Post by @nixCraft@mastodon.social

2026-10-14 18:07 UTC

PSA: Google is silently linking your phone number across all signed-in accounts https://www.androidauthority.com/google-auto-phone-number-verification-android-3723117/ Anyone surprised by this? Every AI and tech company wakes up each day asking the same question. How can we build an even bigger surveillance network, squeeze more profit out of it and turn George Orwell’s 1984 into reality? At this point, they are not predicting the dystopian future. They’re building it and charging its users for it. Truly evil stuff.

Replies (11)

@nemo@mas.to 2026-10-14 18:12

@nixCraft@mastodon.social what happens when folks use aurora store and no google account and no google browers. wIll they register over 9k numbers to to one rando account?

Open ##5033275
@gpumoto@mastodon.social 2026-10-14 18:51

@nixCraft@mastodon.social You want to know what the worst thing about all this "Big Data" BS is? These companies lack the resources to protect the data they collect. If Microsoft can't stop hackers from stealing user data no company running an understaffed IT department can. IT trolls are expensive so we will just assume everybody is understaffed.

Open ##5034605
@softproof@mastodon.social 2026-10-14 19:40

@nixCraft@mastodon.social Growth + Internet = Mordor on steroids. (And google probably aren't the only ones doing it.)

Open ##5034612
@clmj@mastodon.social 2026-10-14 20:15

@nixCraft@mastodon.social gross it added my phone number to my account which I've been refusing to do for years. Fuck you Google.

Open ##5035058
@darwinwoodka@mastodon.social 2026-10-14 20:22

@nixCraft@mastodon.social I keep my phone in the other room for Reasons. Seriously don't allow it near me most of the time.

Open ##5035112
@zetabeta@mastodon.social 2026-10-14 20:42

@nixCraft@mastodon.social this is bad. even if person is pro-google. what if pro-google person has two accounts and two phone numbers. now these numbers get intermixed for both accounts, therefore bad. where android gets a phone number? volte-profile from operator is one. does this mean that if android has both sim card and google account, then phone number leaks into google servers automatically. therefore bad for privacy.

Open ##5035330
@ModernMaslow@techhub.social 2026-10-14 20:46

@nixCraft@mastodon.social The complexity we should now be enjoying, with such a potentially evolved state of evolution millennia, is now being directly threatened by .01% abusers. Are we that #sheeple that we can't remove them from power?

Open ##5035355
@h1dden@mastodon.social 2026-10-14 21:27

@nixCraft@mastodon.social only for those not using #GrapheneOS

Open ##5035722
@nickynah@rebel.ar 2026-10-15 00:49

@nixCraft@mastodon.social I have this theory. They make all of this in the name of profit, people get angry, so they surveil more to try to control the anger/narrative to protect the profit , people get angry, repeat. The thing is that loop ends up in more and more extreme things, on both ends, cookies, ad blocker, browser fingerprint, custom browsers, Face ID, city council complains, arrests, protests and on and on, until violence on either side is the only course of action

Open ##5038183
@zetabeta@mastodon.social 2026-10-15 00:46

@nixCraft@mastodon.social as a short story. when i bought my first android device somewhere 2012, and it asked google account, it felt icky even in that time. those times i used google accounts, but always separate for every android device. later, i stopped using google account somewhere 2019.

Open ##5038184
@filipedireito@mastodon.social 2026-10-15 09:02

@nixCraft@mastodon.social Even worse are the governments and banks locking people to this surveillance because of the Google Play integrity checks.

Open ##5043950