5 November

If your Android phone was sold by Google or one of its partners and comes with Google Play Services and apps such as Gmail and Maps, Google's privacy policy says it periodically contacts Google's servers to provide information including your device type, carrier name, crash reports, the apps you have installed and, depending on your device settings, other information about how you use the device. According to the press release from the time, 34 companies, among them Google and Taiwan's HTC, formed the Open Handset Alliance on 5 November 2007 and announced that they would release Android, a platform for mobile devices, under an open-source licence. Android's official overview now says the operating system's source code is available for anyone to use, while Google's apps and services form a separate set that only Android-compatible devices can be licensed to preinstall. In mainland China, GreatFire's third-party tests found the website play.google.com 100% blocked as of 1 November, and the Google documents we read do not say whether phones sold there come with Google's apps. If you would rather not send Google details such as your battery level and how often you use your apps, open Settings → Google → More → Usage & diagnostics and turn it off, though the menu may sit elsewhere on some brands (Google's account help page said as of 2 November that this still lets the phone get Android updates and does not affect what apps collect, without saying whether the items listed in the privacy policy stop as well).