The privacy sub may be even more paranoid than the stim subs.
This haunts them in their sleep:
Privacy sub... Iphone
What a lack of computer literacy and libre software thought does to a mf.
this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2023
165 points (100.0% liked)
the_dunk_tank
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It's the dunk tank.
This is where you come to post big-brained hot takes by chuds, libs, or even fellow leftists, and tear them to itty-bitty pieces with precision dunkstrikes.
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but for the companies that can access your information
As if Android is any better?
Android is leagues ahead of Apple, first of all, the core of Android is libre, anyone is able to take Android and create their own mobile operating system around it (with various amounts of success). Of course, this leads to OEMs who create bastardized nonfree operating systems with privacy holes, but it also leads to things like Vanilla Android, GrapheneOS, CalyxOS, /e/ etc.
There are also GNU/Linux phones like UBports, GNOME/KDE mobile shell, so it's not a binary decision.
Android is not without its flaws (like Google play services and closed down hardware), but to say it's not better than Apple is misleading. Countries choose Android, only America pushes their Apple sludge.
Every cell phone, even dumb phones, can track you with a warrant or Stingray. Rather than picking which is better, understand that every single cellphone is snitching on you and act accordingly.
To be clear, it is possible to defend yourself, but ofc no defense is perfect. For illegal activities that might attract federal attention? best to avoid them at all costs. But for general privacy in your day to day life that isn't practical for most people, and "every cellphone is snitching on you" is way too reductive, even if it's true in a sense.
For example the person you are replying to mentions Linux phones, many of which publish schematics and make hardware kill switches for the discrete modem a big selling point. That still isn't perfect protection, but it would protect you from a stingray... and if you have a thought out threat model, you can make the choice whether or not that device is appropriate for your situation.
Let me be clear first: If you want to get rid of advertising, then yes your advise is OK. If you want to defend against the Surveillance system, it's not close to adequate. This is the fundamental gap I'm trying to address.
I understand where your heart is at, but you are making a mistake. Free/Libre software is about Freedom, and from that guarantee we can build other guarantees about security and privacy. However Freedom itself does not guarantee security nor privacy. Freedom is also the freedom to shoot yourself in the foot.
To be clear, it is possible to defend yourself, but ofc no defense is perfect.
There is a perfect defense: Don't use technology. Much of this advise is trying to use technology to fight technology. It's a rabbit hole that has no bottom, and the best defense is to not play. The problem is attack surface. Technology is incredibly complex and is chattier than your extroverted :LIB: friend at brunch, and boy howdy 
do people love to listen! You can reduce this attack surface, but it never goes away as long as you are using technology.
But for general privacy in your day to day life that isn't practical, and "every cellphone is snitching on you" is way too reductive, even if it's true in a sense.
Here's the trail crumbs you might make on the Web as you browse each and every website:
- DNS request - sends URL domain/hostname (www.hexbear.net, for example), collects IP and timestamp. Your ISP is often the default DNS, so they are collecting this information. Google (8.8.8.8) and Cloudflare (1.1.1.1) as well.
- 1st party HTTP(S) request - Encrypts body but sends URL domain/hostname in the clear across the network, collects IP and timestamp.
- 3rd party request - Usually advertising, but also could be security (Sign In With Google, Okta, etc), collects IP and timestamp
- 3rd party cookies - Sent and updated with every request to that domain (Amazon cookie to Amazon.com, FB cookie to Facebook.com, etc), collects IP and timestamp
- 1st party advertising - Think Amazon's "Customers also bought...", has full access to your request, collects IP and timestamp and User-Agent.
- Logs - Usage data about what you do on the website, both front-end and back-end, collects IP and timestamp
- Telemetry - Usage data about what you do with your app, collects IP and timestamp
You can use custom software for #3 and #4 on the device (most of the advise here), but do you block google.com? You can use a network DNS blocker (e.g. Pi-Hole) for #1, #3, #4, and some of #7, but that only works on networks you control. VPNs advertise as solving #2, but that's pure ideology; it only moves where the routing traffic goes and still can log information in transit.
This also ignores data brokers who buy all of this information and compile it together.
And this is just the advertising/surveillance defense against tech companies. I haven't even touched 
or 
defense.
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I'm with you on libre stuff, but I would say it's not any better than Apple unless you are actually using one of the options you mention. Essentially every OEM available in western countries (and probably most other countries but idk) jam it full of spyware and telemetry, both the default google kind and all kinds of OEM and carrier-based additional spyware which is also often horribly insecure.
I know your hearts in the right place about this, but android is not better than iOS for privacy.
The only way android can be made decently privacy respecting is through graphene and that requires a very small subset of the ocean of android devices and requires that you give up almost everything that makes a smartphone useful.
The solution to privacy isn’t graphene or android, it’s not using a smartphone at all.
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graphene
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what does this person think China will do with this information you live in another country dipshit china can't arrest you
Xi Jinping is personally jerking it to my noods! 
Are you 
enough to slide into Xi's DMs?
All the pics I take of my feet are actually a matter of national security, sweaty.
🦶
They can just buy the information from data brokers anyhow
this person doesn't seem to appreciate that the chinese government is too busy managing the chinese state to give a shit about them
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from amazon or whoever, who they'll happily give their information to and who have way more ability to fuck with them
This is the kind of drivel which gets posted to that sub regarding why they should care China is "stealing their data" :
if they get enough data, then they can use machine learning to find patterns effectively reading the mind of an average american. The govt can then push specially crafted propaganda aimed at destroying your faith in country, and seed ideas like resisting the chinese is in vain and you should surrender.
With enough time the population will get weaker and starts to fear any retaliation against the chinese because they are TOO STRONG (they are in your mind). Without public support Democratic govts can't do shit ultimately causing US to crumble down and even taken over by chinese.
Data is dangerous.
I'd like to think this is a joke because I would write something like this as a bit, but I've seen a similar argument 1000 times by now.
One of the senators in the tiktok hearing basically insinuated that China was installing a communism activation word in the heads of Americans.
To put it mildly, Americans are not an intellectual people.
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I don't think the cretin making the post on 
can adequately explain why they are so terrified without resorting to blatant racism and westoid fantasies. But the existential crisis for the west is that capitialism has run out of road with data, attention and platforms the last all important commodities to shape and dominate what is left of the economy. Your attention is a zero sum game for them and the data is the all important fuel.
The majority of people have huge data footprints with fragments of themselves everywhere. Yet is there any real example of blackmail with all this data? I remember reading a quater of Soshana Zuboff's Surveillience Capitialism before I could take no more of needlessly prolonged lib storytelling. Are there any worse examples of this specifically ruining somebodies life other then a ruined engagement? Like if somebody who made it to the end of that drivel enlight us that would be great or correct me where I am worng about data.
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It’s like Snowden & Assange taught these people nothing.
All the new media literacy pedagogy should be thrown out and replaced with Michael Parenti’s Inventing Reality and Make-Believe Media.
Edward Snowden fucked up his life for nothing. Everything he revealed, and people are more scared of a government they don't live under using their data -- which they could already just buy from various US-based companies which take plenty of that data for their own purposes.
cares about privacy
downloads a shopping/fast fashion app
on an i phone
posts to his reddit account
something isn't adding up
Is there an iPhone equivalent of deleting System32 because that's clearly the answer to this question.
If anyone is that worried about data privacy, they shouldn't have a smartphone lol.
I think that attitude is frankly toxic. It's the digital equivalent of "if you don't like America, you can move to Afghanistan!".
the platform and devices are kinda counter to principles of privacy. the towers track you, "free" software where your data is the product, the panopticon of everyone having a camera... Places that need to actually be secure ban them. You can get by without a smart phone just fine if you have a regular computer but then you transfer all the vulnerability to that device, it's just not physically with you and you have a little bit better control over it if you know or care enough to make the efforts.
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how can acknowledging reality be toxic? it would be nice if it were different, but they're right - smartphones are anathema to privacy as they exist today
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The real toxic attitude is simply expecting everyone to have a smartphone. Stop trying to make me install an app or scan a QR code for everything. I've gone without using a smartphone for months at a time and I was fine. Pre-covid there were usually a couple times where some event or restaurant or work thing required some unnecessary app, but since covid I think people have gotten sick of this type of stuff and it's not as common. Worse case scenario just get a burner phone for when you're forced to use a smartphone.
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Is there an iPhone equivalent of deleting System32
It’s Apple, so no.
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r/privacy is full of the dumbest people I've ever met. If you cared about privacy you would never have a smartphone in the first place.
That product violates every Maoist principle, but damn does it look sexy.
It's red and has Mao's face on it. He'd love it.
the absence of a Stalin phone case is revisionism
You have to travel to a parallel dimension 2012 to get the CPUSSR 100 year anniversary Stalin drip
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This guy just got tricked into downloading a communism and you're laughing?
Scared about privacy. Has a public reddit profile with a year long posting history.
Oh god oh fuck Xi is in my phone. He made my wallpaper an animated Chinese flag flapping in the breeze and the language preferences looked like they're being 变成中国人请帮忙我很害怕
shit is so stupid. i don't care if the chinese government spies on me. I live in america. It's DHS, ICE, CIA, FBI that want to kidnap me and harvest my organs. chinese govt can't do shit to me and have no reason to. honestly i dare them. 
xi jinping is inside my phone
I have a google phone right now but I'd love to get a Chinese phone when I need a new one. I'm pretty sure the party isn't getting transcripts of what I yell at my phone right now, so I'm hoping a Xiaomi or Huawei would be more conducive to sharing my political advice with the chairman
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Obviously most apps are stealing your data but people's reactions to Temu are literally insane. They have a thing where they'll literally paypal you £20-£40 to refer other users, I was 1 referral away and 2 friends wouldn't download it because it's Chinese. Another two friends said that people they know had money stolen by it... like, legality and possibility aside yes, I'm sure Pinduoduo, one of the BIGGEST COMPANIES IN THE WORLD needs to steal your last tenner
why would one of the BIGGEST COMPANIES IN THE WORLD need
You can say the exact same thing about PayPal which is known to 'misplace' people's money and make it extremely difficult to get back. I don't see how any other fintech company would be different.
Critical support to Temu for separating chuds from their money
If you're that paranoid about privacy, perhaps an iPhone and social media are not the right choices for you.
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lmaooooo the "data breach" tag
I would actually prefer if a tame country who hasn't been aggressive since its creation besides one or two times, which is thousands of miles away from me, to spy on me
instead of the fucking united states
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