I was looking at buying a new android device with either android 12 or 13. and I wasn’t ready to see how all phones shipping with these versions have forced sign-up using a mandatory phone number. the step cannot be skipped , and workarounds are very tedious and sometimes require a PC.
Where is the EU when you need them. how is it acceptable to force people to sign-up to your spying software when they want to acquire a smartphone?
Are there no laws in place to forbid this type of bundling between hardware and forced subscriptions ??
Are there any privacy non profit organization that can take them to court ?
Yeah I did hear about this workaround. But really, I resent being made to jump thru hoops like this, and so do you. Besides, we all know the deal with obscure loopholes - they end up being closed as soon as few enough people are using them. So at what point are we going to refuse to play these games?
As an intermediate step, I’d say the best option right now is sabotage. Play Microsoft’s game but give them a fake useless email. If and when the email validation step comes, then we should create and use fake useless email accounts. All while making sure to gum up their systems with as much fake useless data of other kinds whenever it is asked for, of course.
Other option: get organized and have a LInux boot USB ready before buying the computer. That solves the whole issue.
Absolutely agree! It’s really sad that I need windows for work, otherwise I would’ve fully committed to linux already.