what？

If you have an OEM phone, yeah. It's gone happen all the time. Even on my de-googled phone, the location is pinged often enough, but, I tend to know what's doing it.

Nope...GrapheneOS

all kinds of things, not just that. depends on which android version.

go look close at the permissions of some of the installed apps. for sure at least, the google phone app by default has permissions to alter system settings. this extremely powerful permission basically is nearly as good as root.

the way that phones come from the factory now is borderline Nineteen Eighty Four viewscreen style.

Ditch your backdoored OS for something more secure.