201–210 of 240 posts
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... and you continue to let them abuse you.
Give a solution
You can have (or provide) a phone that's specifically for those use cases and you can turn it off for actual communication.
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I was just wondering that... GrapheneOS team consider Fairphone to be infosec plebs, but instead partner with a company that intentionally harms users' privacy for profit?
It may be worth noting that GrapheneOS in most cases to date are not the initiators for conversations around extra device support. They do not control which mobile divisions and engineering teams can come to them and back genuine interest with the resources needed to reach an acceptable privacy/security standard for support. The question is really why are Motorola the only ones that have gone that extra mile so far a…
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Not sure what timescale you're referring to when you're talking about "how bad the market got" and "today", but back around 2012 I got my first and last Samsung smartphone, must have been a Galaxy 3 or something, that had all of those problematic things too. It seems like this starting to happen as soon as apps were installable on phones, even iPhones came (and still comes) with a ton of apps you cannot remove regard…
And before it was (smart)phones, it was PCs. The New York Times was running items on spyware and nagware on PCs in the early aughts.
Think how bad the market got. Today we have preinstalled garbage apps like LinkedIn, garbage apps mandated to be preinstalled by the government, ads, cloud accounts, notifications spam, telemetry. This is not only Chinese smartphones, for example Samsung also plays this game. I assume there are Chinese backdoors, American backdoors and national government backdoors on almost every phone. And there seems to be no way…
Cheap smartphone path is harder and harder. Unfortunately the pixel series is easiest but comes in double they number for unlocking the bootloader and flashing lineage, etc. Xiaomi has been ironically the pioneer in this field, but their phones are inaccessible in the USA assuming you’re USA based. The mediatek chipset also is more fun for this over Qualcomm. Besides suid binaries, the radio firmware and subsequent r…
Think how bad the market got. Today we have preinstalled garbage apps like LinkedIn, garbage apps mandated to be preinstalled by the government, ads, cloud accounts, notifications spam, telemetry. This is not only Chinese smartphones, for example Samsung also plays this game. I assume there are Chinese backdoors, American backdoors and national government backdoors on almost every phone. And there seems to be no way…
On that last point, GNOME/Gtk/Adwaita apps generally function really well on small screen sizes. The design language naturally suits it, and in my experience most apps will even make some layout adjustments where they're needed when resized to ~phone screen dimensions. Anecdotally, out of the ~50 or so I have installed right now on my laptop, which covers the basic calculator/calendar/contacts/etc., and also things l…
Think how bad the market got. Today we have preinstalled garbage apps like LinkedIn, garbage apps mandated to be preinstalled by the government, ads, cloud accounts, notifications spam, telemetry. This is not only Chinese smartphones, for example Samsung also plays this game. I assume there are Chinese backdoors, American backdoors and national government backdoors on almost every phone. And there seems to be no way…
Cheap smartphone path is harder and harder. Unfortunately the pixel series is easiest but comes in double they number for unlocking the bootloader and flashing lineage, etc. Xiaomi has been ironically the pioneer in this field, but their phones are inaccessible in the USA assuming you’re USA based. The mediatek chipset also is more fun for this over Qualcomm. Besides suid binaries, the radio firmware and subsequent r…
Xiaomi has virtually stopped allowing users to unlock their bootloaders. They only allow 2000 device unlocks per day, which resets every day at 00:00 Beijing time. You can set an alarm and press the unlock button exactly at 00:00 Beijing time, only to get frozen out due to the thundering herd effect and fail to secure an unlock quota. Then, when you try again at 00:01, you just get the dreaded "quota limit reached, try again tomorrow" message.
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The paranoia is completely warranted, but there is a solution. Just root your Android phone and put a custom ROM like LineageOS etc If you want a stretch goal try and de-Google yourself, I have tried but failed twice now.
1) My phone is not officially supported by LineageOS so I will have to port it first. 2) I did not analyze LineageOS yet and how it is different from stock Android, so I need to go through complete diff. > If you want a stretch goal try and de-Google yourself My goal is to have an open source system that is under my full control and doesn't play tricks on my by sending telemetry or collecting forensic databases. Beca…
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In the past I often tend to replace stock Android with LineageOS but in today's world with so many attack vectors like for example malware in supply chains etc. I choose to stay with stock OS. I also have my bank apps and lot of my clients data/credentials stored on my accounts.
Honestly LineageOS is probably a more secure root than the typical random android OEM; unless you're dealing with Samsung or Google.
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You should all be aware that Lenovo (the owner of Motorola Mobility) has some dark moments in its past. https://www.theregister.com/2015/08/12/lenovo_firmware_nasty...
Asus does this on many of their consumer motherboards now, too.