How Your De-Googled Phone Can Still Track You

When people think of privacy, especially when it comes to communications, they might think that a de-Googled phone will offer them complete privacy when they communicate with others.  De-Googling a phone is fairly simple--buy a Pixel phone, watch a few YouTube videos on the topic, install Lineage/Graphene/Calyx/etc on the phone, and you will be on your way to cell phone privacy.  Kind of.  Besides the cardinal rule of privacy--nothing you do digitally is 100% private and secure--there are several ways your phone activities can still be tracked even on a de-Googled phone...

• The phone can be linked to you via the IMEI number if you purchase the phone online (like on Amazon) or in a store (like Best Buy) with a credit card.  When a phone is sold, the IMEI number is often attached to the sale and using a credit card allows the phone to be connected to you.
• If you decide to do an end run around this process and go into a store and pay cash for the phone, you should probably do this at a store not in your area and give it a six months "aging period" (ie: leave it in the box and don't even turn it on for several months).  I'm not sure how long store surveillance videos are kept these days, but many a criminal is found on nearby store surveillance video buying the shovel/duct tape/tarp needed to hide their criminal activity, even if they paid cash for the items.  
• Never connect your de-Googled phone to your home/work/school wi fi network.
• Don't use your de-Googled phone to call friends/relatives/others who can be traced back to you.
• Don't use/carry your de-Googled phone along side your normie phone (the phones will ping together for  period of time which is pretty much a dead giveaway when it comes to who has the de-Googled phone).
• Never log into apps/email addresses that can be traced to you like email/Amazon/Facebook/etc.  Doing this immediately links your identity to the phone.
• Don't use your regular sim card in your de-Googled phone.  Again, this immediately links your known identity to the phone. Pick up a burner sim for the phone.
• Put the sim card in the phone when you need to use it then immediately remove the sim when it is no longer in use.  The sim card can be tracked through IMSI catchers to locate and eavesdrop on your phone activities.
• Use a microphone blocker device on your cell phone.
• Turn off the bluetooth on the phone as well as location permissions.
  
• Only charge your de-Googled phone with your own charge-only USB cable to avoid juice jacking.
• Keep your phone in a Faraday bag when not in use.
• Use a VPN when using your de-Googled cell phone.
• Never give your de-Googled phone number to friends or family.  Most people will add the number to their contacts and it will be vacuumed up by any social media services they use.
• Use a secure browser and ad-blocking DNS servers.
• Never use your de-Googled phone for 2FA.

tldr; if you want 100% digital privacy, don't use or bring digital devices (cell phone, smart watch, iPad, etc) with you.  I have no doubt that the first thing the cops did when this young lady was killed by a group of guys throwing rocks at cars, was geofence the area.  Geofencing shows all cell phones in a certain location at a certain time and since pretty much everyone--criminals included--carry their cell phones with them at all times, it was a no-brainer to determine who the rock throwers were.  Don't want a digital tracking device to track you?  Don't carry a digital tracking device.