putting a different rom on a samsung is something they don’t allow. not to say it can’t be done, but it’s above my pay grade. eventually i’ll get a different phone.

i disabled a bunch of stuff using adb and pm uninstall -k --user 0 package. i won’t list it all here unless someone asks - everyone’s list will be different, and just disabling things willy-nilly can break stuff.

i have nextdns (a paid service). this is configured as the phone’s private dns provider.

• my router intercepts all unencrypted dns, to any address, and handles it using nextdns.
• my router rejects all traffic to 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4, which are the google servers most commonly used by bad actors to bypass restrictive dns.

i haven’t checked lately for suspicious connections to other dns providers. i think cloudflare and quad9 may have similarly obvious ip addresses for dns that should be blocked.

my nextdns config rejects the samsung-related domains below explicitly, and has the ‘native samsung tracker’ enabled also.

• *.gos-gsp.io
• *.hiyaapi.com
• *.ospserver.net
• *.picks.my
• *.samqaicongen.com
• *.atlas.samsung.com
• *.dqa.samsung.com
• *.mcsvc.samsung.com
• *.samsungapps.com
• *.samsungdm.com
• *.samsungknox.com
• *.samsungrs.com
• *.samsungcloud.com
• *.samsungosp.com
• *.samsungvisioncloud.com