I was sort of set since I've generally liked local banking and local shopping for a long time, way before I even got light of how the world was going. No idea why it was my nature I guess. I'd be a liar if I said I didn't buy from any big corporations though.

With respect to phones, I'm in the industry, albeit not wireless anymore but I was in the past and am still involved in it a bit. There's really only three network owning wireless companies, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon. Most of what used to be has merged into one of those three. Sure, there's still some tiny companies left like US Cellular and some ultra-rural, but if you don't live in one of those areas you're out of luck anyway.

If it wasn't for my work I'd go to a third party company. Yeah, you're still going to be on one of the big three carriers, but they get wholesale prices versus collecting full customer $, so might as well be cheaper for you. Personally, I'd look for one that had access to multiple carriers towers for the best service and wasn't totally tiny and fly-by-night. You can research MVNOs for these companies, something like a simple search will find those. Cricket is one, I know Tracfone was a big one years ago if they are still around, they were independent as well. There's some owned by places like Walmart too, so you know do research.

With respect to IOS/Android, you can check out LineageOS. Yeah, it's still Android, but it's open source and de-Googleized. I can't sit here and say it's not got Google stalking or something woke in it, because I just don't know. Open source stuff has a lot more eyes on it at least. Next time I get a phone I may look for one that supports it. I have an old phone here I'm going to load it on to play around with.

I just have a regular Android phone with most of the Google stuff disabled and using alternative apps. I've never been one for "ecosystems" anyway so that wasn't even as a resistance move. No, it's not perfect but it's a good enough compromise for me. The fact of the matter is if you are trying to avoid being tracked at the very least turn the cell phone off, leave it at home, buy some sort of faraday cage bag to put it in, etc. If your phone is on you are being tracked if anything by the operational needs of making the phone actually work. The network has to know where you are to know how to get calls and data to you. When I did network support and had access to all the tools, I never saw any way to get data on a phone that was off, but the particularly paranoid will call that a risk too. I do recall a few times freaking out customers because they would be driving or something and I was essentially following their serving towers on a map to troubleshoot call drop issues.

As with any outside connections though, they are all risks as with everything else in the world. Just fly under the radar is my approach.

I was sort of set since I've generally liked local banking and local shopping for a long time, way before I even got light of how the world was going. No idea why it was my nature I guess. I'd be a liar if I said I didn't buy from any big corporations though.

With respect to phones, I'm in the industry, albeit not wireless anymore but I was in the past and am still involved in it a bit. There's really only three network owning wireless companies, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon. Most of what used to be has merged into one of those three. Sure, there's still some tiny companies left like US Cellular and some ultra-rural, but if you don't live in one of those areas you're out of luck anyway.

If it wasn't for my work I'd go to a third party company. Yeah, you're still going to be on one of the big three carriers, but they get wholesale prices versus collecting full customer $, so might as well be cheaper for you. Personally, I'd look for one that had access to multiple carriers towers for the best service and wasn't totally tiny and fly-by-night. You can research MVNOs for these companies, something like a simple search will find those. Cricket is one, I know Tracfone was a big one years ago if they are still around, they were independent as well. There's some owned by places like Walmart too, so you know do research.

With respect to IOS/Android, you can check out LineageOS. Yeah, it's still Android, but it's open source and de-Googleized. I can't sit here and say it's not got Google stalking or something woke in it, because I just don't know. Open source stuff has a lot more eyes on it at least. Next time I get a phone I may look for one that supports it. I have an old phone here I'm going to load it on to play around with.

I just have a regular Android phone with most of the Google stuff disabled and using alternative apps. I've never been one for "ecosystems" anyway so that wasn't even as a resistance move. No, it's not perfect but it's a good enough compromise for me. The fact of the matter is if you are trying to avoid being tracked at the very least turn the cell phone off, leave it at home, buy some sort of faraday cage bag to put it in, etc. If you're phone is on you are being tracked if anything by the operational needs of making the phone actually work. The network has to know where you are to know how to get calls and data to you. When I did network support and had access to all the tools, I never saw any way to get data on a phone that was off, but the particularly paranoid will call that a risk too. I do recall a few times freaking out customers because they would be driving or something and I was essentially following their serving towers on a map to troubleshoot call drop issues.

As with any outside connections though, they are all risks as with everything else in the world. Just fly under the radar is my approach.