Yes, I had thought of the purge-before-sync angle. As you said, that would be pretty cumbersome since I am syncing my calendar several times a week. If my little battle with Google were serious, I’d have to go off the grid, and I’d find another web-based calendar, but last I looked Google was the only one that met my needs.

Yes, I'll use another mail client for reasons of style, and I don’t have email addresses or “people details” in my contacts. What I don’t like, really, is the idea that I’m telling Google all about other people; but I don’t keep that much information about anyone.

Take care,

Victor Odhner

_____________________

On 20180904, at 13:27, Matt Graham <mhgraham@crow202.org> wrote:

On 2018-09-03 19:25, Victor Odhner wrote:

So on my old phone, I only synchronized my calendar items with Google.
I avoided synching everything else, there was no need.
That was in the not-evil days: now it seems to be sync all or nothing.
Q: IF I’M USING A DIFFERENT MAIL CLIENT FOR NON-GOOGLE EMAIL, WILL A
SYNC WITH GOOGLE SLURP UP ALL MY CONTACTS ANYWAY?

I think this would depend on the mail client. Which one are you using? There's also the approach where you back up your contacts in your mail client, delete them all, sync with evil google, then restore the backed-up contacts in your client. This is probably too clumsy for regular use though.

I’m not about to replace my OS, but just curious:
Are there versions of Android that don’t feed the Beast?

AOSP? LineageOS? These don't talk to google nearly as much. How usable they would be depends a lot on whatever it is you want to do with your phone. It's not immediately obvious whether a phone with LineageOS on it can be used to make and receive phone calls and SMS messages using the carrier-given phone#, for instance.

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