I have considered getting a burner phone that I pay for in cash only, having it utterly unconnected from my real life, and turned off and stored in a Faraday wallet when not in use just so I can use the ‘digital coupons’ that food retailers keep pushing. I use a loyalty card because all they get from that is my buying habits–groceries–plus an address. But access to my phone? Absolutely not.
I tried this. I bought a phone with cash, bought a prepaid SIM with cash and a google play card with cash.
Used a throwaway email address, and I could not get the play credit into the account.
I even opened a support ticket with google and they could not help.
I am an IT professional and quite adept at navigating technical bureaucracy and wasn’t able to do it completely anonymously.
My guess (and it’s just a guess, i could be very wrong) is there is some internal, undocumented check that the account has been tied to a real person before it allows credit onto the play store.
If someone has had success doing this I’d be quite interested in hearing about their experience.
Well that may work for you. My goal was slightly different. I needed official apps for work. My goal was to have a work phone that was completely disconnected from my private life. Graphene and sideloaded app would not have worked for me.
I have considered getting a burner phone that I pay for in cash only, having it utterly unconnected from my real life, and turned off and stored in a Faraday wallet when not in use just so I can use the ‘digital coupons’ that food retailers keep pushing. I use a loyalty card because all they get from that is my buying habits–groceries–plus an address. But access to my phone? Absolutely not.
I tried this. I bought a phone with cash, bought a prepaid SIM with cash and a google play card with cash.
Used a throwaway email address, and I could not get the play credit into the account.
I even opened a support ticket with google and they could not help.
I am an IT professional and quite adept at navigating technical bureaucracy and wasn’t able to do it completely anonymously.
My guess (and it’s just a guess, i could be very wrong) is there is some internal, undocumented check that the account has been tied to a real person before it allows credit onto the play store.
If someone has had success doing this I’d be quite interested in hearing about their experience.
But what if I don’t want credit in the Play store? What if I want to use the Graphene OS, and side load everything?
Well that may work for you. My goal was slightly different. I needed official apps for work. My goal was to have a work phone that was completely disconnected from my private life. Graphene and sideloaded app would not have worked for me.