Privacy

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'Dumbphones' Are Not Private (lemmy.ml)

submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by freedickpics@lemmy.ml to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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Whenever people ask about ways to make their smartphones more private or which is the most privacy-respecting phone to get, there's always a few people confidently asserting "all smartphones are spy tools, get a dumbphone with no apps if you want to be private". Which is ridiculous advice for a few reasons

Dumbphones usually run either proprietary operating systems or outdated forks of Android. They're almost never encrypted. They rarely get security updates. They're a lot more vulnerable than even a regular Android phone
With dumbphones, you're usually limited to regular phone calls or SMS/MMS messaging. These are ancient communication standards with zero built-in privacy. Your ISP can read any text message you send and view metadata logs of any phone calls you make. In lots of places (like Australia where I live) ISPs are actually required to keep logs of your messages and phone calls

With even a regular Android phone you at least have access to encrypted messaging apps like Signal or Session so your conversations aren't fair game for anyone who wants to read them. Of course there are better options. iOS (not perfect but better than most bloatware-filled Android devices) and a pixel with GrapheneOS (probably the best imo) are much better options; but virtually anything out there is going to be better for privacy than a dumbphone

Edit: Thanks everyone for giving your thoughts. Some really good points I hadn't thought much about

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[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I keep hoping the Halium project will pick up support for some small tablet, but those are almost all bootloader-locked. I don't love Halium, but anything is better than what we have, I could deal with some UBPorts.

I even looked at DIY. There's no lack of 7" touchscreens, but Pi's are apparently bad on power. There are a couple of mini clone boards that might work, but they all have tradeoffs and red flags.

[–] Crozekiel@lemmy.zip 1 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

I feel like every time Halium comes up it comes with qualifying statements (like "I don't love Halium"). I don't really know enough about it to know why that is. What are the problems with Halium that people don't like? Is it what it does (or how it does it) that is the problem, or something else about the project?

[–] Vittelius@feddit.org 3 points 3 weeks ago

I think the main problem is, that it solves a problem, that shouldn't exist in the first place. If OEMs would build (and ideally also upstream) proper drivers, then we wouldn't need a translation layer

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

The primary problem we have with putting Linux on phones is a lack of drivers. Hallium is basically fishing bits and pieces out of AOSP, then feeding that data into the Linux install. The upside is that we get pretty good power management and we get working cameras and working radios and all those creature comforts you really expect a phone to have.

The downside is that Google (and nearly every hardware manufacturer) is rather aggressively heading towards locking third parties and out of things. It's not hard to envision a world where a couple of back room deals are made and some firmware updates happen. And all of a sudden, hardware that is at any updates is not capable of running Halium.

Halium's core system partition is also read-only, so there's some lack of hacking ability there that we'd really like to see. You have to put the custom stuff you want into a separate container. Not impassable, though.

Halium is at the very least private and works fine right now. Will it continue to work? Once the eye of Sauron hits it, will it survive? Will it be sued into submission? Will it be sabotaged by Google or the hardware manufacturers?

It might very well be the crutch we need for now. But it also makes sense to get the hell off of it as soon as we can.

[–] Crozekiel@lemmy.zip 2 points 3 weeks ago

Gotcha, that makes sense. Thank you for explaining it!