Your smartphone tracks your location, listens to your conversations, and sells your intimate moments to data brokers.

The law pretends to regulate this, but lobbyists write the rules and enforcement is a joke.

Encryption apps aren’t enough when the hardware itself is designed to betray you.

The phone is a spy device marketed as a lifestyle accessory.

We need radical technical solutions, not incremental privacy policies that change nothing.

The surveillance economy depends on your ignorance and inaction.

Break the chain: use open hardware, de-Googled Android, or build your own tools.

#privacy #surveillance #digitalrights #antitrust

How much of your life are you willing to sell for a slightly more convenient map app?

  • pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip
    0·
    9 hours ago

    Can this be true if you use a device without any connection to the internet and no SIM card?

    You’ve got the idea. There’s a bunch to unpack here:

    • If the device is truly offline, your privacy is okay.
    • But there’s lots of ugly ways vendors work around “being offline”
    • Denying the device a SIM card means the device is not authorized to get online, but certain emergency services that require a network will work anyway. The SIM is to make sure we’re paying to be online, and is otherwise not actually needed to connect.

    I mean could a hardware connect to some kind of network to send private information?

    If you’re asking if it is possible to hide a secret antennae in an officially offline device, yes, absolutely.

    I’ve heard privacy nerds theorize that these will become common in smart TVs, so the TV can phone the vendor with screenshots, even (especially) when playing pirated local media.

    Because the basic thing is, it won’t expose your data if doesn’t leave your phone, right?

    Exactly. And you’ve also caught the tricky bit - it’s hard to be 100% sure a device isn’t phoning home if the device is a closed proprietary (secret) design, running closed proprietary (secret) software.

    • CodenameDarlen@lemmy.world
      0·
      9 hours ago

      I mean you could in theory disassembly your phone, remove antenna, wifi, mic, camera and sensors parts.

      Then you still have a tool, transfer things you need via USB only.

      I really don’t think something can leak from your phone after that, even emergency calls might not work if you removed the antenna.

      I know this might cross the line of paranoiac but some people do this, I’d do it too if I was too concerned about privacy, which I’m not. I’m just an average privacy enthusiast.