[Te To1]

Hello all,

I recently picked up a new moto g4 phone, my first experience with android.

As soon as I switched on the phone, it seems that I've had to navigate a minefield of Motorola and Google wanting access to my private data.

After some research, I've set up an email account specifically for the phone and opted out of every privacy option I can find. What I'm doing is logging into an account to download an app and then deleting the account from my phone, for the simple reason that I do not wish for everything I do with the phone to be associated with an online account. Probably safe to assume that everything I do online will be associated with the account anyway, but it at least feels better to delete the account from my phone when I don't need to download an app.

However, it seems that wothout asking google are taking my contact details. My private number which I did not wish to be placed online have been taken by google without them asking. I find that creepy.

When I delete the account form my phone, my contacts on the phone are also deleted even when I've copied them from my sim card. I cant simply save the contacts to my phone and not have google store them in their data banks, deleting them from my phone if I dare to not use their account.

The message from google seems to be, we want to know what you do with your phone including as much details of your contacts as possible. If you do not consent to this, we will make the phone difficult for you to operate.

I had reservations about using android, as google has a bad reputation for taking peoples data. I'm on the verge of returning the phone and not using android.

True to say, you use the internet and you're ina public place and thats even more apparent with smartphones. However, I want as private an experience as possible, and taking contact detauls without an option is going too far for me.

Anyway, thoughts appreciated.

[jeffhaskins]

Hello all,

I recently picked up a new moto g4 phone, my first experience with android.

When you go to add a new contact it will give you the option for phone only or sync to google. Sounds like you want phone only, personally I sync mine to google so that everytime I get a new device or factory reset a device I don't lose my contacts. As soon as you log into your account all of your contacts will be there.

[Te To1]

Thanks for the answers, the page crashed before I wrote the whole thing, please re read and share an answer if you so wish.

[chanchan05]

1. The deleting the account will actually cause some problems if you decide to buy an app that you need, because as soon as the account is deleted, the app will decide that you don't own it.

2. Did you put your number on the ME Card?

3. Default saving is to Google Account which also serves as real time backup. Not sure on a Motorola, but on most other brands, when copying contacts from a SIM card, you are asked if you want to copy it to phone or Google, where copying it to phone is saved as storage that does not sync to Googlw.

[Te To1]

1. The deleting the account will actually cause some problems if you decide to buy an app that you need, because as soon as the account is deleted, the app will decide that you don't own it.

2. Did you put your number on the ME Card?

3. Default saving is to Google Account which also serves as real time backup. Not sure on a Motorola, but on most other brands, when copying contacts from a SIM card, you are asked if you want to copy it to phone or Google, where copying it to phone is saved as storage that does not sync to Googlw.

I'm not a big user, just spotify, messenger and whats app. They've been working fine when I removed the account.

There is no option as to where to save the contact to, the moto g4 just automatically syncs with gmail. The only way round it seems to be to download another app which manages your phone numbers.

Perhaps its an issue with Moto, but I' get concerned when my private phone numbers are taken by google without giving me the option.

[chanchan05]

Haven't used a Moto since the v3i Razr so can't really tell. As far as I know, Samsung, Sony, HTC, and LG, all offer device only saving for such data.

[Te To1]

The only way round this I've found is to make sure that auto syn is off with your google account in the accounts setting, Then import your contacts from a VCF file saved on the phones internal memory or SD card. If you don't have a VCF file to import from, you have to manually create it and save it. In effect, you have created contacts storage on your phone which you can update as you go, and have full control over.

If you don't want your phone permanently linked to a google account, you can delete the google account from your phone but this will automatically wipe your contacts. Then just import them again from the VCF file. When I've added my google account temporarily to download an app(I rarely do this), it seems that the google account remains to set to auto sync off.

Pretty bad that they just don't straight up offer phone storage for your contacts, instead of back handedly taking the phone numbers of your friends and family into their data banks, with the grand aim of giving you a crap advert which you don't look at.