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How to stay private when using Android

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Re: How to stay private when using Android

#171

Post by blaser-waffle »

wongarsu wrote: post #67
api wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything on the Internet has to be "free," so that's the business model.

Not really in this case: I paid money for my smartphone. The manufacturer might not have paid anything for Android, but that's a problem of Google spending insane amounts of money outcompeting and destroying the entire mobile OS market, not a problem of me not wanting to pay.

You paid money for phone hardware. You didn't pay for the OS on top of it, or the additional software you got via the play store.

If it's anything like the Window's tax on consumer PCs, that would add $50 to the price tag. And then another 20 for McAfee anti-virus, and pay-per-month fees for Adobe and Office365, etc.

Re: How to stay private when using Android

#173

Post by alicorn »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #46
qrbLPHiKpiux wrote: post #33

> smartphones per se are not evil. No, just the people who write the code.

It's not the people who write the code, it's their management. If they were paid to write secure privacy centric code then that's what would happen

I suspect that a significant amount of developers do not care. A job is a job, if the problem to solve is interesting enough or it pays well enough, rest is irrelevant. This is supported by my experiences interviewing developers who apply for jobs in my department. Questions about the ethical implications of the things they have worked with more often than not are incomprehensible to them. Note that this is distinct from having made an informed and motivated choice, let's say, 'yes, I am aware of x, but due to a, b and c I work with it anyway' or similar. I do not judge the content of the motivation, but I strongly judge the presence or absence of it. This is why I strongly support having strong courses in both etics and diversity / inclusion in all CS / data engineering programs. The blind spots seen in the thinking of some people who work with software that has potentially far-reaching consequences for minorities, privacy etc is sometimes really unnerving.

Re: How to stay private when using Android

#174

Post by 5555123abc »

itvision wrote: post #133
evgen wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 5. Use the most common OS (Windows 10 at the moment) + the most common web browser (Chrome at the moment) Use the OS with built-in telemetry and the web browser that constantly reports your activity to a data harvesting company and which keeps trying to prevent people from blocking ads or limiting data harvesting on the browser? Try again.

Wiping all data in Google Chrome is enough for Google to lose track of you. Windows 10 leaking personal data hasn't been conclusively proven by anyone in the entire world. There's no evidence Microsoft has ever downloaded a single file off Windows 10 PCs (except for telemetry, e.g. application minidumps, which doesn't uniquely identify you, or contains any of your personal documents). Disabling telemetry in Windows 1…

"There's no evidence Microsoft has ever downloaded a single file off Windows 10 PCs (except for telemetry, e.g. application minidumps, which doesn't uniquely identify you, or contains any of your personal documents)."

If there was, it would be outright scandalous and probably lead into criminal proceedinds. That does not mean anything less than that is fine.

"Disabling telemetry in Windows 10 isn't too difficult either."

It is. Yes, you could use some third-party tools that supposedly prevent it and hope that they a) work and b) won't break anything important.

Re: How to stay private when using Android

#175

Post by em-bee »

throwaway41597 wrote: post #85

Honestly, Android is hopelessly so much worse than that. You need to disable/adb uninstall tens of apps because, you have no way to actually remove them. Some of them cannot be disabled (Google Play Services for instance). Additionally, you cannot have a secured up-to-date WebView (rendering library for Android apps showing web pages) without signing in with a Google account and updating Google Chrome. I found out wh…

check out e.foundation. /e/ is a linageOS based android distribution that does all the work of getting rid of stuff that affects your privacy.

Re: How to stay private when using Android

#176

Post by lazzlazzlazz »

hydgv wrote: post #121
danShumway wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Google tracked user location even when location history was turned off. 2. Most people don't understand the full extent of Web and App Activity permissions -- they don't understand that this will allow Google to do things like parse search queries out of DuckDuckGo searches on Chrome. 3. Similarly (until recently) most people didn't realize that Google was using email info for advertising, including purchases made…

>This is the reason why none of your Amazon purchase confirmations list the items you purchased any more Just checked a recent email from Amazon I received on a Gmail account and that is false.

My confirmation emails contain zero product information.

Re: How to stay private when using Android

#177

Post by lern_too_spel »

cnlwsu wrote: post #112
lern_too_spel wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet Apple's OS collects more information than Google's. You cannot even write an app for your device without handing over banking details like a credit card. You cannot get your location without also sending that location to Apple. If you're in China, everything in your iCloud is accessible by the Chinese government. Edit: this is not whataboutism. People are seriously suggesting using Apple devices instead for p…

A lot of what you just claimed is completely false or misleading, given your rants throughout this thread though I doubt it’s worth time to enumerate it. You seem very intent to distract the discussions for this post towards Apple and whataboutisms.

Now that I can respond, this is not whataboutism. People are seriously suggesting using Apple devices instead for privacy, when doing so is worse, as I have shown. If you believe anything I've said is false, go ahead and point it out. I've stated these claims multiple times on Hacker News and not once have they been refuted, so I'll be happy to get corrections before I state them again.
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