In Part 1, published on August 21, 2026, I made a case that surprises most people: Your phone is not eavesdropping on you.

Researchers at Northeastern University tested more than 17,000 Android apps over a year and found no evidence of any app secretly switching on a microphone. The uncanny advertisement that follows a private conversation comes from somewhere else — from what your devices record about your behaviour, and from the single identifier tying those records together across every app you use.

Knowing that is only useful if you act on it. Here is the 20-minute fix.

One caution first: There is no legitimate one-click tool for this. Anything advertising itself as an automatic Google privacy cleaner would need your password — a larger risk than the tracking itself. Do it by hand, once.

Step 1: Turn off the account recorders

These live in your Google account, not on your phone, and they apply to every device you are signed into.

Go to myactivity.google.com/activitycontrols and turn off, in order:

• Web & App Activity — the master switch. Choose “Turn off and delete activity” if you also want the existing record erased.

• Timeline/Location History — same again

•YouTube history

Then visit myadcenter.google.com and switch off personalised ads. This sits in a different place from the others, which is why most guides miss it.

Finally, under Data & Privacy, find the list of third-party apps with account access and revoke everything you no longer use. Most people find services they last opened years ago.

Step 2: Break the thread

This is the most effective step in the list, and the one almost nobody knows about. As Part 1 explained, your advertising ID is the number that allows unrelated apps to recognise you as the same person. Remove it and the fragments stop assembling into a profile.

• Android: Settings → Privacy → Ads → Delete advertising ID

• iPhone: Settings → Privacy & Security → Tracking → switch off “Allow Apps to Request to Track”

Step 3: Starve the collectors

Your account settings and your phone settings are independent. Changing one does nothing to the other, and most people only ever change one.

Go to Settings → Apps → [each app] → Permissions. For location, choose “Only while using the app” or “Don’t allow” for anything that doesn’t obviously need it. A torch app does not need to know where you are. Do the same for microphone, camera and contacts. Work through your 10 most-used apps — that covers most of the collection for a fraction of the effort.

Step 4: Change your browser

Chrome does not block trackers. Firefox and Brave do, by default, and both are free. If you do nothing else in this article, do this.

iPhone users are not exempt. If you use Gmail, Chrome, Maps, or YouTube on an iPhone, Step 1 applies to you in full. The recording follows the account, not the handset.

Using fewer Google apps

A complete Google exit isn’t realistic for most Jamaicans — the phone itself runs on Google. Treat it as a ladder rather than an ultimatum.

Easy, with no real loss: Firefox or Brave instead of Chrome. DuckDuckGo instead of Google Search. Signal for private conversations. Proton Mail or Tuta as a second address, used for new sign-ups.

Harder, for those willing: Osm And or Organic Maps, instead of Google Maps. Proton Drive instead of
Google Drive.

Move your new activity off Google, rather than relocating 20 years of old activity. The old account can stay where it is, recording switched off.

What this does not fix: Turning a setting off stops future recording; it does not delete what is already stored — that is a separate action, and worth taking. And even with everything off, Google still derives approximate location from your IP address, nearby Wi-Fi and cell towers to deliver services and prevent fraud. Anyone promising total invisibility is selling something.

The honest claim is narrower, and still worth twenty minutes: you will stop most ongoing collection, erase years of stored history, and break the identifier that ties your behaviour together across apps.

Digital literacy in Jamaica is usually discussed as a question of access — devices, data plans, connectivity. But access without control is not empowerment. The defaults on seven in ten phones in this country were chosen for us, by a company that does not answer to us.

Take the 20 minutes. Then show somebody else how.

Trevor Forrest is chairman, Lignum Security Limited and is a cybersecurity, digital transformation & AI consultant and senior advisor for science, technology and special projects at the Office of the Prime Minister.