Facebook has no business knowing when I'm making trades, listening to music, sending money or anything else.
A simple example: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-13/google-tr...
What I mean is you wipe the phone, reinstall either AOSP or LineageOS (or other custom ROM), do NOT install any Google Apps (to include Google Play Services, Google Store, Google Maps, etc.). Use F-Droid (https://f-droid.org/) as your App Store.
I have been using OsmAnd (https://osmand.net/) as my map service.
I saw a very interesting talk last year about how Google Maps is often useless in third world areas, and OpenStreetMaps provides the only useful coverage.
It's due to armies of volunteers mapping an area during disasters, while Google has no economic interest in mapping the area.
https://media.ccc.de/v/emf2018-157-how-the-internet-has-chan...
Google has an economic interest in mapping anything as long as it's useful to some people. Google is playing a very long term game: provide free services online (Email, Maps, Search...) to entice more and more people to go online. The more Internet users there are in the world, the higher their ad revenues are. It's that simple.
I don't doubt your experience.
The talk is about disaster response, so it only describes maps in regions where a response is taking place.
Elsewhere, the rest of the time, I'm under the impression there is no serious mapping taking place, neither by Google or OSM.
What I found surprising from the talk I linked was instances where there was a hardly usable Google Map to use for the area (just big expanses on the map and the occasional large feature), and the fact that at times up to 1000 volunteers would work together mapping a region at short notice, down to street and building level, by analysing satellite images, and coordinating with responders on the ground.
In the opinion of those disaster responders, those volunteer created maps were much more useful than the Google ones.
We haven't exactly had one of those in decades, so yeah. I'd say it's a bit telling that there's only interest/means for volunteers to map the developing world when there has been a disaster, but I digress.
Google Maps is perfectly usable where I live (apart from its continued if understandable confusion about how...irregular roads and road access can be here), and in my experience has been at least useful in all the cities in my home country I've visited. OpenStreetMaps is...not.
I wish there was a system that lets me whitelist specific hosts per app.
Also, downloading netguard from github will give you the option to use hostfile to block providers (not available via Play Store).
Separately, if you have root should look into XprivacyLua from the same dev
Of course this is only useful at home. As soon as my phone leaves the house, everything is open again.
I’d love to take a look if you end up doing that!
It wants: - have full network access - view network connections - run at startup
That's a pretty serious list of permissions to consider giving something that while it would seemingly be beneficial, is also a great vector into my phone activity for a malicious actor (not accusing them of being such btw).
By block list is huge at the moment, and have basically stopped installing any apps, or allowing non-allowed apps to update.
Regarding Android: I switched to Android for the "NoRoot Firewall" and since most Android phones are Root-able I can also edit my hosts file.
The article gives a very good analysis of what I have been telling friends, and my constant complain towards that Cancer called Facebook: why does my e-banking app or Booking.com or practically every air carrier's app, need to alert FB that I am using this or that app?
Anyone with an Android can install that NoRoot Firewall and see in 60seconds what their phones are doing when you are not looking. This in combination with the applications running in the background 24/7 makes privacy a thing of the past.