Stock Android sends data to Google over 8,300 times per day

dryfter

https://www.reddit.com/r/degoogle/comments/1wkv1jj/we_captured_72_hours_of_idle_android_network/

So i wanted to know what an Android phone actually transmits when you aren't touching it most articles say "Google collects a lot of data" but nobody knows to what extent and publishes some proof lets say some packet captures.

So i did set up some old three Pixel 8s on an isolated VLAN behind a hardware pfSense firewall running Wireshark All devices were plugged into power and left untouched for 72 continuous hours.

So some of the things we found out were:
Stock Pixel 8 - Default Out of Box: 348.4 outbound connections / hour (over 8,300 per day). Peak destinations were checkin.gstatic.com (scanning nearby Wi-Fi BSSIDs) and device-provisioning.googleapis.com.

Stock Pixel 8 - All Privacy Toggles Off: 194.2 connections / hour. Disabling location and diagnostics in settings only stops ~44% of background requests.

GrapheneOS - Sandboxed Google Play: 12.1 connections / hour (strictly push notification heartbeats over port 5228 for apps you explicitly approve)

GrapheneOS - Zero Google Services: 0.0 outbound connections / hour over the entire 72-hour window.
I published the raw CSV dataset under CC BY 4.0 so anyone can verify our numbers or inspect the destination IPs in Excel/pandas https://www.praveentechworld.com/data/degoogle-telemetry-2026.csv

Research methodology and per-service packet breakdown: https://www.praveentechworld.com/research/degoogle-telemetry-2026

please share your thoughts

Their research page on the website actually has some interesting details about what actually goes where. That is, if you can get past all the de-googling stuff in between. I have no clue who this company is, and it seems like they're heavily into AI, but this data is completely open and to me paints a really good picture as to why stock Android on Pixels isn't private at all. This is isn't first time I've seen claims of Google collecting a lot of data, but this is the first time that I've seen actual numbers to go with that claim.

Handlebar6933

It would be interesting to compare that to a phone running GOS but with Google play services installed.

de0u

Handlebar6933 It would be interesting to compare that to a phone running GOS but with Google play services installed.

That information appears in the cited article (search for "GrapheneOS").

That information also appears in the original post in this thread.

Developer-Dude

dryfter Very very interesting. Crazy how much data Google collects from Stock Android.

dryfter

Developer-Dude It really is interesting. We all knew Google collected a ton of data. But the difference between stock Android and GrapheneOS with Play Services is mind-boggling. Really is proof that while using Play Services isn't the most private or secure it, it really doesn't seem to cause that many more calls back to Google compared to not having it installed on GrapheneOS. It just depends on how much permission is give to Play Services.

This is a huge testament to just how good the Graphene team really is at this stuff.

Novaliss

dryfter I can recommend this experiment: Order a 'Google Takeout' of your data from your logged in Sandboxed Google Play.

In that dialog, you'll get to choose how large the delivered chunks will be packaged as prior to you receiving them as downloads. The smallest size you can select is one gigabyte.

Every time I've tested this the delivery arrives as a zip, which after decompressing is under 500 kilobytes, and contains reports of the entries containing data from my usage, in my case almost only empty results. Hundreds upon hundreds of entries about various products and services reporting 'no data found'.

Of course this still isn't proof of abscence of collected data, of course there's still a possibility that 'they' could be disclosing only the null results to obscure their capabilities, but the scale I believe is telling me something about how scarce the collection have been when using Sandboxed Google Play.

I think the gap between the design environment for apps and the Gos strictness is much much larger than how it looks, since the apps permissions listings are the same regardless of OS, and Sandboxed Google Play is the same Google Play that's so utterly invasive in other OS:es.

Also, I've increasingly been opening up the permissions for both my phone and Sandboxed Google Play, just to get as much compatibility as possible when testing banking apps. And a very conservative guess is that I've well passed a thousand test-installs of invasive apps using Sandboxed Google Play, with an exception in RethinkDNS for each of them, and all their permissions allowed, and with the exploit protections turned off, then running them in Owner.

Still, a takeout arrives as less than 500kb decompressed. And Play still don't show me localised ads, nor personalised ads even when I've toggled these ON for testing.
Again, I cannot prove a negative, but I find it a bit remarkable how little Google appears to be collecting from Sandboxed Google Play.

Please note I'm not affiliated with the GrapheneOS project.

SplatterGames

Novaliss Still, a takeout arrives as less than 500kb decompressed. And Play still don't show me localised ads, nor personalised ads even when I've toggled these ON for testing.
Again, I cannot prove a negative, but I find it a bit remarkable how little Google appears to be collecting from Sandboxed Google Play.

I would be very careful with these assumptions. Google will only show the data in takeout that is officially tied to your identity and account. They still collect (pseudo-)anonymous data which will obviously not show up in there. They only show you what is legally required.
I say "pseudo" because that data can still be correlated to your identity in practice (and pretty easily at that), studies have shown that. The same of course applies for other companies like Meta's shadow profiles. You can't even request it from them because you don't have an account there, but they still possess that data, whether you like or not. I'm pretty certain Google has a lot more stored on you than it seems, but they decide to keep it "anonymous" and use it for stuff like cohorts, as to not spook their users too much.

Novaliss

SplatterGames Yes, I'm not claiming this is the information total, but still the scale seems very off even though I've used very few steps to hide my activity.
My threat picture have been low enough to allow using the phone for compatibility first, and I just expected a larger amount of 'footprints' showing after much of usage in this fashion.

I'm not recommending easing up your precautions or security practices.

Winston

This is why I wish people weren't intimidated by GOS. Some don't make the switch because they hear about it from some guru who thinks they need separate profiles for banking, travel, google, etc. Just making the switch and using GOS like any other phone increases your privacy and security substantially, then you can make adjustments as you go, if you want. Habits will be bad and privacy will be blown constantly, but its something to build on.

gravity-reprint

dryfter

The AI slop website is extremely obnoxious to read. Shows you just how lazy the person is that they can't even use their own words.

treenutz68

Handlebar6933

I'd love to see how an iPhone compares

MichaelJohn

Interesting post. I wonder how reliable this is as a test but in any case, it does put my mind at ease knowing GPS doesn't have nearly as much power on GOS as it does on stock Android.