This is after forcing login to a store account:
At least they don’t hide in their ToS that:
“l agree to let Walmart monitor my use of Walmart WiFi, including to:
- Determine my presence in Walmart stores
- Associate information about me with my Walmart account
- Improve products and services
- Gather market insights about my in-store purchases and activities”
But that’s not enough, they need to monitor your internet activity further too.
For further reading, some greatest hits (the section headers on Wiki’s Criticism of Walmart):
- Local communities
- Allegations of predatory pricing and supplier issues
- Labor relations
- Poorly run and understaffed stores
- No AEDs in stores (automated external defibrillators)
- Imports and globalization
- Product selection
- Taxes
- Animal welfare
- Midtown Walmart
- Opioids settlement
That is true of Android as well.
And remember that while iOS is built by a tech company first and foremost, Android is built by an advertisement company first and foremost.
I have tried both, and only Android gives me the feeling that someone is constantly looking over my shoulder.
I know Apple does also, but I don’t get the same feeling.
You pay the premium price to feel better about the same thing.
Quite possible
You can literally sniff the fucking traffic and see that’s not true. You understand there are laws of physics at play here and the devices can’t sneak data/etc past them, right? Default android devices send significantly more data back to home base than a defaultly configured iOS device.
I recently acquired a used iPad and its my first real iOS experience in a decade, and I have to say I have similar feelings from using it.
Many privacy controls are set to their tightest settings by default, many things require the app to ask the user before intruding then give you clear indication if and when they are intruding, and most controls that I might want to change aren’t buried 4 layers deep in the settings.
However, I can’t install uBlock Origin on Firefox (yet?) and there’s quite a few minor customizations I’d really like to change but can’t. And honestly Android’s openness to sideloading sometimes lets me do things like load an old paid game that hasn’t been updated in several years and sometimes does or doesn’t work depending on the Android version and specifics of the vendor’s implementation, or snag random stuff off Githubor Itch if I really want to.
Aurora Store instead of Play Store, Firefox with UbO and Adguard DNS. I feel Android does look over my shoulder (why do I need to use ADB to disable uninstallable apps or install pre Android 6 apps?!) but not in the context of privacy. I don’t know how having GMS enabled w/o being signed in affects being tracked.