’s a silver lining to that storm cloud.

I as well was curious, but it was clear to me that this was a bad idea from the get go. Long before I became truly privacy focused, it was still blatantly obvious this was a bad idea. It sucks that it was such a hot trend and terms written in a horrible, and dare I say predatory fashion.

The description of the Matrix users is hysterically accurate.

First time I went there, I had an obscure problem with an app. A very friendly and helpful person jumped in and said they have that app but don’t use it often. Then proceeded to run multiple tests on their end to validate my experience. I was blown away. Super solid dude.

Every other time I’ve been mostly ignored. Which is fine if people can’t help. But as I check in all I see is forum fighting about what is right and best, as if there’s only 1 answer.

I’ve been trying to work this out since the beginning of the year. This is anecdotally what I’ve done, what works and what doesn’t.

Most of my solution comes from JMP.chat for my phone number along with the cheogram app for functionality.

Basically I got a number for friends and family. I got a second number to give to businesses that don’t care about VoIP (my dentist etc). ($5 ea). Cons here are that SMS groups are limited to 10 recipients. This doesn’t work for my large family chats (I can get them but can’t respond). Another thing I dislike is since its XMPP based, all contacts are listed as their phone number if in a group, so it’s hard to tell who’s in it. (Solo texts show as names just fine). They have a premium tier that routes differently to allow more than 10 in a group text, but I’ve tried that twice now and the actual phone calling gets screwed up. So I’m still trying to get it all sorted out (and I’m not optimistic) It’s also a service only in USA and CAN.

My original number that I’ve had for 20 years and all big tech have assigned to me, I ported to google voice ($20 fee)

Since my original phone number was a carrier number it is already assigned to all the stringent companies like banks. They continue to use it without knowing its now a VoIP number. I have all SMS messages forwarded to my email so I don’t have to log into google ever. It works perfectly for 2FA. Shortcoming of this is that any group texts the email just says you got a group text, but a single source text the actual text is forwarded. I don’t use it for groups so its not a problem but just mentioning it as a potential con. Then of course, its legacy so opening new accounts won’t work the same way since its a VoIP number now.

I bought a hotspot from calyx. By far the most expensive part of my solution. But it gives me WiFi access without a standard carrier (it does use T-Mobile but calyx doesn’t track you like they do). Check them out to see if it fits your threat model. It works out to about $50/mo but the biggest issue is that its an annual lump sum.

Another option I’ve been trying is 4freedommobile. They have decent plans and are focused on privacy. Everything runs through their app for encryption. But I’ve found the app lacking both in UI and functionality. You can’t do group SMS (which is apparently coming very soon) but my biggest issue is they require google play services for notifications. They state they don’t, but they do. Hands down it just doesn’t work without it. So that’s a deal killer for me.

Honorable mention is the premium service Elfani. I haven’t used it but have considered it. Its very expensive at $99 a month but is secure. However I don’t see much on privacy so I’m not sure how different they really end up being from their base AT&T provider.

Yeah, that’s why I mentioned having a secondary profile. Some stuff like bank apps you just can’t get away from so a profile with play services running is a workable solution. If you have a pixel phone already, you can give it a shot. One very nice feature of GOS is that it’s super easy to install - and uninstall if it’s not for you.

Like you said, banking apps. The logic behind that is they use google to security check their apps. A random non-bank example would be the slick deals app. Without play services it would just open then crash.

Many apps use play services for their notification system. So for instance, proton mail works fine but notifications do not.

NFC is not supported, so anything that uses that won’t work.

Not an app, but I was surprised that widgets don’t work unless you’re in the primary profile. Technically they work on any profile, but they randomly get deleted, and frequently. It’s a known bug that probably will never get fixed because the source of it comes from stock android.

I will mention that you can have a profile running play services, which gives you access to many apps that wouldnt normally work. And it’s sandboxed so it has less impact on your information (I don’t know all the specifics but it does limit in some way how much it can snoop into the rest of the OS). Then you can also set up granular controls on your apps to limit them from snooping.

Yeah, other than freezing credit, there’s not much you can do. It’s a toothpaste out of the tube scenario. It’s basically too late. The offerings always suck and are basically only there so they can say they’re doing something for you.

Other than that, harden your privacy in general. Yeah, it doesn’t help for breaches like this because you can’t hide from your doctors, but simple things like having an alternate email address makes it a tiny bit better.

Yeah, that’s the one that came up in my initial search. The recommended app Tuner is pretty damn good.

Thanks for the rec. I tried it last night and am very happy with it, better than what I expected.

I actually own a chromatic tuner, and it stays at home with my guitar. Sometimes I’m elsewhere and need a tuner. Which for the record the recommended Tuner app is phenomenal, and very accurate.

Thanks. I wholeheartedly agree. I was just looking for recommendations from the community based on experience.

Thank you. I’m going to check it out.

People like to ntpick and fight. GrapheneOS is one of the best options (realistically of just a few) out there, and it’s pretty damn good and simple to get into.

I’m an old fart that grew up on these games too. They were what I lived for. Kings Quest 1 blew me away. Then 2 had me hooked. 3 was another level and felt so big.

I collected their catalogs and dreamed f what would come next. There was a box art for KQ4 they showed in the catalog that didn’t make it to the actual box. It was amazing and I wished I had that.

I also played Space, Police, and Heros Quest, but Kings Quest was my jam.

I can’t comment on their privacy, but I thought of Nine when I read your post. I used it back before the Outlook app supported folders. I think it was a great alternative and worked better than anything out there… Mind you, it was years ago.

Also, have you thought about using a different user profile for just work? I know you’re asking about apps but you can gain some privacy from segregation too.

Have you read Means of Control (Byron Tau)? He tracks the evolution of all of this and how we got to where we are today. Yes, 9/11 fast-tracked it but there’s so much more to it. Highly recommended.

JMP is my recommendation too. I don’t think you can pause it, but the cost is so low it might not matter.