[Paisley]

Contact VCF can read a vcf file and use the contacts direcltly, no need to export them to google.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=by.androld.contactsvcf

Oh yeah, I know. I plan to keep copies of my contacts on vcf for the sole reason of not syncing them to google. : ). And i want to keep them on a cloud somewhere as well in case my phone crashes or i have to do a reset.

ohh, unless you're saying if i have this my contacts could be my own contacts, no longer “google contacts” and no longer recognized by google. That would be great, I could keep my access to playstore.. I'll give it a shot.

THANKS!

[someguy01234]

I think if you install a custom rom like CyanogenMod you won't have the same issue. Since you want to keep your info from Google anyway, its makes sense.

[Paisley]

I think if you install a custom rom like CyanogenMod you won't have the same issue. Since you want to keep your info from Google anyway, its makes sense.

Is it super easy to do?

[someguy01234]

Is it super easy to do?

It depend on what phone you have and may/will break your warranty. What phone do you have now?

[brad4560]

just wanted to explain how i got my contacts onto my new moto g yesterday. if you have a live or outlook.com acct, you can have your contact list there, download the outlook.com email app from google play, enter your email and tell it to sync contacts, and when i do that, i have no numbers going up to google. hope this helps if you use outlook?

[Paisley]

It depend on what phone you have and may/will break your warranty. What phone do you have now?

oh shoot. i think that means i have to root it? or something like that? i definitely don't want to do anything that could injure my phone or break my warranty, or do something that requires a lot of technical work, but i just read a couple of testimonials on their site and the comments sounded interesting. Moto X, but prefer not to do anything crazy. 100% would break my warranty, based on the assumption that if it commonly breaks warranties, it will on this phone for sure. Well, i'm betting.

[Paisley]

just wanted to explain how i got my contacts onto my new moto g yesterday. if you have a live or outlook.com acct, you can have your contact list there, download the outlook.com email app from google play, enter your email and tell it to sync contacts, and when i do that, i have no numbers going up to google. hope this h elps if you use outlook?

Thanks! Unfortunately I don't use outlook. I looked into thunderbird but their app for the android didn't sound like it was so easy to deal with. But thanks, that is much appreciated.

[ultravisitor]

Man, I was just thinking, this means if I get rid of my google account on my phone so that my contacts aren’t given to google for relationship connections and advertising, I won’t be able to get phone updates for things like my camera and voiceless controls because they can only be gotten on the google app store. Lol. Wow.

You do realize that EVERYONE is using your data somehow, right? You're not going to be able to hide from it. Browsing the web? You're being tracked. Using Yahoo! or Outlook or some other similar webmail service? You're being tracked. Even simply buying an item from a brick-and-mortar store with a credit card provides the store with data that they'll use to track you. I mean, there's even that story from a few years ago in which a father found out via Target that his daughter was pregnant due to her purchasing history:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirh...er-father-did/

And really...why do you think Google gives away Android? They're not angels sent from heaven simply trying to rescue people from the grip of Apple, you know. They get something out of it, too.

[Paisley]

You do realize that EVERYONE is using your data somehow, right? You're not going to be able to hide from it. Browsing the web? You're being tracked. Using Yahoo! or Outlook or some other similar webmail service? You're being tracked. Even simply buying an item from a brick-and-mortar store with a credit card provides the store with data that they'll use to track you. I mean, there's even that story from a few years ago in which a father found out via Target that his daughter was pregnant due to her purchasing history:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirh...er-father-did/

And really...why do you think Google gives away Android? They're not angels sent from heaven simply trying to rescue people from the grip of Apple, you know. They get something out of it, too.

They certainly do. And it just happens to be my preference to not just offer up everything if there are other options. I just personally don't like one place having so much, and give so much to one company, and there are other reasons i dont want my contacts, etc. for google. I know you and others feel differently, I think we all just have different preferences as to our personal data flow and capture by companies, and control over our phones, the data we put in them, services, etc. The hardware I paid for so hopefully there are options other than only their free service/data exchanges if I don't want to hand it all over.

Posted via Android Central App

[ultravisitor]

I just personally don't like one place having so much

I just think you're being naive if you think you can really hide. I used to think like you, but not anymore. Now, the way I see it is you can either pick your poison and give in to a company by choice, or don't choose and let anyone and everyone have your data and lie to yourself that it's not happening. I mean, what do you do for email? No matter what, that service has your contacts. Even if you typed the address and everything in by hand each time you sent something, they'd still have each of those contacts (and phone numbers if you typed them anywhere in the message) for themselves and they just won't show them to you in an easy to see and navigate list.

Well, I suppose you can hide. You'd just have to give up a digital life, start using cash only, and go completely off the grid.

[Paisley]

I just think you're being naive if you think you can really hide. I used to think like you, but not anymore. Now, the way I see it is you can either pick your poison and give in to a company by choice, or don't choose and let anyone and everyone have your data and lie to yourself that it's not happening. I mean, what do you do for email? No matter what, that service has your contacts. Even if you typed the address and everything in by hand each time you sent something, they'd still have each of those contacts (and phone numbers if you typed them anywhere in the message) for themselves and they just won't show them to you in an easy to see and navigate list.

Well, I suppose you can hide. You'd just have to give up a digital life, start using cash only, and go completely off the grid.

Like i said, some people don't like one company to have so much of their data, which is not the same as to hide from all companies or tracking in general. And there are other reasons people prefer to have more control over their own hand device and the data in it.

Posted via Android Central App

[ultravisitor]

Like i said, some people don't like one company to have so much of their data

Too late for that, I'm afraid. You have an Android phone and have had Google accounts assigned to it. Google will likely hold onto your data for several months at a minimum so long as you don't sign back in with a Google account, and they even keep "deleted" data for their own internal purposes.

[Paisley]

Too late for that, I'm afraid. You have an Android phone and have had Google accounts assigned to it. Google will likely hold onto your data for several months at a minimum so long as you don't sign back in with a Google account, and they even keep "deleted" data for their own internal purposes.

Yup, i know they hold on to it. I think a lot of people think of personal data/info and even privacy as an all or nothing 'privacy is dead so don't bother' sort of thing, that's just not my point of view or how i decide on my settings, services, data, etc, so I try to pay attention to what i can in my data flow, esp as things change, new policies, new advertising/sharing initiatives or if i notice things i don't like and want to change. For example, i specifically asked if anyone knew the data flow of google putting my sisters reviews on my google play store page since i don't have any sort of G+ circle with her, people weren't quite sure, so i changed a bunch of stuff, not knowing which it was, and that fixed it (although i suspect it was only because i turned on the 'don't advertise to me' setting on my phone, although maybe it's cuz i took her out of my contacts, i don't know). Didn't fix it for her, but there are changes she can make to do that. But for me it's not an all or nothing proposition. HP will always know how much ink i use because i let them. Yahoo knows whatever, okay. But for me it's not all or nothing and don't concern myself with data or settings, etc. Some people want their contacts on their sim, and some people like the google contacts and everything else data exchange for services. it's just a preference. So far yes, my contacts are no longer listed as google contacts after i put them as an accessible vcf file, which works better for me than forever having relationship data for google, and every connection i make in the future (esp given they are now treating my contacts like some sort of social media site, that's not what i put them in my phone for). Some people like cross service data exchange, some people like every contact forever data storage used for advertising, some people dont and can avoid it, esp across different services, i just like my stuff separate. I signed up for them separately, and was okay with that. Play store separate from contacts, facebook social sharing stuff separate as well. HP isn't going to send my sister my review of their printer but they know what time i print my documents (and that's pretty much all they know, i mean, IP, that type of stuff too). Now if my first and last name were attached to my youtube, THAT definitely falls under TOO LATE! lol. I do wish they'd stop asking me to merge them, i've rejected it 20x over. What's up with that?

And this was annoying too, i set my contacts not be synced to google, they still of course label them google contacts, even those i never put through google, but okay, get a new contact app, i can ignore it, but there are a few screens related to settings that set your syncing preferences. They look similar, but one you click in and you choose settings, one you click in and it starts the sync. Well, that doesn't make it easy to control my information. I know they didn't do that on purpose, but that's how it is in my phone. I prefer if i don't want to sync i don't have to remember 'which setting screen is this', "oops, press stop!", lol.

[someguy01234]

Well if you don't want to root, and that;s understandable, especialy with Motorola devices which are still aren't very open, I think you will have to look forward to a different platform like Ubuntu.

[ultravisitor]

Well if you don't want to root, and that;s understandable, especialy with Motorola devices which are still aren't very open, I think you will have to look forward to a different platform like Ubuntu.

Right. A different platform would be preferable to a bunch of pain-in-the-*** workarounds to avoid what looks to me to be a minor issue, particularly considering how it affects the ease of simply updating the phone and its features.

[Paisley]

Well if you don't want to root, and that;s understandable, especialy with Motorola devices which are still aren't very open, I think you will have to look forward to a different platform like Ubuntu.

The vcf dialer that was rec'd worked out perfect. Lets me keep my contacts on my hardware without any issues, so that is a good solution for me for the relationship-based advertising and now i also won't get people's photos automatically sent to my contacts app in my phone, etc, so that i like as well. And then the 'a calendar' app makes it easy to have a local calendar, which means the 'guess whether that click syncs or doesn't' won't be an issue (since i never wanted or have used google for my calendar). Gtasks is good about having a "local" only app which doesn't try to sync. So the finding alternative apps for things, and changing which google services I use should get rid of the issues that occurred recently and will keep me opted out of services I didn't want to be an integral part of, and semi-opted out of both the all-in-one hardware/software/all services and the move from regular web services to social media and sharing type of thing as well. With that i can stick with the o/s, the google drive and playstore until they make it even harder to avoid the 'complete tie-in of all services and people or no phone for you!'. lol.

Thank you so much, all very much appreciated. : )

[Paisley]

Right. A different platform would be preferable to a bunch of pain-in-the-*** workarounds to avoid what looks to me to be a minor issue, particularly considering how it affects the ease of simply updating the phone and its features.

Someone had a solution, and it worked out. Wasn't too hard, turned out I could do it with an app. I asked for a way to have non-google affiliated contact list and viola! Someone found an easy way. Not so much a pain in the A in my book! .

[gone down south]

Until you lose your phone and all your data disappears.....

Sent from my Nexus 4 using AC Forums mobile app

[Paisley]

Until you lose your phone and all your data disappears.....

Sent from my Nexus 4 using AC Forums mobile app

Thanks for the reminder, I think I saw a send it setting somewhere.

Posted via Android Central App

[Paisley]

BAM:

For anyone interested, 2 super easy options. Both perfect. (or so they seem).

You're gonna laugh at how easy this is: Settings > Apps > Disable 'Google contacts/sync'. lol.

With this you won't be able to add contacts to gmail even if you wanted to. It disables Google contacts completely and your address book will be "local/non-sync". With that, that would be your only option, you won't have a choice to add a contact to your gmail account.

The other is an app called local account.
https://forums.androidcentral.com/e?...token=s2fa_4Rj

With this you can have both. It's just adding a non-account account, this way you'll have a choice btwn adding a contact to either your gmail/google account OR your "my local account". Which i guess means almost any normal server account does the same thing, but i don't have a server account anywhere, and I guess that wouldn't really be local only sorta thing, I dunno. There's a couple other non-account accounts in the app store as well. Very easy: Install, the dummy account is added, next time you add a contact it will offer you the account choices just a gmail and the local "account". If you're viewing contacts from one account and not the other, touching the account label lets you go to the contacts display menu, but if you're viewing all you have to go to the 3 dot menu to change views.

Updating with Step by Step instructions for reference: For new Motorola and new Nexus phones. Looks like this is the first generation of Google and Motorola phones to not give owners a local phone book option. Tsk tsk, obviously not an oversight.

-If your contacts ended up in your gmail but you don't want them there, export them to "storage" (3 dot menu), it will be saved it as a vcf file.
-After that, delete your google contacts: [Settings > apps (all) > contacts > clear data/cache. And: Settings > apps (all) > contact storage > clear data/cache].
-Download the account app listed above. To import your contacts to your new local account, go to the vcf file (though a file manager app), click on it the file, it gives you 2 options. “Contacts” or “dialer”, click “Contacts” (ONCE), it will give you 2 options. “local account” or the gmail account. Choose local account. All your contacts will end up there.

(Obviously, if your contacts inadvertently went to your gmail account via a default link and sync, and you want to remove them, [make sure you do this last after you've saved your contacts to your local phone book and a vcf file] go to your Gmail site, pull down to contacts, click all, hit delete. They stay there for 30 days (start to type an email addy and you'll see), but will be gone from that Gmail account. Check all your gmail accounts if you have any more, to make sure they didn’t end up there as well.)

[milayo]

Thanks for this post. I found the "Google Contacts Sync" app and tried to disable it, but the "disable" button was greyed out - couldn't click on it. Surprise. So I might try the Local Account App!
I know it is impossible to have even close to 100% privacy in 2014, but I have the right to keep my phone numbers for my eyes only, good grief. It is ridiculous that a business forces me to use them. That's not good business, that's force.
Also, even on this forum, in order to see the link to the Local Account app, I had to register. Sigh. In trying to register, I was forced to watch advertisements in order to see the capcha phrase to prove that I am human(!). Then, it still wouldn't let me register until -presto!- I clicked, yes to receiving newsletters. Yeah, I'll be changing that setting shortly.
Ridiculous.

Update: YAY! The Local Account worked- Thank you!!!

[Paisley]

Thanks for this post. I found the "Google Contacts Sync" app and tried to disable it, but the "disable" button was greyed out - couldn't click on it. Surprise. So I might try the Local Account App!
I know it is impossible to have even close to 100% privacy in 2014, but I have the right to keep my phone numbers for my eyes only, good grief. It is ridiculous that a business forces me to use them. That's not good business, that's force.
Also, even on this forum, in order to see the link to the Local Account app, I had to register. Sigh. In trying to register, I was forced to watch advertisements in order to see the capcha phrase to prove that I am human(!). Then, it still wouldn't let me register until -presto!- I clicked, yes to receiving newsletters. Yeah, I'll be changing that setting shortly.
Ridiculous.

Well, regarding advertising, that's how they make money to keep the site going, and a lot of forums have captcha to get rid of bot activity. And I'd didn't have to opt into newsletters, so that's weird. But that's strange you couldn't disable. What phone do you have? Cuz that would be pretty lame if that wasn't an option. I know nexus5 and motos have the option..for now. lol.

Update to your update, awesome. .

[sauce_a_poutine]

To keep contact from being synced to Google, I disabled auto-sync on the phone, then disabled contact syncing from Gmail through the web mail portal. All my E-mail accounts are set to manual sync, to prevent Google form doing it's hypocrite contact syncing deeds. All contacts are created as "local contact", and the list gets backed-up to SD card and to SIM one in a while.

Killing the auto-sync and doing it manually has also helped to achieve significant power saving.

[Rukbat]

The other is an app called local account.
https://forums.androidcentral.com/e?...token=Dwd8rIWk

With this you can have both. It's just adding a non-account account, this way you'll have a choice btwn adding a contact to either your gmail/google account OR your "my local account".

Or you can do it without any app. Google gives you option of entering a contact as an Account contact (that syncs with Google Contacts) or a Phone contact (that has nothing to do with Google) - it stays on your phone only.

Which i guess means almost any normal server account does the same thing, but i don't have a server account anywhere

You don't need one for a Phone contact - the phone is the "server".

, and I guess that wouldn't really be local only sorta thing, I dunno. There's a couple other non-account accounts in the app store as well. Very easy: Install, the dummy account is added, next time you add a contact it will offer you the account choices just a gmail and the local "account". If you're viewing contacts from one account and not the other, touching the account label lets you go to the contacts display menu, but if you're viewing all you have to go to the 3 dot menu to change views.

Tons of overthinking - Google built this all into Android.

And you can change any contact from one to the other at will. The only problem is that if your contacts are on your phone, and not backed up to someplace that will survive the theft or destruction of your phone, when the phone goes, so do all your contacts.

BTW, Google doesn't make a nickle from your contacts being on your server. It's called "give great service and people will flock to your door". Once you come to your door they try to sell you other things. Whether you fall for that is up to you.

[Paisley]

Or you can do it without any app. Google gives you option of entering a contact as an Account contact (that syncs with Google Contacts) or a Phone contact (that has nothing to do with Google) - it stays on your phone only.

You don't need one for a Phone contact - the phone is the "server".

Tons of overthinking - Google built this all into Android.

And you can change any contact from one to the other at will. The only problem is that if your contacts are on your phone, and not backed up to someplace that will survive the theft or destruction of your phone, when the phone goes, so do all your contacts.

Nope. On most phones, yes, but on the X you don't have the "phone" option. Then someone here checked their N5, no option there either.

BTW, Google doesn't make a nickle from your contacts being on your server. It's called "give great service and people will flock to your door". Once you come to your door they try to sell you other things. Whether you fall for that is up to you.

love it.