Yes, one actually leads to the other.
So I got this backup generator installed, and Generac has an app so that you can check the health of your generator, check for alerts, etc. Super simple little app. I went to download it and got a "not compatible with your device" message. Why? My Samsung S9 and Android version were too old. What?!? I have all kinds of complex apps on the phone that also regularly update (Samsung stopped updates on my phone like two years ago). No problem with new versions of those apps working on the phone. But the crappy little Generac app? Nope.
So I have an around two year old Lenovo tablet laying around and tried that. Same thing - too old. Then I do some research and see that Generac provides a website as an alternative to the app. Great! I set it up, find the generator's AP, and get it showing up on the web app. However there is no #$%(*& way to connect the generator's AP to my network from the web app - you need the regular app. I got so pissed off that I found a Samsung Tab A9+ on sale at Amazon for $150 and had it overnighted Tuesday. Success! Downloaded the app and got the generator talking to my network.
Which having to buy the Tab leads to the second part. Holy moly - there is all kinds of old data of mine in the cloud that I didn't know was there, as in, I thought I had deleted it all. It all came about because the Tab started talking to my Samsung TV and phone, and wouldn't let me finish initial setup until I logged into my Samsung account. So I just rolled my eyes and did that so I could get the genny stuff taken care of, but then last night started scrolling through the tablet.
The first thing I saw was that even without Google Calendar installed, the Samsung calendar has my current Google calendar events on it and up to date. Then also, apparently because it is talking to the phone and TV, it is showing my main network, even though I have the SSID off. I put all my Internet of Things stuff and portable devices on my guest network, so it shouldn't have seen the primary. I do have the primary available on the TV though, which I have on a wired connection, even though I keep the TV on the guest network and only use the primary for troubleshooting. Somehow the Tab must have seen that and showed it as an available network.
Then I looked at the Tab "contacts" app, where >200 contacts, going back to like 2005 (or I'm thinking whenever I got my first smart phone, and started moving contacts to new phones) were showing up. My current phone has like 50 because I (thought) deleted a bunch of old and obsolete contacts. The Tab contact list is full of old work contacts. There are O-2s and O-3s on there that by now are Admirals, revolving door GS-15s, or Battelle consultants.
I'm thinking what happened is that the Samsung account, which I never do anything with, is synching with Google on my phone and creating phone backups, so that even if I get rid of stuff in Google, there are older copies of stuff on the Samsung account backup. I'm going through and trying to figure out where everything is and where I can permanently get rid of stuff, but it's a bit unnerving to find all kinds of PII that I thought I had secured showing up from unexpected sources. It really makes me wonder how much more of it is in other places on the cloud from old phone carriers or other applications that synch data that I've forgotten about. I guess Big Brother will have an easy time scraping information on me off the Internet if I ever become a person of interest.
