Android (And Amazon) Calling Home – How To Stop It – Revisited

Three years ago I published a post on how to stop Android frequently calling home to Google. I was hoping that three years and a couple of devices later the situation would have improved somewhat with all the options one can disable in Android today and by replacing Google services with OwnCloud. But unfortunately this is still not the case. I can disable whatever I want in the settings but my Android phone still connects to Google via mtalk.google.com every time I unlock the screen. I also have the Amazon kindle app installed which contacts Amazon every 20 minutes even after rebooting the phone and not having opened the app before. Sorry guys, that is intolerable. So I had to again resort to the method of blacklisting all domain names that are used for these purposes in the hosts file on my device (see my original post from back in 2011). Unfortunately the method is not practicable for the ordinary user so it will remain a niche solution for the willy hacker.