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?
I use Graphene OS and mostly/exclusively only open source applications.
Would the three hardware switches on the furi phone actually help here?
Some stuff that you can use are
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AdNauseam, visually blocks ads but under the hood clicks on them, nuking the usefulness of ad trackers
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TrackMeNot, spams queries on search engines, clicks some links here and there, all in the background. Works perfectly with AdNauseam, nuking both ad & search profiling
Then there is this experimental (HARPO: Learning to Subvert Online Behavioral Advertising) paper on using ML to obfuscate online tracking, it’s a research paper so my understanding is limited to the excerpt 😅 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2111.05792
TrackMeNot is dead
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We need bots, automations… I don’t know… we need a new category called “telemetry jammers.” If the tools existed, I’m almost certain people would not mind running them. Spam the hell out of telemetry sensors of all kinds, with random data… destroy the usefulness altogether. The more spam, the fewer people we actually need to participate. The more transparent to the actual user, the better.
At some pint the extra data being sent to the trackers might start to consume more battery power and heat from CPU usage.
Pokemon GO did something similar to this and those were the side effects
Could be done on another device though, a computer could pretend to be your phone and start sending tons of useless data maybe? I don’t know how feasible it is.
You’d have to automate the retrieval of IDs for each data harvesting platform (including web based cookies to be feature complete) and manage to send the properly formatted data on each platform.
Funnily enough though, the kind of fuzzy data generation that just looks plausible enough could be a great usecase for LLMs
So like what, just Faraday cage bags?
Nah, a reverse faraday cage, something that would make telemetry useless by flooding it with trash. We can try all we can not to be spied on, but it’s an uphill battle. If we start being so noisy that they’d have to sift through tons of crap to maybe perhaps get a tiny speck of useful data, it won’t economically make sense to continue harvesting the data.
It’s one of the things I do with a combo of trackmenot + adnauseam, spam web search & click websites and all their ads automatically while I use my computer. Good luck profiling me correctly
Faraday pants.
What we need most at this point are hardware manufacturers that aren’t in bed with the CIA.
for a long time i have had the feeling that basically there’s only a very small number of hardware manufacturers in the world, we all know them, TSMC and others, and basically i suspect that the CIA puts some kind of spyware directly into the hardware. maybe i’m wrong here, but i have a gut feeling. we need independent hardware manufacturers, maybe stationed in europe or somewhere else in the third world altogether.
you said it yourself, encrypted apps don’t mean anything when the underlaying system is already flawed. that is the operating system and the hardware. first we need better hardware, then we need a clean, non-invasive operating system, then we need good apps. starting with good apps alone doesn’t actually do that much when your data gets siphoned off through other apps nonetheless.
Not the CIA, the NSA does this all the time. The documents that Snowden leaked confirmed that the agency intercepts hardware being shipped to targets and swaps out the firmware to allow them to listen in on all network traffic going through that device. They also work closely with ISPs to install devices that mirror all network traffic going through that ISP to another device so they can log and analyze it.
This is why I’ve wanted a PDA for a while now. But nobody makes them anymore because everyone pivoted to making smartphones, so DIY would probably be one of the only options unless I want to buy used tech from I believe 2 decades ago.
You can get a Google Pixel, install GrapheneOS on it, then keep it in aeroplane mode.
we are all moths and the internet is the flame
Cell phones started to become popular while I was in college. I still have not used one. I have a dumb phone for businesses and institutions that absolutely must call for whatever reason. Everything else can be easily handled on my computer.
How do you get around 2FA? I was able to stay off of phones for so long, but the standard 2FA implementation has made it impossible.
I’ve never been forced to use 2FA except on GitHub. I just ditched it and went to Codeberg.
Lyft/uber, airlines, hotels? Its nearly impossible to use any of those without a smartphone. Or its a huge hinderance.
I’m convinced most of the people on this instance don’t leave their basements !
Huh? I’ve flown and booked hotels recently and you absolutely do not need a smart phone for that.
Everyone has cars where I live. I’ve never needed a smartphone for a hotel. That sounds like utter nonsense.
And you’re right, I haven’t flown in decades, nor do I have any desire to, since it sounds like a nightmare.
We all know the title is right. Graphene OS is the answer, from what I read.
Best friend is stuck on his iPhone. Does anybody have any quick and easy links that show how bad Apple is at privacy? I’ve been trying to get a few together to show him and hopefully break the cycle.
The site says user privacy is a concern on iPhone but doesn’t actually list any incidents. Is this correct?
He needs to enable lockdown mode, then go into the privacy settings and turn off “allow apps to request to track”, disable the system services in location settings which aren’t needed, turn off personalised ads under Apple advertising, then he well be good.
Sweet! Love seeing actionable things I can send him.
friend is stuck on his iPhone
my honest opinion is that it’s a lost cause. people superficial enough to be on an iphone in the first place probably aren’t gonna think through the deeper ramifications of privacy and information security practices at all.
Apple is pretty decent actually. If I couldn’t use GrapheneOS, I’d go for iOS.
Apple devices aren’t the best but theyre definitely not the worst. If the leaked Cellebrite documentation is to be believed then the newest devices running the latest iOS builds are well protected against hacking tools, second only to GrapheneOS. The iOS permissions system is relatively robust, lockdown mode is a good bit of extra protection too. And iirc full-disk encryption is enabled by default on iOS these days. Advanced Data Protection lets you E2E encrypt (most) cloud storage too. These are all good things
For the most part, you can set up an Apple Account without using genuine information (though the age verification thing might change this, but Google is implementing that too). For both iOS and GrapheneOS you need to either trust Apple or Google with your phone number to set up an account.
I’d be interested to hear people’s criticisms so long as they’re not just random claims with no elaboration or evidence
GrapheneOS can be used just fine without any Google Services. This is one of the core features.
This is a fair assessment but Apple is getting worse as well.
It’s not as bad as Google but still pretty terrible. I too would like to see a comprehensive list on Apple issues.
i mean this with sincerity, and not as a means to further the Android vs Apple bullshit. please stop drinking cyanide.
But where is the data? I’m genuinely curious since I want to get my friend off the platform but if there is nothing to show them then I don’t really know if I can (or even should tbh).
I don’t like smartphones and im kinda paranoid so turned off and in an rfid blocking bag. Even with dumbphones because who knows what is hidden away active without me knowing. I would have laughed at such paranoia 15 years ago.
This is a legal/poltical issue more than a technology one. The good guys are the EFF, OpenRightsGroup, EDRi and others in the same side. Increasingly phone apps are forced on us to do things at all, and those apps are not only closed but only run on locked down OSs. It’s anti competitive, anti-freedom, authoritarian, etc etc.
We need to get better at convincing non-nerds. We need to stop fighting political fights by burying ourselves ever deeper in tech. Which I’m guilty of too!
💯 support EFF
Me reading this on Pixel 9a running GrapheneOS:
graphene is pretty good, but be careful with cell network triangulation. also careful with what apps you run on it.
I would love to think its just a hardware and software issue, it is a habit issue too - i am keen to get away from my phone. I am starting to detest it.
But we do still need things that genuinely aid us. People do need maps. and bank apps on the go. I am trying to break my habits. I have been tempted to go back to a nokia flip but i need a map. I miss the days of flips, that satisfying clip closed. The actual physical act of opening it.
I will be moving to graphene pretty soon but its still a touchscreen, and even if i buy second hand it bumps google prices, i begrudge that. Jolla is too far away and a tad on the pricey side. Motorola is still another big brand just producing touch screen smart phones that lean towards bad habits. I would love a physical switch too.
lineageOS on 1 of the hundreds of nonBoogle phones?
I’ll take a look. Thanks. I am just at the start and learning.
last week i posted these links under another comment:
☞ https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/
https://github.com/zenfyrdev/bootloader-unlock-wall-of-shame/tree/main/brands
make sure to choose a phone with an unlockable bootloader and you will be fine.
Google gets nothing from you if you purchase second hand.
Is this a post just tilting the blame and impetus for escaping closed hardware on the user and nothing else? Because I’ll buy a Jolla or a Fairphone when my current phone dies, maybe, if I can afford it. All your post does is position true privacy as a hobbyists niche.
exactly right. positioning the solution as "buy different hardware and swap OSs’ is short term thinking that solves the problem for the individual and exactly nobody else.
privacy should not be niche, it should be standard. go to city council meetings and make your voice known during flock safety hearings. write your legislators to make your stance known on OS DOB registry. its not nearly as cool as a de-googled phone you can show your friends. its not technical. but we’re sliding backwards because we’re distracted from tried and true solutions.
