All my maps are offline for that reason and also, simply pragmatically, for when I don’t have a signal and can’t, therefore, rely upon them otherwise.
All these conveniences stop being so convenient and actually become a hindrance, when you don’t have a signal — so, as many of mine as possible work offline and those that want to do stuff online as well are prevented from doing so by my firewall unless it’s absolutely essential.
I even have a bluetooth based firewall to prevent other devices connecting to (or even seeing) my phone when I have bluetooth on.
Add microphone and camera blockers to the mix, to ensure background privacy — you should be disabling voice activated search, etc. anyway but they make sure that, even if they can’t be … or are, somehow, turned back on again (like, say, after an update) … they still can’t hear/see anything anyhow.
Turn off location services and, further, fake your GPS coordinates.
Add bluetooth automation, to turn it on when making/receiving a call and off when the call ends (all the convenience of bluetooth when required with none of its inconveniences when not).
Create different radio system profiles so that you can be:
- invisible — all radio systems off a la Airplane Mode
- incognito — cellular off but bluetooth and wifi on, for VOIP calls and connecting to other bluetooth devices (like speakers) at home or wherever.
- visible — cellular and bluetooth on, wifi off, so that you can be contacted but supermarkets and other stores can’t track you as you wander around them.
- drawing attention to yourself — everything on.
Slowly, you begin to gain some control of your device and what data it can collect and what it can do with what it does collect.
