[HN Gopher] Study Warns Android Phones from Samsung, Xiaomi and ...
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Study Warns Android Phones from Samsung, Xiaomi and Others Are
Spying on Users
Author : rbanffy
Score : 95 points
Date : 2021-10-16 13:39 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (hothardware.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (hothardware.com)
| throwawaysea wrote:
| So are there any privacy friendly phones outside of Apple's
| ecosystem? I have been hoping someone would make a premium
| Android phone that is ungoogled and doesn't play these games.
| Right now I have to choose between Apple's tightly controlled
| walled garden and Android phones that are more open but not
| privacy friendly.
| sharikous wrote:
| I think Librem and the Pinephone are the only options with some
| privacy features. None of them runs Android, however.
| ctack wrote:
| There was that post a few days ago about Apples massive profit
| margins in the mobile phone space, which just seems to
| reinforce what this study is saying. Am watching the Pinephone
| space with massive hope for the future, though there is not
| much there for the present moment.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| There's no good out-of-the-box privacy-friendly phone, but you
| can install a friendly OS on some devices.
|
| Besides the article-mentioned /e/OS, there's also CalyxOS and
| GrapheneOS. GrapheneOS is seen as the top choice for tightest
| security, but also comes with the most downsides, being less
| compatibility with all your favorite apps, slower performance,
| lack of JIT compilation abilities (because it's unsafe), and,
| ironically, is completely limited to _Google Pixel_ devices,
| which happen to have a black box "Titan" security chip that
| Google promised to open up but never did.
|
| Why they think this unknown chip somehow makes the device more
| secure, I'll never know.
| summm wrote:
| GrapheneOS and CalyxOS might have slightly less tracking, but
| are similarly anti-User as they do not grant any higher-level
| access to the user (root for example), and similarly enforce
| app authors' arbitrary restrictions against the user. All
| under the guise of "security".
| sofixa wrote:
| The beauty of Android is that you can usually install a more
| privacy focused OS if you want to. Besides that, there's the
| Android One program, which comes with the Google stuff and some
| related tracking inside it, but that's about it and it's
| probably on a similar level to Apple's tracking. And the rest
| depends on the apps you install, at least on Android there's
| F-Droid for FOSS apps only.
| t-writescode wrote:
| I haven't owned an Android phone in a long while; but, back
| when I did, the phones I liked, the ones with very long
| battery lives, were not rootable and I couldn't replace the
| OS.
|
| Has that changed or can you replace the OS in all phones,
| now?
| winternett wrote:
| Companies are taking their cues from Facebook and now they're all
| in a race to build back-end data warehouses of information of
| individuals, while congress stays oblivious to the practice, and
| drops the ball on regulating and enforcing protection of privacy.
|
| Because of how embedded mobile phones and cameras are into our
| lives now, the field for collection of personal data can give a
| company a huge database of information on anyone based on how
| they interact with their phones.
|
| Even your phone and Alexa devices are literal microphones that
| can tap into your personal life at any given time. When this is
| combined with social media, email, photos and videos, and of
| course your browser history, anyone can be targeted at any time
| by these private companies for any reason.
|
| Blackmail will be a likely result. Corporate espionage will also
| be a constant threat. The future is going to be wild, and we'll
| likely need to lock our phones up and have private conversations
| in rooms with no tech at all unless privacy invasion and
| surveillance is reigned in properly by Gov leadership around the
| world.
|
| There is, in contrast, probably a fast growing pool of
| independent hackers and whistleblowers out there to counter these
| bad behaviors and practices by big corporate interests... The
| future is both interesting and scary citing all of this.
| choeger wrote:
| Forget government. China actually shows what all governments
| more or less publicly desire: Better and deeper control of
| their feared enemy: The population.
|
| In fact, I think we are about to enter an era where our
| personal devices not only don't work exclusively for us but
| instead work explicitly _against_ us. It will take a while for
| governments to gather some experience, but I won 't be
| surprised when data gathering becomes mandatory.
|
| Wouldn't it be great for instance, if police could just tap
| into Alexa's records to clarify a case of rape? Or throttle
| down your intelligent thermostat because you are wasting so
| much of our CO2 budget? Or stop your car because it already
| entered that particular city twice this year?
| ypcx wrote:
| A distinction should always be made between the government
| and the elites who influence it to benefit their interests.
| Being a member of the elite doesn't preclude one of being a
| (high-ranking) member of the government, or becoming a member
| of elite that way.
| winternett wrote:
| There is usually a lot more accountability for corruption
| in being a government official than a private citizen in
| collecting and controlling private information. There is a
| lot more illicit profit in being corrupt as a private
| citizen than in being a government official who collects
| and holds private information.
|
| This is why the government is the only one that should be
| authorized to hold LIMITED private information. Somehow
| it's mis-construed to private individuals and companies
| collecting UNLIMITED personal data on everyone. Strange
| times.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| >Forget government. China actually shows what all governments
| more or less publicly desire: Better and deeper control of
| their feared enemy: The population.
|
| After the uprising of the 17th of June
|
| The Secretary of the Writers' Union
|
| Had leaflets distributed on the Stalinallee
|
| Stating that the people Had forfeited the confidence of the
| government
|
| And could only win it back By increased work quotas.
|
| Would it not in that case be simpler for the government
|
| To dissolve the people And elect another?
| sofixa wrote:
| > China actually shows what all governments more or less
| publicly desire
|
| I doubt China is the best example for what "governments
| desire". Many people of different kinds go into politics for
| different reasons, and i personally doubt controlling people
| is among the top ones. Enriching oneself, having power and
| reputation, fixing things, etc. seem to be more popular.
| summm wrote:
| In what respect is "having power" different from
| "controlling people"?
| chuckee wrote:
| > we are about to enter an era where our personal devices not
| only don't work exclusively for us but instead work
| explicitly _against_ us.
|
| About to? LG smart TVs send filenames on connected storage
| devices back to LG, Google's phones by default (and until
| they were caught, even if you explicitly disabled it) send
| your location to Google for logging, that is then accessed by
| police with geofence warrants, printers add tracking dots to
| deanonymize you, Intel and AMD refuse to sell CPUs without
| their management engines (except to special customers),
| printers want "authorized" ink, and all of DRM is explicitly
| anti-user.
|
| We are already firmly in that era, even if you ignore China.
| foobarian wrote:
| I've been watching a French show Bureau which has a lot of
| hacking/spying technobabble, but as far as those things go I
| think it has some interesting actually plausible things.
|
| - Locate a phone using discovery data from nearby Bluetooth
| devices under adversary's control
|
| - Track/access a turned-off phone via a secondary battery-
| powered GPS module (or similar, like in new iPhones)
|
| - Localize nearby phones via IMSI catchers
|
| The main implausible line of plot devices there are the ability
| to access any target device at will, just a matter of
| time/effort. This alludes to organizations having access to
| zero-day exploits but that's still very unlikely to work
| against a random phone.
| nuerow wrote:
| > Companies are taking their cues from Facebook and now they're
| all in a race to build back-end data warehouses of information
| of individuals (...)
|
| The current state of affairs can be explained without dragging
| Facebook or other bogeymen into the picture. The inception of
| A/B testing, business metrics, and even crash analytics on
| applications deployed to devices that are always on is prime
| ground to emit tons of metrics regarding anything the
| application/device does.
|
| Even though I agree that this state of affairs goes against the
| users' best interests, there's no need to refer to bogeymen to
| explain why apps phone home.
| zxcb1 wrote:
| Corporate superintelligences are eating the world
| Yaa101 wrote:
| Besides the privacy problems, this also means that they use your
| bundle to transmit data, it is a form of theft if one is not
| compensated. I wonder if that can be a narrative to sue them for
| it.
| hypnotist wrote:
| Related: Lithuania says throw away Chinese phones due to
| censorship concerns https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28616683
| [deleted]
| ComodoHacker wrote:
| In other news, water is wet.
| jsnell wrote:
| Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28830328 (691 points,
| 360 comments)
|
| Also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28875932
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(page generated 2021-10-16 23:02 UTC)