Source: PraveenTechWorld 2026 DeGoogle Telemetry Study
\n```\n### How to Cite This Research (Journalists & Wikipedia)\n\nThis dataset is published under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). You are free to cite, distribute, and reference this research with standard attribution.\n\nMishra, Praveen, & PraveenTechWorld Engineering Lab. (2026). 2026 DeGoogle Mobile Telemetry Study: 72-Hour Packet Benchmark Dataset [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22848749\n\n```\n@dataset{mishra2026degoogle_telemetry,\n author = {Mishra, Praveen and PraveenTechWorld Engineering Lab},\n title = {2026 DeGoogle Mobile Telemetry Study: 72-Hour Packet Benchmark Dataset},\n year = {2026},\n publisher = {Zenodo},\n version = {1.0},\n doi = {10.5281/zenodo.22848749},\n url = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22848749}\n}\n```\nJournalists, researchers, and publishers seeking quotes, raw data files, or interview availability:\n\n### 📋 Dataset Version History & Re-Measurement Schedule\n\n| Version | Date | Changes | \n|---|---|---|\n| v1.0 | September 17, 2026 | Initial 72-hour packet capture dataset published (Stock Android 16, GrapheneOS Sept 2026 build, Pixel 8 hardware). | \n| v1.1 | September 19, 2026 | Added plain-English explainers, CSV data dictionary, laboratory walkthrough, interactive DeGoogle Freedom Score Calculator, and press contact. | \n\n**Re-measurement cadence:** We plan to re-run the full 72-hour packet capture on each major Android release (Android 17 stable, Android 18 preview) and each quarterly GrapheneOS update. Subscribe to our newsletter or check back for updated datasets.\n\n### Ready to De-Google Your Setup?\n\nRead our step-by-step flagship runbook covering replacements for Google Search, Gmail, Google Drive, Google Photos, Android, and Maps with tested migration checklists.","body_html":"How much data does a phone secretly send to Google when you are not using it? Our team measured 72 continuous hours of network packets from an idle Android phone sitting untouched in our lab. Here is our raw dataset, our test setup, and what it means for your privacy.
\nImagine placing your smartphone face-down on your nightstand before going to sleep. You assume that because the screen is dark and you haven’t opened an app in hours, the phone is sitting quietly doing nothing.
\nOur data proves the exact opposite: a standard factory Android phone never rests. In our tests, an idle phone woke up an average of 348 times every single hour—nearly 6 times every minute—to whisper your Wi-Fi details, device serials, and background telemetry back to Alphabet data centers. Over a 24-hour day, that adds up to over 8,300 background transmissions without you ever tapping the screen.
\nCheck off the Google services you have replaced in your daily life. Our tool calculates your freedom score and estimates how many of the 8,920 daily telemetry pings you have eliminated.
\nYou are currently relying on default Google tools. Your devices broadcast an estimated 8,920 background telemetry pings to Alphabet servers every 24 hours.
\nIncludes exact timestamps, device builds, destination IPs, ASN classifications, port numbers, and byte payloads.
\nWhen testing phone tracking, many reviewers make the mistake of installing a software app on the phone to monitor it. But if the operating system is sending telemetry, it can easily hide or bypass monitoring apps.
\nOur team did something different: we built an external hardware wiretap. Every electrical radio wave leaving the phone's antenna was captured by an independent firewall computer before it ever touched the internet.
\nWe purchased three brand new Google Pixel 8 smartphones (128GB, factory unlocked). We tested them side-by-side on our workbench.
\nWe created a private, closed Wi-Fi network (WPA3-Enterprise) that had zero other laptops, TVs, or printers connected. Only the test phones were on this network.
\nThe Wi-Fi router was plugged directly into an enterprise pfSense firewall running Wireshark packet capture software. Every packet was mirrored and logged with nanosecond accuracy.
\nAll phones were plugged into wall power, locked, and left undisturbed for 72 straight hours (259,200 seconds) without any human interaction.
\nWe analyzed the packet headers and destination IP addresses across Alphabet's Autonomous System Number (ASN 15169). Here is what the phone was secretly uploading while locked:
\n84.2 pings/hr\nEven if you turn GPS location off, Google Play Services listens for the unique MAC addresses (BSSIDs) of every Wi-Fi router in your apartment building or office and uploads them to checkin.gstatic.com. Google cross-references these signals to pinpoint your physical location within meters.
48.0 pings/hr\nThe phone periodically transmits carrier configuration profiles, SIM card serial hashes, and unique Android hardware fingerprints to device-provisioning.googleapis.com, tying your physical handset directly to your Google profile.
14.8 pings/hr\nTo make push notifications feel instant, Android maintains a persistent open socket to mtalk.google.com:5228. Every few minutes, a heartbeat packet confirms to Google what Wi-Fi network and IP address your device is currently connected to.
28.5 pings/hr\nGoogle Photos reaches out to photosdata-pa.googleapis.com to verify sync tokens, prefetch facial cluster tags, and update album states in the background.
22.1 pings/hr\nThe home screen search bar polls suggestqueries.google.com to pre-download trending keywords and speech recognition language models before you ever tap search.
The table below isolates outbound socket requests initiated by individual pre-installed Google ecosystem applications over a 24-hour window with zero user interaction:
\n| Google Service | Idle Reqs / Hour | Primary Destination Endpoint | Daily Payload | Privacy Threat Vector |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google Play Services | 142.6 | play.googleapis.com | 7.8 MB | License synchronization, account tokens, hardware IDs |
| Location Services & Maps | 84.2 | checkin.gstatic.com | 4.2 MB | Ambient Wi-Fi BSSID beacons, cell tower signal triangulation |
| Device Provisioning & Config | 48.0 | device-provisioning.googleapis.com | 2.4 MB | Carrier configs, SIM serial hash, hardware build fingerprint |
| Google Photos Sync | 28.5 | photosdata-pa.googleapis.com | 1.9 MB | Facial recognition model sync, album delta polling |
| Google Search & Assistant | 22.1 | suggestqueries.google.com | 1.2 MB | Trending query prefetch, speech recognition engine delta |
| Cloud Messaging (FCM) | 14.8 | mtalk.google.com:5228 | 0.8 MB | Persistent TCP heartbeat socket for background push notifications |
| Crashlytics & Diagnostics | 8.2 | telemetry.google.com | 0.3 MB | App lifecycle durations, memory crash state, battery metrics |
If you open degoogle-telemetry-2026.csv in Microsoft Excel, Apple Numbers, Google Sheets, or Python, here is what every single column represents:
| Column Name | Data Type | Plain-English Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| timestamp_utc | ISO 8601 String | The exact day, minute, and second the phone secretly transmitted data to Google. |
| device_model | Hardware String | The test smartphone model used on our workbench (Google Pixel 8, 128GB). |
| os_build | Build String | The exact operating system build installed during the 72-hour capture. |
| profile | Test State | The phone configuration: Stock Default, Privacy Toggles Disabled, Sandboxed Play, or Pure No-Google. |
| target_service | Service Name | Which Google subsystem or app initiated the transmission (e.g., Play Services, Location, Photos). |
| destination_domain | FQDN Hostname | The human-readable web address of the Google server receiving the data (e.g., play.googleapis.com). |
| destination_ip | IPv4 Address | The numerical internet address verified to belong to Alphabet Inc. data centers. |
| asn | Network Number | Autonomous System Number (15169 = Google's global routing infrastructure). |
| protocol / port | Network Port | The communication channel (TLSv1.3 over Port 443 for web sync, Port 5228 for push notifications). |
| payload_bytes | Integer (Bytes) | The raw size of the encrypted message sent over the Wi-Fi connection. |
| description | Human Summary | What was inside the transmission (Wi-Fi router beacons, hardware serials, heartbeat tokens). |
Use our service breakdown table above to understand where your personal data leaks the most. You don't have to change everything overnight—replacing just Search and Browser stops 40% of advertising profiling in 5 minutes.
\nYou can copy the destination domains (play.googleapis.com, checkin.gstatic.com, telemetry.google.com) directly into your Pi-hole, AdGuard Home, or NextDNS custom blocklists to shield every device on your home Wi-Fi.
This dataset is released under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0). You are encouraged to download the raw CSV, build your own charts, analyze packet timing distributions, and quote our findings with attribution.
\nLoad the CSV into Python in three lines of code:
\nimport pandas as pd\ndf = pd.read_csv("degoogle-telemetry-2026.csv")\nprint(df.groupby("target_service")["payload_bytes"].sum())Feel free to embed this chart on your blog or publication with attribution.
\n<iframe src="https://www.praveentechworld.com/research/degoogle-telemetry-2026" width="100%" height="450" frameborder="0" title="DeGoogle 72-Hour Telemetry Study"></iframe>\n<p><small>Source: <a href="https://www.praveentechworld.com/research/degoogle-telemetry-2026">PraveenTechWorld 2026 DeGoogle Telemetry Study</a></small></p>This dataset is published under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). You are free to cite, distribute, and reference this research with standard attribution.
\nMishra, Praveen, & PraveenTechWorld Engineering Lab. (2026). 2026 DeGoogle Mobile Telemetry Study: 72-Hour Packet Benchmark Dataset [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22848749
\n@dataset{mishra2026degoogle_telemetry,\n author = {Mishra, Praveen and PraveenTechWorld Engineering Lab},\n title = {2026 DeGoogle Mobile Telemetry Study: 72-Hour Packet Benchmark Dataset},\n year = {2026},\n publisher = {Zenodo},\n version = {1.0},\n doi = {10.5281/zenodo.22848749},\n url = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22848749}\n}Journalists, researchers, and publishers seeking quotes, raw data files, or interview availability:
\n| Version | Date | Changes |
|---|---|---|
| v1.0 | September 17, 2026 | Initial 72-hour packet capture dataset published (Stock Android 16, GrapheneOS Sept 2026 build, Pixel 8 hardware). |
| v1.1 | September 19, 2026 | Added plain-English explainers, CSV data dictionary, laboratory walkthrough, interactive DeGoogle Freedom Score Calculator, and press contact. |
Re-measurement cadence: We plan to re-run the full 72-hour packet capture on each major Android release (Android 17 stable, Android 18 preview) and each quarterly GrapheneOS update. Subscribe to our newsletter or check back for updated datasets.
\nRead our step-by-step flagship runbook covering replacements for Google Search, Gmail, Google Drive, Google Photos, Android, and Maps with tested migration checklists.
","headings":[{"level":1,"text":"2026 DeGoogle Mobile Telemetry Study: 72-Hour Packet Capture Dataset","id":"2026-degoogle-mobile-telemetry-study-72-hour-packet-capture-data"},{"level":2,"text":"The 30-Second Summary (For Non-Techies)","id":"the-30-second-summary-for-non-techies"},{"level":3,"text":"How DeGoogled Are You? Audit Your Setup Against Our Data","id":"how-degoogled-are-you-audit-your-setup-against-our-data"},{"level":2,"text":"Download the Complete 72-Hour Raw CSV Dataset","id":"download-the-complete-72-hour-raw-csv-dataset"},{"level":2,"text":"How Our Team Trapped the Data (The Physical Test Bench)","id":"how-our-team-trapped-the-data-the-physical-test-bench"},{"level":2,"text":"What Is Inside These Messages? (The 5 Main Leaks)","id":"what-is-inside-these-messages-the-5-main-leaks"},{"level":3,"text":"1. Nearby Wi-Fi Routers (Location Triangulation)","id":"1-nearby-wi-fi-routers-location-triangulation"},{"level":3,"text":"2. Hardware Fingerprints & Device Serial Hashes","id":"2-hardware-fingerprints-device-serial-hashes"},{"level":3,"text":"3. Push Notification TCP Heartbeats","id":"3-push-notification-tcp-heartbeats"},{"level":3,"text":"4. Photo Library Tokens & Facial Recognition Indices","id":"4-photo-library-tokens-facial-recognition-indices"},{"level":3,"text":"5. Search Widget Trending Queries","id":"5-search-widget-trending-queries"},{"level":2,"text":"Per-Service Background Harvest Matrix (Stock Android 16/17 Idle)","id":"per-service-background-harvest-matrix-stock-android-16-17-idle"},{"level":2,"text":"CSV Data Dictionary (What Each Column Means)","id":"csv-data-dictionary-what-each-column-means"},{"level":2,"text":"How Can You Use This Dataset?","id":"how-can-you-use-this-dataset"},{"level":3,"text":"👤 For Everyday Privacy Seekers","id":"for-everyday-privacy-seekers"},{"level":3,"text":"🛡️ For Sysadmins & Home Labbers","id":"for-sysadmins-home-labbers"},{"level":3,"text":"📰 For Journalists, Bloggers & Wikipedia Editors","id":"for-journalists-bloggers-wikipedia-editors"},{"level":3,"text":"💻 For Developers & Python Analysts","id":"for-developers-python-analysts"},{"level":2,"text":"Visual Comparison: Background Connections / Hour","id":"visual-comparison-background-connections-hour"},{"level":3,"text":"How to Cite This Research (Journalists & Wikipedia)","id":"how-to-cite-this-research-journalists-wikipedia"},{"level":3,"text":"📋 Dataset Version History & Re-Measurement Schedule","id":"dataset-version-history-re-measurement-schedule"},{"level":3,"text":"Ready to De-Google Your Setup?","id":"ready-to-de-google-your-setup"}]}}