Privacy

32015 readers

1067 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
Don't promote proprietary software
Try to keep things on topic
If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
Be nice :)

Related communities

Chat rooms

[Matrix/Element]Dead
Discord

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

Question about phones: Am I overreacting? (linux.community)

submitted 11 months ago by vestmoria@linux.community to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

44 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I don't like so called smartphones (flashy devices to mine your data and other reasons) but my regular no touchscreen phone's microphone is no longer working as it should, making conversations difficult.

Enter a smartphone I received as a present, my phobia (for lack of a better word) to smartphones and my (misguided?) obsession with privacy: I don't want to use this smartphone as my default phone because I'm scared the carrier, ISP or google are going to mine my data and trace my calls.

Which might be an overreaction, because each time I use my regular cell phone, the carrier knows when I'm calling from, who I'm calling and how long the call lasts.

So I ask you: how much more data would I be leaking if I use my new smartphone for calls only, compared to a regular, no touchscreen phone?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] QuazarOmega@lemy.lol 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Agreed 100%, I wish any smartphone could support Graphene

[–] BearOfaTime@lemm.ee 1 points 11 months ago

Sadly it's only getting worse.

Google and hardware manufacturers aren't motivated to make open devices. Quite the opposite, really.

They learned their lesson from the BIOS wars of the 80's that resulted in standardized hardware interface, so any compliant OS could be installed. This is what gave MS the ability to beat IBM at their own game, and prevented strong DRM.

Phones don't have a standardized BIOS like that, so each brand requires drivers built specifically for it (also a bit of a result of using Linux as the base, since it's a monolithic OS). Without those drivers you can't install an OS, and each device is different.

Google and friends like it this way, their long-term goal is fully locked down phones that you don't control and can't modify, so they can fully implement DRM.