this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2023
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Privacy
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At this point you should consider that all your devices are compromised or compromisable.
the amount of data gathered by your device's OS , is akin to a surveillance tool. Microsoft, Google and Apple have shown an ever growing appetite to siphoning user data back to their servers. and no consumer really has an extensive view of what is gathered. if you want sovereignty over your device a linux OS you compile yourself from source is the only guarantee you can rely on .
I bought an affordable xiaomi phone. and I was floored by how much data the device is trying to collect and how restrictive this vendor version of android has become. they have replaced stock android apps with their own apps that all try to phone home. you can't even change your ringtone straight from the config panel. it redirects you to xiaomi's propriatary app just to replace the ringtone with one that is already store on the phone. their proprietary shit apps keep filing my firewall's blocklist log.
I had a Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 and noticed the traffic to China. I blocked network access for all Xiaomi apps and the phone started overheating because it tried over and over again pinging back to China. Never again Xiaomi.
I think you went on to check literally for the worst possible offender. That's how they subsidize their cheap phones. They have now monitors (not TVs!) with smart features, only so they can continue to phone home. I'd advise to unlock and install something like lineageos on it.
Unfortunately Lineage OS stopped supporting xiaomi phones at least 2 years back. they only focus on pixel phones now. Xiaomi catalogue is quite big. and the amount of their cheap phones sold is 20 times bigger than pixel. but I guess Lineage is only focused on what phones westerners use.
I mean if you want you should be able to download/compile to your phone model. With lineage its about as simple as downloading the source, running a specific single command that customizes the specific drivers for your phone, then hit compile and go take a coffee. You'll end up with an installable image you can just copy to your phone.