Is it worth unlocking the bootloader on my phone? It’s a Samsung with One UI 7.0 (I’ve been avoiding upgrading to 8.0 since they don’t let you unlock it after that). I just want to avoid having Google Services and AI installed. I use my phone to take photos of my art / send it to friends on signal and hate the idea of it being scanned by AI. I use a camera and gallery from fdroid but somehow the default photos app still has access (I know because it makes GIFs of pictures I took even though I marked permissions as “not allowed”). I also would love to get rid of the default apps I don’t use. While I can unlock the bootloader (for now), I can’t install a custom ROM because there are none compatible with my phone, so will I just be forced into using 8.0 at some point anyway? :( ATP I’m pretty much ready to give up smartphones and get a digital camera for anything I don’t feel comfortable feeding to tech companies.
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn’t great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don’t promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
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Yeah, but while libre software is only available on specific, expensive hardware, it is a PRIVILEGE for the rich.
Do a test: think of a country that you believe people would need GrapheneOS to protect themselves against the government. Be sure Pixel phones aren’t available there, so just take the retail price of the latest model (because of its limited support time, and other models are going to be just as expensive, buying the latest is more cost-effective) and convert it to that country’s currency. Add 5% because banks get a share in the exchange. Expect that this cost will be at least doubled by tariffs, as third-world countries are full of protectionist taxes and corruption. Wait, we didn’t add the shipping costs yet. So if the retail cost of a Pixel is $800, expect someone from a third-world country to pay $1600~$2000 for it.
But wait, now check the average income of that place, and you can safely remove 30% of it to get a number closer to the real average income because of top 1% earners and higher income inequality. Now consider that if someone manages to spend only 80% of that income on housing, utilities, transport, clothing, food, healthcare, education/childcare, etc, that person is in a really comfortable zone and can think about buying a new smartphone. Hell, if that person is committed to not eating out even once and only keeps some money for emergency medicine and such, they could spend up to 10% on it. How many months would it take for them to pay for a Pixel 9?
I did the math quickly here: for a Venezuelan, it would take about 88 months of heavy sacrifices and having no savings, which means the phone would go out of support before they could fully pay for it… oh, and I didn’t take interest rates into account.
So yeah, thanks to everyone who gave tips on how to improve privacy and security on commercial OS.
The user said they were not upgrading for a reason that wasn’t financial. Anyways, your post was still useful. Makes me realize some things.
Well, 800 - 1000€ for a new pixel is normal even in EU. Where the fuck could I even get that kind of money as a highschooler? I’ll just use my old (2017) Redmi 4x with LineageOS for the time being. I know it isn’t secure, but it’s the best I have.
And of course, I don’t recommend buying older redmis (I got mine for free around a year ago). The security is atrocious since it doesn’t support AVB (not even with original OS). I’m always anxious about it starting to bootloop (since it randomly restarts, I saw the same issue on multiple Xiaomi phones, even ~2 year old ones). And while I have used some decent phones from 2017, the Redmi’s performance is underwhelming while others (like my mom’s huawei p10) still perform well.
You can also refuse infected devices.
Privacy is not single player. Showing privacy through your actions like this works far better than just talking about it.
Turning it off and never using it costs nothing.
What choice do I have? Not using a phone? Not being able to message my relatives when not bringing a laptop to school?
After I unlocked the bootloader and flashed custom software, the privacy invasive OS from Xiaomi is gone, unless they embedded a spyware into the bootloader, which any other company could also do.
But I do use Linux on my laptop and try to avoid useless and privacy invasive smart home devices (which is all smart home devices).
Don’t worry. When I will be able to afford it, I will switch to a GrapheneOS phone.
Then, just admit it. Fake privacy does not fix that.
Like saying it’s useless to use Tor if you are not on Tails…
I suggest that you just admit you don’t want to help people improve privacy within their means. If they can’t have it all, they should have nothing.
We can spread Tor without lying about Windows or macOS being private or crying over comments about libre system software.
Do you really block the word “improve” in your head? Not fucking once I claimed commercial OS could be private so you are arguing against your own imagination here.
Yeah, if someone got a phone and he doesn’t have the means of getting one compatible with a better OS, I really hope he manages to IMPROVE his privacy with better programs and workarounds. If you however don’t give a fuck and think it’s useless to try to improve his privacy because the OS is still shit, well, either buy that person a device that can use a better OS or move on, because telling that person to just buy it isn’t helping.
Again, paid and unpaid software spies.
Say that to the GrapheneOS devs and they gonna hit with 20 pages talking about sandboxing this and boolean that to show neither the OS nor the Vanadium browser can spy on you and point to all documentation :P
Well, if you say all alternatives from F-Droid are also spying, we don’t have much to talk.
Bring them here. I’ll tell them too.