that haven't been true since pixel 4. it just picks your phone in the background.
a burner sim, like a literal criminal, is the only way today.
that haven't been true since pixel 4. it just picks your phone in the background.
a burner sim, like a literal criminal, is the only way today.
Even with a burner sim, there is the International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) number, which is tied to the phone, and is known to all apps with the android.permission.READ_PRIVILEGED_PHONE_STATE permission.
That can't be true? <https://grapheneos.org/faq#hardware-identifiers>
I don't know however if sandboxed google play is such a privileged app.I couldn't immediately find whether GrapheneOS grants READ_PRIVILEGED_PHONE_STATE to Google Play. It might very well be that the GrapheneOS sandbox spoofs a fake IMEI, and I do hope so.
In any case, my parent comment was meant for stock Pixels, as mentioned by armadyl further up in this thread.
https://grapheneos.org/usage#sandboxed-google-play
> Google Play receives absolutely no special access or privileges on GrapheneOS as opposed to bypassing the app sandbox and receiving a massive amount of highly privileged access.
It doesn't mention IMEI here, but hopefully READ_PRIVILEGED_PHONE_STATE is included in "privileged access."
There is an AppStore app, I am not sure if this is the one we are talking about? <https://github.com/GrapheneOS/AppStore/blob/main/app/src/mai...>
That one lists:
That's grapheneos's own app, separate from the play store or play services.
True. I think this one is closer to the truth: <https://github.com/GrapheneOS/platform_packages_apps_GmsComp...>
There is no READ_PRIVILEGED_PHONE_STATE mentioned there.
That's also incorrect, because the gmscompat app is just a helper app. Play services can and does request additional permissions. Those permissions are handled by the OS under the play services app, not gmscompat. If you want RCS for instance, you must grant play services and google messages phone and ICC auth access, which isn't seen in gmscompat at all.
EDIT: "GmsCompatConfig is the text-based configuration for the GrapheneOS sandboxed Google Play compatibility layer. It provides a large portion of the compatibility shims." [1] This seems to indicate that the permissions requested by Play Services are being honored with the shims from the helper app. That would alleviate the permission problem.
1. https://github.com/GrapheneOS/platform_packages_apps_GmsComp...
That's the application software side. I would assume the IMEI and IMSI are both going out to the cell network though, and I would presume that it's trivial to tie a phone number to those with how the mobile industry generally sells subscriber data to various data brokers. The only question is how permissive those data brokers are (their major constraint is how much most people become aware of this dynamic), but when dealing with a major APT like Google I'd assume they're tuned into the best ones with songs about bona fide purposes.
Are you talking about the US here? I am hoping this would be off-limits in Europe.
Yes I am talking with a US perspective. I would hope the GDPR would prevent such things in (most of) Europe. But I also personally wouldn't assume so given that there are still the same dynamics of keeping the info flows private to avoid scrutiny, and claiming plausible "legitimate purposes" and "consent".
Its possible to set up a phone with a google account without even a sim card in it and use it as a wifi only device, so Im pretty sure what your saying is wrong.
assuming the number you get hasn't previously been assigned to a google account
I've had no end of trouble registering an account on our corporate SIMs as the phone numbers (not the actual SIM cards) had been recycled as employees leave.
So many systems cannot handle known pattern of a phone number changing. Who's decided these are imutable values? That I have only one? That it's not shared?
It still works without a SIM card, how do you explain that?