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Tell HN: Your Android carrier can remotely turn settings on

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Re: Tell HN: Your Android carrier can remotely turn settings on

#241

Post by brainchild-adam »

burkaman wrote: post #193
matheusmoreira wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that supposed to be an absurd proposition? Because that is something I want. Stuff like advertising should be straight up banned, and it should be considered abuse to get a phone call from someone you have not explicitly whitelisted, especially corporations and governments. No one should presume they have an IRQ line to your brain and attention. They don't get to interrupt you with bullshit you couldn't care less…

Ok, what about an air raid siren? Someone speaking to you on the subway? A letter from the government about an upcoming election? A road sign warning of closures? Someone with a megaphone directing traffic?

I'd argue it's about the level of intrusion and your options in dealing with it.

My phone blaring at me at any time w/o warning and with no way to control this behavior seems quite a bit more intrusive to me than your examples.

Re: Tell HN: Your Android carrier can remotely turn settings on

#242

Post by blep_ »

RektBoy wrote: post #166
kornhole wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I rotate burner SIM's. I never make calls with the SIM. Instead I use jmp.chat if I need to use OTA calls or SMS. I am in airplane mode 99% of the time and use WIFI instead of cellular. I never activate cellular near my home. I am always connected to VPN so that the traffic cannot be analyzed. My phone is anonymous without any identifiers. I think all this mitigates the baseband attacks, but tell me if I am missing s…

So you're detected just by Wifi. Ok. Your phone is transmitting every network you saved. As OSINT you can pretty much fingerprint everybody with just that. And even since phones are using randomized MACs, there are methods to leak true MAC.

> Your phone is transmitting every network you saved.

That's not how saved networks work, as far as I know. If you have a source saying otherwise, I would like to read it.

Re: Tell HN: Your Android carrier can remotely turn settings on

#243

Post by kornhole »

was_a_dev wrote: post #210
kornhole wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I rotate burner SIM's. I never make calls with the SIM. Instead I use jmp.chat if I need to use OTA calls or SMS. I am in airplane mode 99% of the time and use WIFI instead of cellular. I never activate cellular near my home. I am always connected to VPN so that the traffic cannot be analyzed. My phone is anonymous without any identifiers. I think all this mitigates the baseband attacks, but tell me if I am missing s…

> if I am missing something It's the day you miss something that your effort was pointless. Even if your solution is always secure, it only takes one slip up to ruin everything Any threat as large as youre trying to protect against, if interested in you, can just wait for you to make a mistake.

I doubt I am any target. I am just another regular Joe living under mass surveillance and avoiding when possible.

Re: Tell HN: Your Android carrier can remotely turn settings on

#244

Post by greggarious »

bullion9872 wrote: post #218
greggarious wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

>maybe spend more time writing your own copy eh, I think people find popular culture references funny because they are already familiar with them

Fair.

Re: Tell HN: Your Android carrier can remotely turn settings on

#245

Post by Spooky23 »

trogdor wrote: post #139
kasabali wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So drug lords throwing mobile phones out of the car window after each call is just a movie trope?

I am a reporter, and I cover crime. Occasionally, I cover a story whose publication might endanger people. Think cases involving gang violence and/or individuals cooperating with law enforcement. Before I publish those stories, I contact the lead detective on the case to ask whether that concern has merit, and whether certain people’s names, for example, should be anonymized. In one of those conversations, I was aske…

The problem with any defensive strategy is that the opponent only has to win once.

Street level criminals are like Fast food employees - replaceable. The guys up the chain can be invisible indefinitely, but hooking up with the wrong girl, pissing off the wrong guy, being too impulsive or too deliberate with a decision etc can be the one mistake.

Re: Tell HN: Your Android carrier can remotely turn settings on

#246

Post by kornhole »

Retric wrote: post #226
kornhole wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is the same general location about half a mile from home where I flip over. This is to ensure location from cell tower triangulation does not identify my home and therefore me.

It’s all about your threat model. Suppose you wanted to find someone that aways turned on their phone on at ~8:15 AM and found someone that always turned their phone off at ~8:10 AM within 15 miles. How difficult would you say it was to make this connection?

Nobody is looking for me. I don't have any regular commute either. I just make sure not to use cellular at my house since that would narrow the owner of the SIM down to one of the people living in this house.

Re: Tell HN: Your Android carrier can remotely turn settings on

#247

Post by blep_ »

petodo wrote: post #20
brainchild-adam wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you. I should have been more explicit. The settings I am referring to are under "Apps & notifications"/"Wireless emergency alerts". They are about controlling whether to and which alerts one wants to receive on their phone. This not only seems very user-facing to me, it's also something I definitely would want to have control over. It's an unlocked Android One device. The carrier seems to be able to remotely ch…

It doesn't really matter under what setting it's placed in the OS, but "emergency alerts" or CB is clearly network setting/service, so it's not surprising carrier can control status of this setting/service and override what you set in the phone.

Not... really? It's not the setting for whether the phone receives alerts; it's the setting for what the UI does in response (make a bunch of noise vs accept silently). The UI is very much on the user-controlled side of the phone.

Re: Tell HN: Your Android carrier can remotely turn settings on

#248

Post by kornhole »

kube-system wrote: post #224
kornhole wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From https://grapheneos.org/faq : "Connecting to your carrier's network inherently depends on you identifying yourself to it and anyone able to obtain administrative access. Activating airplane mode will fully disable the cellular radio transmit and receive capabilities, which will prevent your phone from being reached from the cellular network and stop your carrier (and anyone impersonating them to you) from trackin…

The baseband is an entirely separate SoC that is a blackbox outside of the control of GrapheneOS. And your radios are solely under the control of that system. GrapheneOS just asks it nicely to do things on its behalf. All of these privacy focussed phone OSes tread lightly on the fact that there are a grand total of zero modern open source basebands in existence.

Agreed. We can only mitigate by tactics: -not associating the device ID's to personal ID's. -only using cellular in limited situations. -rotating the SIMs periodically with other family members

Re: Tell HN: Your Android carrier can remotely turn settings on

#249

Post by withinboredom »

Scoundreller wrote: post #222
withinboredom wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re using a utility and you must accept the terms to use that utility. There’s probably some verbiage in your carrier agreement about it. You can’t disable 911/112 just because you don’t like it either.

9-1-1 doesn’t usually call me at odd hours though.

Is that a thing? At least in this part of the EU, they never ever sound unless it’s a genuine emergency or the monthly test. I’m pretty sure the only reason they would go off is for a tsunami because they don’t even go off for tornados.

Re: Tell HN: Your Android carrier can remotely turn settings on

#250

Post by withinboredom »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #233
withinboredom wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re using a utility and you must accept the terms to use that utility. There’s probably some verbiage in your carrier agreement about it. You can’t disable 911/112 just because you don’t like it either.

I don't care what the carrier agreement says. If they want to send me the warnings, fine. My phone is perfectly equipped to receive them and will happily display them should I choose to allow it. What's unacceptable to me is forcing my phone to do anything. It doesn't matter to me if there's some piece of paper saying I can't turn them off, I will turn them off and I will resist them if they try to force it on.

I mean, you can try. At some point they may just kick you off the network. No shoes, no shirt, no service. IOW, providers have a right to tell you how and in which fashion you use the service. Just like you can’t walk into a 7/11 butt naked, you apparently can’t go into Germany without enrolling in emergency alerts that probably go off once every decade (not including tests).
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