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

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

41 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] floofloof@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

With a regular phone they can also fairly accurately tell where you are, and read your texts. The main difference is the information goes to the carrier but not straight to Google or Apple.

[-] BearOfaTime@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

They can do so with a smartphone too, they both use the same cellular network, so same voice calls, same plain-text text messages (SMS is a feature of the cellular network management, messages are injected into the cell management frames).

Even worse, smartphones use AGPS, so download from AGPS servers (providing another point of location data) and using that ephemeris data to improve location update times.

this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2023

41 points (79.7% liked)

Privacy

32177 readers

292 users here now

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 :)

Related communities

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS