Hi, I'm new and I have the same problem as everyone else: figuring out how to set up the phone and where to get apps.
I wanted a secure platform first, privacy second, so after some reading, I decided on sandboxed GPS with an anonymous account in the owner profile (all apps disabled). Then two separate profiles, one for everything that works, and another with GPS for google dependent apps (whole profile can be disabled).
Creating my anonymous google account seemed to work (it didn't, see footnote), but then I ran into age restricted apps (No, not what you're thinking :D p*rn works great in the browser). Element classic is 18+ (because of "extreme violence"), and while that is on f-droid, dating apps are not. And who knows what will be classified im the future.
Now for age verification, Google wants to see a government issued ID and some selfies. I'm not willing to commit a felony, so my anonymous account is now half useless. Using Aurora store could be an option, but from what I've read its security and privacy is also questionable.
I think with the current push by governments around the world for requiring age verification, Google will be more than happy to comply and ask everyone for IDs soon, which will probably also impact the anonymous Aurora login.
So... What to do? Use my previous personal google account, because anonymity is a myth anyway? Use Aurora? Try harder at getting an age verified anonymous account? I'm kind of stuck here.
Thank you for reading and for your answers :)
athena
footnote: the account verification (regular, not 18+) asked to scan a QR code, my QR app displayed a normal web URL, I opened it and it did whatever for 30 seconds and the account was verified. Usually URLs get opened by Firefox, and Firefox asks before going to an app, so I thought they couldn't access anything from Firefox. But apparently that's not true for google play URLs, which opened without any notification in play and I accidentally verified my anonymous account with my previous, non anonymous google account. duh.