[liberationtech] Advice on secure phones

[riot]

Aloha!

Longtimelurker, chiming in because LineageOS is awesome.

On 12.07.21 15:36, Spencer Sevilla wrote:
> +1 to LineageOS, we had a great experience getting it setup for some
> cellular hacking a couple of years ago.

Yep, using it here, too. Never ever saw it phone home or something in
wireshark.

With aurora-store (or others) you can even install most apps fine and
the neat MicroG suite even enables some apps to run which usually
require Google's BS installed.

But alas, a reminder/caveat: i'd not install a secure phone operating
system and then put clients like telegram, signal or similar on them.
There's Matrix/Element for example. Much better in terms of secure, i'd
say. In other words: don't destroy security by installing potential
malware. Quite obvious, actually. Also: Stay offline if you don't need
it. And setup a strict in/out firewall to keep pesky apps offline.

<rant>Speaking of:
Right now i'm trying to reflash a brand new note 9 and samsung makes me
*wait* for 7 days until i can (hopefully!) turn off the OEM Locking.
Stupid crap, that is.

I am tired of these corporations telling us what we can and what we
can't do with the hardware we bought. So endlessly tired.
I'm also trying to liberate some IOT gadgets (like some Tuya's and a
cleaning bot that constantly wants to talk to his chinese overlords..) -
we really need politicians and others "in power" to DO SOMETHING.

This mess is obviously and seriously getting out of hand. I ignored it
the last few years as i much rather dabbled with RPis and ESPs.. but now
i'm sitting in this mess of proprietary, uncontrollable spycrap - just
because i don't want to vacuum or run to light switches anymore.</rant>

Cheers anyway, keep up the fight and stay healthy,
riot