Google Play app usage data poisoning?

I, reluctantly, have a Google account my my real phone number, for the sole purpose of downloading and updating Google Play apps. I even scanned them my ID card because some apps that I need require age verification.

As I use GrapheneOS as my mobile OS and F-Droid as my main source of apps, Google still has limited amount of app usage info about me. However, I was wondering if there is anything I can do to make this data at least less reliable for them. So I had the idea of “poisoning” my pool of apps, as in: install some apps that I don’t actually need or use, just to make this data less useful.

Is that sound and should I bother?

If your app usage (as in the type of apps you download) might be of importance to anyone, you would have much bigger problems to deal with. I wouldn’t really bother with poisoning at that case.

Instead, is there a way to minimize the data collection or apps installed? Could you transition to another Google account that is not tied to your real identiy?

Google asks for phone number if you try to create an account from a VPN IP. As for using a burner number, Google is known to randomly ask for your phone number when you log in, from another device or IP for example, and in that case I may no longer have access to that one-timer burner number. Also, I have no idea if you can realistically bypass the confirm your age thing where they ask for your ID card photo, and they force this before being able to download some apps like Discord.

I’d love to use an anonymous Google account but these issues make it hard, and having access to apps I need (which is not the same as apps I actually want to be using) is more important to me.

aurora store sounds perfect for your use case. you can use it to download and update google play store apps without needing a google account

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