Broken

I as well was curious, but it was clear to me that this was a bad idea from the get go. Long before I became truly privacy focused, it was still blatantly obvious this was a bad idea. It sucks that it was such a hot trend and terms written in a horrible, and dare I say predatory fashion.

Flossing! I floss frequently. I floss more than I brush my teeth (yuck) but it works. Logic behind the lack of brushing is that in the morning I'm drinking coffee and running out the door. At night, sometimes I fall asleep before I brush. But I have floss on my desk at work and in my coffee table at home (as well as obviously in the bathroom with my toothbrush). My dentist can't even tell I miss brushing at times. But can definitely tell I floss regularly.

You don't have to floss all your teeth, just the ones you want to keep.

Correct. And the same is true for the mobile phones, carriers, and a slew of apps that all look at contacts. They know who you are and who your friends and family are.

The description of the Matrix users is hysterically accurate.

First time I went there, I had an obscure problem with an app. A very friendly and helpful person jumped in and said they have that app but don't use it often. Then proceeded to run multiple tests on their end to validate my experience. I was blown away. Super solid dude.

Every other time I've been mostly ignored. Which is fine if people can't help. But as I check in all I see is forum fighting about what is right and best, as if there's only 1 answer.

Additionally, running GrapheneOS you can set up a duress pin to wipe the phone profiles if things were to escalate.

Being smart, set up the main profile a bit to look real, but have no actual information. That way it's not obvious tha its been wiped.

Being cheeky, set the duress pin to be something simple like your birthday. So if you are detained/arrested and they try to get into your phone they are the ones to wipe it for you.

Flood it with AI copies of official Mario content. Train the copyright software to associate the context of the official art to get the official art taken down.

This sounds like a great movie.

AI sends police after him because of things he wrote. Writer is on the run, trying to clear his name the entire time. Somehow gets to broadcast the source of the articles to the world to clear his name. Plot twist ending is that he was indeed the perpetrator behind all the crimes.

I was thinking more along the lines of:

We were woken up to check out this signal.

Shine that, let's go home and get paid.

But you know, we're required by law to do so or we forfeit our payment.

OK, so what's the story we all say?

Yeah, nothing there. Must have been a glitch.

OK, let's go home.

No. Microsoft 365 (previously office 365) is not a web app. They have web apps, and some licenses (the bare bones $6/mo one) only has web apps. But overall the suite of apps can't be defined as web based.

Not to be confusing, but some of the apps are only web apps, but those are "other" apps than you're probably thinking of. Like Planner or Power Automate. The "office" apps like outlook, word, excel and PowerPoint all have desktop and web versions included.

I've been trying to work this out since the beginning of the year. This is anecdotally what I've done, what works and what doesn't.

Most of my solution comes from JMP.chat for my phone number along with the cheogram app for functionality.

Basically I got a number for friends and family. I got a second number to give to businesses that don't care about VoIP (my dentist etc). ($5 ea). Cons here are that SMS groups are limited to 10 recipients. This doesn't work for my large family chats (I can get them but can't respond). Another thing I dislike is since its XMPP based, all contacts are listed as their phone number if in a group, so it's hard to tell who's in it. (Solo texts show as names just fine). They have a premium tier that routes differently to allow more than 10 in a group text, but I've tried that twice now and the actual phone calling gets screwed up. So I'm still trying to get it all sorted out (and I'm not optimistic) It's also a service only in USA and CAN.

My original number that I've had for 20 years and all big tech have assigned to me, I ported to google voice ($20 fee)

Since my original phone number was a carrier number it is already assigned to all the stringent companies like banks. They continue to use it without knowing its now a VoIP number. I have all SMS messages forwarded to my email so I don't have to log into google ever. It works perfectly for 2FA. Shortcoming of this is that any group texts the email just says you got a group text, but a single source text the actual text is forwarded. I don't use it for groups so its not a problem but just mentioning it as a potential con. Then of course, its legacy so opening new accounts won't work the same way since its a VoIP number now.

I bought a hotspot from calyx. By far the most expensive part of my solution. But it gives me WiFi access without a standard carrier (it does use T-Mobile but calyx doesn't track you like they do). Check them out to see if it fits your threat model. It works out to about $50/mo but the biggest issue is that its an annual lump sum.

Another option I've been trying is 4freedommobile. They have decent plans and are focused on privacy. Everything runs through their app for encryption. But I've found the app lacking both in UI and functionality. You can't do group SMS (which is apparently coming very soon) but my biggest issue is they require google play services for notifications. They state they don't, but they do. Hands down it just doesn't work without it. So that's a deal killer for me.

Honorable mention is the premium service Elfani. I haven't used it but have considered it. Its very expensive at $99 a month but is secure. However I don't see much on privacy so I'm not sure how different they really end up being from their base AT&T provider.

Yeah, that's why I mentioned having a secondary profile. Some stuff like bank apps you just can't get away from so a profile with play services running is a workable solution. If you have a pixel phone already, you can give it a shot. One very nice feature of GOS is that it's super easy to install - and uninstall if it's not for you.

Like you said, banking apps. The logic behind that is they use google to security check their apps. A random non-bank example would be the slick deals app. Without play services it would just open then crash.

Many apps use play services for their notification system. So for instance, proton mail works fine but notifications do not.

NFC is not supported, so anything that uses that won't work.

Not an app, but I was surprised that widgets don't work unless you're in the primary profile. Technically they work on any profile, but they randomly get deleted, and frequently. It's a known bug that probably will never get fixed because the source of it comes from stock android.

I will mention that you can have a profile running play services, which gives you access to many apps that wouldnt normally work. And it's sandboxed so it has less impact on your information (I don't know all the specifics but it does limit in some way how much it can snoop into the rest of the OS). Then you can also set up granular controls on your apps to limit them from snooping.