A group of researchers at Trinity College in Dublin has released the
results of a study into the data collected by a number of Android
variants. There are few surprises here, but the picture is still
discouraging.
We find that the Samsung, Xiaomi, Huawei and Realme Android
variants all transmit a substantial volume of data to the OS
developer (i.e. Samsung etc) and to third-party parties that have
pre-installed system apps (including Google, Microsoft, Heytap,
LinkedIn, Facebook). LineageOS sends similar volumes of data to
Google as these proprietary Android variants, but we do not observe
the LineageOS developers themselves collecting data nor
pre-installed system apps other than those of Google. Notably,
/e/OS sends no information to Google or other third parties and
sends essentially no information to the /e/OS developers.