Privacy on your phone?

22 Dec 2025

People often asking me which phone has better privacy, and they typically ask that in a context of comparing bunch of commercially available Android based phones and iPhone. My typical response to that question would be “neither”, since any phone is a little spying device you carry in your pocket, so let’s dive deeper why and what to do about it.

Step 1 - Stick to the basics.

Today Android phones produced by multitude of manufacturers vs iPhone is made only by Apple. My first recommendation for Android would be to stick with Pixel phones as they made by Google. Why do I recommend that, simply because every other Android phone will have Google trackers plus whatever trackers manufacturers put together to “personalize” your experience. Limiting your exposure to only trackers built into an OS will improve your privacy.

Step 2 - Setup your phone.

Review privacy controls that your phone has and disable every single feature that aims to do personalization and/or states that it will send data to manufacturer to improve something. Enable features that will hide your IP or for example won’t show remote content in emails and most importantly delete advertisement ID associated with your phone. That would allow you to setup all privacy controls that are available on your phone.

Step 3 - It’s all about apps.

Review apps on your phone and remove those that you no longer use or no longer need on a day to day basis. For example do you have Airbnb installed? Do you really need it right now, or you can wait until your next vacation and reinstall it? Each of these apps might have 2 types of trackers. Trackers that built by company that owns it, to “improve your experience”. And trackers added by developers who made it knowingly or unknowingly with or without consent of a company that owns app. Let me explain. Developers use SDKs(Software Development Kit) to speed up development, if code is a lego bricks SDKs would be those special pre-build components like multi door frames and so on, so that you don’t have to build it out of the bricks. Those SDKs which often freely distributed might have little trackers, so that parties who developed SDKs can resell data. So bottom line if you don’t need that app, delete it.

Step 4 - Divide and conquer.

This is where it get’s very tricky. Our goal is to ensure that no single entity has access to all of your data. For example if you are an avid Google user, buy yourself an iPhone and use built in apps, instead of Google ones. When you are an avid iPhone user, avoid using iCloud for everything you do, find different email and cloud provider or even host cloud yourself. Shameless plug, if you are not tech savvy there are a lot of projects out there which aim to remove complexity from hosting your own cloud. I am associated with one of these - Ethiork. Ethiork is an open source project where we are aiming to simplify self-hosting, so that even non-tech savvy people can do it. We install all open source software and ship it to your doorsteps, all you need to do is just plug it into your router and click couple buttons to enable what you need. Remember cloud is just “somebody elses computer” so hosting your own ensures that data never leaves your premise.

Step 5 - Dive into privacy rabbit hole.

Now, this step is bit more technical! There are a lot of projects that use open source version of Android and that’s where Pixel phones would shine, because there is not going to be need for additional drivers and so on. Of course, there is always a trade off: there is not going to be Google there and it’s by design. Technically you can install it, but then you’ll lose all privacy benefits from open source OS. So you can use apps, that are available on various open stores, and good apps that does not track you will most likely be available from various sources. Just be careful you definitely have to understand what you are doing to avoid infecting your phone with some sort of malware or spyware. Once you are on an OS without trackers, get service that does not collect any data. Even better you can get a hot-spot with such service and use your phone without SIM. That way you’ll cut ability for your provider to spy on you. You can also do that with normal provider and normal phone. In situation like that providers would only be able to spy on your hot spot which does not have camera and bunch of other features we have in our phones and providers can’t get data off of your phone without your consent.

In a conclusion I’d like to say that getting back your privacy is not an easy process and there are a lot of trade offs. But in an age of surveillance capitalism I view privacy as a necessity. In order to help you start that journey and cover basics I’ve created “Privacy Advent Calendar” last year, please check it out it’s not a comprehensive guide, but rather a good starting point. You can find it here

Finally if you’d like processional assessment of your privacy feel free to reach out to me directly.