I am in need of a separate degoogled phone for some things that require high level of privacy (nothing illegal).

I have 2 phones that I can use. One of them is my business phone (it has my business number, apps, data and that sort of stuff) which is now running an OS with all the Google spyware because it’s necessary for the apps to work. I can reinstall everything on the second phone and use the first one as the secure device since it supports everything I need. The problem is that it has some issues on vanilla ROMs that I don’t really want to deal with and the reinstalling will take a lot of time.

The issue with the second phone is that it is rocking an old MTK chip and rooting instructions are let’s say a bit beyond my ability to understand. I still want to use it without Google if possible though. So can I degoogle its stock ROM with ADB or something? And is it worth trying or there will still be some vulnerabilities?

EDIT: to clear some possible misunderstandings, the reason of why I need a separate secure phone is that I am forced to use a very invasive proprietary app that I’d prefer just keeping on a separate device instead of trying to limit its spyware abilities with firewalls and that kind of stuff. I don’t trust the last solution much. Also I can’t use it in a VM because I need it to always be accessible wherever I am and yk carrying a PC is not an option

  • GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.mlOP
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    6 months ago

    What I meant is that if we can’t disable them without root we probably can’t disable the network access either. I don’t have the knowledge and time to test outgoing packets and stuff like that

    • MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz
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      6 months ago

      Android has built in support for VPNs. If there was a way for the OS to leak traffic, that would be a massive security vulnerability that would have corporations dumping all android company phones within a week.

      Non root ad blockers work by creating a vpn within the phone that all network activity goes through, which then doesn’t allowed ad traffic.

    • Anamana@feddit.de
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      6 months ago

      It’s fairly secure that it works, because it’s basically setting up a VPN connection that effectively blocks every network traffic outside of the tunnel.

      But if you wanna be 100% sure you need to invest either the time or root your phone.

    • Empricorn@feddit.nl
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      6 months ago

      It’s okay to admit you don’t understand stuff, you don’t need to push conspiracy theories. None of us is omniscient…

      • GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.mlOP
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        6 months ago

        I don’t push it and it’s not a theory. It’s just my assumption that I don’t have time to prove or destroy

        • Empricorn@feddit.nl
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          6 months ago

          if we can’t disable them without root we probably can’t disable the network access either.

          Complete bullshit and utter speculation.