291–300 of 320 posts
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When disabled via group policy, no it doesn't.
"Windows telemetry can be easily disabled", you said, but what you're talking about is the opposite of easy, isn't it?
Its definitely easy. EDIT: or is this sarcasm ? difficult to tell.
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There was a massive wave of phones being sold with unlocked bootloaders with preinstalled malware. How do you stop this? Unscrupulous retailers would buy thousands of your latest phone, root it and sell it for $1 less than MSRP, and make much more than that from injecting extra ads and stealing data. Not to mention, all the bad press "you" get for "shipping a phone with ads in it". Mere tamper-evidence - having a "bo…
How about let adults wreck the phone they bought if they 'want' to. Bootloader unlock in a 'hidden' power-on menu is sufficient. If you really want to baby users just have this set a flag that requires a click box to be ticked on next boot in order to actually unlock it (eg "you selected to unlock your bootloader in the power-on menu; unlocking your bootloader may lead to you destroying your phone, do you want to con…
In a way, it’s to protect naive users. And it still allows you to root the phone - go through this idiocy once and then never worry about it again.
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What about LineageOS with a non-Google app store?
I've been trying to execute on this approach, as I'm very interested in checking out of the tracking-by-default ecosystems. We're using some Xiaomi devices we purchased, and I'm currently seething. I can't root without 'unlocking', which is a process that requires me to activate a Mi Account, which then requires my email and a SIM (?!), and 'find my device' (location) to even allow installation of apps via USB. To un…
You can also grab a used device with a confirmed unlocked bootloader. You usually have to ask a seller, and some won't know the answer, but you can provide the steps for them to determine this.
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Maemo was great, and so was WebOS in the Pre days. App distribution was also better on both platforms. Maemo used apt under the hood, and Preware[1] was phenomenal. These days the two vendors that own 99.4% of the mobile OS market[2] don't want to let you install apps unless they can get a 30% cut. [1] https://webos-internals.org/wiki/Application:Preware [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/266572/market-share-hel…
> don't want to let you install apps unless they can get a 30% cut. They both allow free apps.
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What about LineageOS with a non-Google app store?
I'm currently using LineageOS and I'm not going to use it in the future. The issue I have is that unlocking my phone creates a security trade off that doesn't seem better than the privacy gains. I'm more afraid of losing my phone and someone replaces the bootloader than I am of telemetry. I really have enjoyed the LineageOS and it's been great to have a phone that isn't as dumb as a flip phone but doesn't have all th…
If you're in a position that your chain of custody is broken, just wipe, revert the device to stock signed binaries, confirm by locking the boot loader again, then unlock and re-flash your custom binaries.
Or am I missing something here?
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If you have a supported device, LineageOS is great. But so far the ecosystem for non-Google apps stores is tiny. They exist in certain niches (most notably F-Droid for open source), but not using Google's Play store at all is a major downgrade of your experience.
The lack of the Google Play store isn't actually a problem on LineageOS, because you can use Aurora Store from F-Droid to download any desired apps from the Google Play store. The issue rather is that even if you get those apps indirectly from the Google Play store, many of them will refuse to run on a device that lacks Google Play Services.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been trying to execute on this approach, as I'm very interested in checking out of the tracking-by-default ecosystems. We're using some Xiaomi devices we purchased, and I'm currently seething. I can't root without 'unlocking', which is a process that requires me to activate a Mi Account, which then requires my email and a SIM (?!), and 'find my device' (location) to even allow installation of apps via USB. To un…
There was a massive wave of phones being sold with unlocked bootloaders with preinstalled malware. How do you stop this? Unscrupulous retailers would buy thousands of your latest phone, root it and sell it for $1 less than MSRP, and make much more than that from injecting extra ads and stealing data. Not to mention, all the bad press "you" get for "shipping a phone with ads in it". Mere tamper-evidence - having a "bo…
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I've read this is a very easy way to brick your phone because the bootloader will check if the signature matches the one from the OEM.
Been a few years since I was playing with this stuff, but can you not still just unlock the phone with fastboot? Has something changed that it’s actually bricked or is this the modern sense of the word bricked (mildly inconvenient and maybe some data loss)?
Between this and Jeffrey Paul's article shared yesterday about Big Sur and Apple Silicon[1], it's becoming increasingly tempting to throw my phone away and keep using only Linux with no applications primarily developed by these giants (i.e. no Chromium, etc). Supporting initiatives like the Librem phone is also moving up in my list of priorities, once I get enough money to spare at least. [1]: https://news.ycombinato…
same with me. I'm buying a new phone soon due to mine being too old and slow. Librem seems like a great choice, even though it still has a quite good share of bugs... but I need to support this effort. It's sad the lack of alternatives
And you don't think this is related to Google Play Services constantly running in the background, searching for networks, location, open & installed apps, and OS metrics, per the linked article?
Reading through r/BlackBerry, it seems my KeyOne is only useable because I've disabled Google Play Services - otherwise it would be dramatically slower with much worse battery life.