These seem to be the 4 options particularly for ssaid. See my last comment. you should also be able to reset the advertising I.d which you can easily do right on your android phone’s settings without root.

USAID is pretty straight forward to spoof, you can either do it with adb using a PC, or by factory resetting the phone. (which is probably a last resort for you not sure.) edit: or you can create a virtual environment, or root and use Xposed/Magisk modules.

No i’m saying what specifically do you mean by device id. because I need to know so I can tell you if or how you can spoof it.

One final detail, when you say device id. Do you mean (for Android) ssaid, IMEI or advertising I.d or Mac address?

So device id is one piece of the puzzle, among other ways of getting your location and address.

However with that in mind here is why I would particularly try to hide the device id.

It never changes, your IP address can change based off of the network you are on which is particularly good for cellular connection. However using a VPN is still better.

To my knowledge they couldn’t just get your location form device id itself, however device id and IP address are part of the collection they are aiming to grab. As I said, if you forget to check if your VPN is on, then they can collect your IP address/location separately from your device id.

Do cover up anything and everything you can. Not because it gives additional info, but every new thing is just another piece of the equation.

I mean, in what context. Are you trying to to make sure they don’t know its you using their apps or services? Or just in general wondering if you should hide your device id. If you aren’t hiding anything illegal, while using a VPN device I.d wouldn’t really help them much. If you are using modified apps to access services. In a case like this, for instance with Disney+ or Netflix, apps could figure your device id and then the second you mess up and are connected to their apps and your VPN is off then they can then connect the real IP address with that device id.

Overall For privacy protection you should 100% spoof your device id. However if you aren’t doing anything illegal particularly modding official apps, or using such modifications. You might not need to spoof the device id, and a VPN alone might still be enough anyways as long that it is a trusted VPN, don’t just use any make sure you know that you can trust the VPN host provider.

with that said, while you can delete your content from the physical server any screen share, or internet archive are kept forever, also this might not clear your posts from federated servers.

It’s pretty easy to do in your Lemmy account settings. For someone who has done this many, many times .