Original Image Source: freemockups.org - Pexels
Mobile phones has been one of the most staple gadget of the past decade and a must have for most people due to their versatility and convenience. Despite it being small and lightweight, it is packed with multitude of applications some of which allows us to communicate, take photos, listen to music, access the internet, play games, use it for work and even manage our help. This was made possible through the applications that was installed in our mobile device, whether it was installed in the phone to begin with or that we installed it by ourselves. With that said, not all applications installed on our mobile device are really necessary for us to have and some are just sitting idly in our phone.
In most cases, we can just go and uninstall it on our device but there are also some applications that we cannot directly remove without the technical knowhow. We call those "Bloatware Apps" and are usually comes pre-installed in our mobile device. An example of those were manufacturer and developer apps which are most of the times cannot be uninstalled and can only be disabled. In my case, I use an Android phone by which the operating system is developed by Google so whether I like it or not, a Google Chrome browser will be installed in my phone as well as a default browser by from the phone manufacturer. Many people may have been fine using this app but for me, I find it useless. Not only that I find their UI very uninteresting but also the excessive adds makes using them unbearable and at the same time, accidentally clicking them may lead on malware sites that could compromise my personal information and bank account. Also, lots of the websites that we use has 3rd party trackers that would track our internet activity and can use the data they collected to sell on large companies. Aside from that, unless you disable them, they will continue to eat your phone's memory and your internet data even if you do not use them when the application gets updated.
Because of those issues, it is better to get rid of those apps and replace them with Browsers which has stronger privacy protection. But as I mention removing them using normal means is not possible as they cannot be uninstall and can only be disabled. For me though I was able to completely remove those apps in my phone long ago when I root my android phone. The process vary from phone to phone so I can't really go through the specifics and unless you want to void your phone's warranty, I can't recommend using this method as it can also potentially damage the phone when done incorrectly.
Original Image Source: indra projects - Pexels
As a replacement to my previous browser, I used Brave Browser to navigate the internet. Unlike Chrome, Brave has a strong Add and tracking blockers so I can rest assured that my data and information was safe. We can even check how strong the protection Brave has by checking at https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/ that shows different parameter to determine the protection that your browser provides. At the same time, I can also passively earn Brave rewards when visiting some sites in partnership with brave.
Screenshot of my phone.
I also use the browser feature of Hive Keychain but only exclusive for my Hive related activities. Unfortunately, using the browser is not that secure because although Hive Keychain uses DuckDuckGo which also has decent protection, by being an in-app browser for Hive Keychain seems to lose some of its settings so non- Hive 3rd party websites may still be able to track my internet activity.
As someone that values my privacy, having Bloatware browsers that tracks my activity is a no go. I understand that these manufacturers and developers have their reasons why they included bloatware apps on our phones but as a user, we should have the choice to install the apps we want and remove the apps we don't.
Thank you for reading my post and see you on the next one!
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