Realistically I’ve never been banned, rate-limited or affected when using Aurora. I would recommend at least using microG installation as well though. I suspect that phones that look most suspicious would be ones that never formally “logged into” Google Play Services normally as well, so make sure you’ve logged into your chosen Google account once with the phone in it’s stock full OEM Google Play Services configuration.
Critically, Do Not Use the “Built in Anonymous Accounts” In Aurora! That’s just painting a target on your backside and would probably make your device look even more suspicious to whatever AI is swinging the banhammer these days.
Setting up a fresh, new, Google account is critical. Then go about “hardening” the account by setting up TOTP 2FA and disabling all the unwanted tracking options in your Google Account page. You can even generate “app passwords” here that can work for logging into Aurora.
My advice to you is to use this one new Google account across any Google Services you need to log into. Do not just log into microG and Aurora with your new account! Throw it a bone and log into a Youtube page or some other Google Service like GMail every once in a while, even if you do so from the phone’s browser only.
The more suspicious and single purpose the account appears to be; the less it blends in and could potentially be suspended by some wayward AI.
Critically, Do Not Use the “Built in Anonymous Accounts” In Aurora! That’s just painting a target on your backside and would probably make your device look even more suspicious to whatever AI is swinging the banhammer these days.
But this is the whole thing about the anonymous accounts. What thing of yours are they going to ban? They don’t even know you. There is nothing they can ban.
I’m sure they will ban the anonymous accounts often but the Aurora guys just keep adding more to the pool.
I’m mentioning that it’s a bad idea to Only use that account for Aurora Store and microG services.
You need to log it into a few other apps on the web too. This gives the account more “livelihood”. Of course nothing you use the account for should be anything you care about; you just need to occasionally log into it through a browser and browse YouTube while pretending to be someone entirely different from yourself for a bit and check emails or compose a Google Doc, full of nonsense of course, for it.
You’re well above average. I’d say pretty good. One thing you didn’t say: Are you often logged in into the services like Google, Facebook, YouTube, Discord, … Because if you are, they can tie everything together with your account. And did you sign up for those services with your phone number? That’d be bad because it’s a unique identifier. Regarding the phone it depends on which apps exactly you installed from the Play store. Most have trackers and there are shady apps out there. I also mainly rely on F-Droid and that’s the way to do it. Another thing is email. If you use gmail, all your correspondence gets scanned, regardless of what you do at home. And you shouldn’t use membership programs for discounts in real life.
Other than that. I think I do more or less the same things you mentioned. Plus I replaced the Android my phone came with.
i looked over their linked.in profiles, COO and CEO seem to know each other from their time in college. Both are newcomers; looks like a nice startup. Their advisor is a professor from their school, Norbert Pohlmann, who is also chairman of TeleTrusT. Seems pretty legit from my perspective.
Been using it for over a year now. The clients were a bit ropey for awhile but they’re great now.
As for trust, only you can really answer that, but they tick all the right boxes for me - I can pay in a way that preserves my privacy, everythings open source and E2EE, they have good policies.
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