>Open your phone right now and count the apps that are scoring your behavior.
Zero. Are everyone really that terminally online? I reject most things that use an app. Yesterday I encountered a coffee vending machine that required an app. I walked away. Uncle Ted was right.
Agreed. I categorically refuse to install non-FOSS apps on my phone. I don't use social media, and refuse to use Uber for various reasons (including those explained in this article). I do buy things on Amazon, but only those that are physically delivered to my door (rather than "subscriptions" aka buying things that you won't own).
How about banking apps? In my part of Europe a growing number of banks require installing an app via Google or Apple story. The Android ones are known to use sdks that at full of "telemetry". Cash is no longer an alternative.
Can you not use a browser to access banking services? If not, you should vehemently complain and/or move to another bank. And while cash is better for privacy, you can always use a credit card instead of your phone.
You may be able to at the moment, but web banking is being increasingly phased out in a lot of countries.
If nothing else works, my suggestion would then be to buy a cheap Android phone just for that indispensable banking app. Just leave it home in a drawer powered off when not in use, and use your a degoogled phone for your daily business.
My bank recently asked me to "re-identify" due to regulations about fraud and me being a customer for more than five years.
Rather than asking me to come into a building in real life, the asked me to:
- download yet another app
- make a picture of my id card (front and back)
- hold my id card to bank of phone
- show my face in the front camera
This process got stuck in step 3, because my phone has no RFC support.
The morale? So much for using a cheap Android phone just for that indispensable banking app.