Okay, I read the article. It isn’t “essentially” a no. It’s “let’s believe that google and apple wouldn’t let this data be misused.”
As well as several paragraphs about a three-person study (wtf), and an inconclusive one, for no apparent reason other than to underscore “we just don’t know”. Then they give paragraphs over to Apple and Google for them to repeat their claims that everything’s just fine-and that’s it. That’s the article.
So it’s “essentially no” if you believe google wouldn’t harvest your data or that intelligence agencies and hackers can’t or wouldn’t listen in.
TL;DR, go into the Privacy settings of your phone and disable everything that uses it - that’s the best you can do.