icedterminal
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It does. If you purchase a device from the carrier, it’s guaranteed to be preloaded with their apps. Verizon currently states

“we may change your wireless device’s software, applications or programming remotely, without notice.”

https://www.verizon.com/legal/notices/customer-agreement/

The solution is to get a phone from the manufacturer themselves. They don’t come with carrier bloat.

@Septimaeus@infosec.pub
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Agreed, though I might add that a number of manufacturers have been known to dabble in data brokerage as well.

It might sound paranoid, but Android is built around data collection, and in practice it’s just a feeding frenzy. The carrier, the manufacturer, the ad platforms, the advertisers, the app developers, everyone gets pieces of you and none take responsibility for the pieces the others take, since it’s outside the scope of their offering.

The best bet is a clean flash, Lineage or the like, and strictly open source apps. I’d encourage any user who can’t or won’t go through that process to stick to iOS. It’s not perfect but it has the best default privacy protections by a significant margin and the refurb market has many affordable units. Factory Android these days is a privacy nightmare.

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