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Samsung Galaxy Nexus - and Google #android

🕢︎ - 2012-03-18

I have resisted creating a Google account on my Samsung Galaxy Nexus until today.

Maybe my tinfoil hat has been pressing too hard on my skull, but I thought it would be an interesting experiment to see how long I could use my new phone without signing up and potentially giving Google access to all my data.

Today I created a new account, so I could download the ~10 apps I wanted to installed from the Android Market^WGoogle Play Store.

After installing the apps, I went into Settings to remove the account. A window popped up warning me: "Removing this account will delete all of its messages, contacts and other data from the phone!"

Uh oh. That didn't sound nice.

It sounds like removing the Google account might mean that the contacts I had in the phone before I created the account would be deleted?!

I really didn't feel like recreating them all from scratch. So, before clicking the "OK" button, I went to my contact list and exported it to a file, which I then email'ed to my desktop computer.

Which turned out to be a good idea, because after removing the account, the only contact left on the phone was myself!

That is not only stupid but also rude!

Following the logic that my data from before the account was created now belonged to the Google account, I went to my desktop computer and logged into Google Dashboard with the account I just removed from my phone.

The phone had been granted full access - makes sense. Revoked.

There was a calendar. Which cannot be deleted. The interface says it is deleting it, but it keeps appearing in the list.

There were three welcome emails in Gmail. Never mind.

There were two bookmarks in Chrome Sync. Deleted.

But here is the kicker: The 51 contacts that was deleted from my phone a couple of minutes ago was automatically uploaded to the google account without my consent. (Didn't Path just get into trouble for doing something like this?) Deleted.

My tinfoil hat and I feel vindicated. You may snicker as much as you want.

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