Question about phones: Am I overreacting? (linux.community)

submitted 1 year ago by vestmoria@linux.community to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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I don't like so called smartphones (flashy devices to mine your data and other reasons) but my regular no touchscreen phone's microphone is no longer working as it should, making conversations difficult.

Enter a smartphone I received as a present, my phobia (for lack of a better word) to smartphones and my (misguided?) obsession with privacy: I don't want to use this smartphone as my default phone because I'm scared the carrier, ISP or google are going to mine my data and trace my calls.

Which might be an overreaction, because each time I use my regular cell phone, the carrier knows when I'm calling from, who I'm calling and how long the call lasts.

So I ask you: how much more data would I be leaking if I use my new smartphone for calls only, compared to a regular, no touchscreen phone?

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[-] Crul@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago

My 2 cents: I have a similar relation with smartphones as yours.

In my case, what I fear the most is some app getting my contact list and using it to send some kind of "XXX has joined YYY service" notification to all of them. Also, I didn't like that Google had all the data they wanted, so I ended with 2 smartphones:

One de-googled (LineageOS without Google Apps) that I use for calls and trusted apps. This one has my contacts list.
One default Android-Google without simcard for those apps that require oficial-Android (mainly banks apps) and any app I'm afraid could mess with the contact list.

AFAIK I've only had one incident because I trusted Telegram too much. There is always non-zero risk, but this works for me.

[-] JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Similar setup here, for same reasons. But I go further: my contact list is empty. Not a problem if your contacts are all on Signal or Telegram rather than SMS or Whatsapp. IMO contact lists are privacy scourge #1. They allow everyone to grass on their friends with zero consent.

this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2023

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