There are so many bad defaults to deal with. For instance I can remove Google Photos and try to communicate with Signal, but when I need to use a group chat which is still in WhatsApp then any photos posted there are probably being auto-uploaded on the recipient's phone.
this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2025
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There's why I do not have or use Contacts on phone. There is no phone numbers in my phone. I have a couple copies of a text file with phone numbers save on USB's and I think a BSD server. There's no contact info that apps can scan to get other people's emails or numbers.
It seems pretty extreme to me. Any app needs your consent to access your contacts and if you wanna hide them from Google to (if you've an Android smartphone), you could just download an open source contact app (like Fossify Contacts)
It's a cat and mouse game for contact numbers. For example, Android's Messages app can report all phone numbers of sent and received messages back to Google. You will never get millions of users to change which proprietary app they use for texting, so I do my part to have no numbers, no contacts, and never send a text message.
Very interesting article