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coffeeClean

@ coffeeClean @infosec.pub

Posts
16
Comments
56
Joined
2 yr. ago

  • motivation to deGoogle: Creditors can lock your Android remotely if you are delinquent.

    Jump

  • It should be regulated against by governments. The EU is slowly heading in the right direction. We’re letting these tech companies do whatever the fuck they want to.

    I wonder if it already is illegal. Have you looked into that? Did they disclose this “feature” in any of the agreements or literature that came with the device so that you could return it for a refund? Maybe you have a good legal case here.

  • motivation to deGoogle: Creditors can lock your Android remotely if you are delinquent.

    Jump

  • You don’t own the phone. That’s how credit nonfree software works.

    ↑ corrected that for you.

  • motivation to deGoogle: Creditors can lock your Android remotely if you are delinquent.

    Jump

  • The code is inherently in the firmware (edit: kernel) no matter how you acquire the phone.

  • motivation to deGoogle: Creditors can lock your Android remotely if you are delinquent.

    Jump

  • If you don’t control it, you don’t own it.

  • motivation to deGoogle: Creditors can lock your Android remotely if you are delinquent.

    Jump

  • Most of my shopping is done at street markets. When a big parking is filled with vans and portable tables on a weekly basis, there is no surveillance. But if I need something very particular then the cash option gets threatened. E.g. I would like to have a Flipper Zero but these are never at street markets and not even on any shelves anywhere.

  • motivation to deGoogle: Creditors can lock your Android remotely if you are delinquent.

    Jump

  • I wouldn’t choose a custom rom on the sole basis of anti-theft. My ½-baked suggestion was simply disable the playstore framework (so it’s present but just dead code) and installing an app on the side.

    Anyway, I have no interest in anti-theft bricking myself. I don’t envision ever having a phone where i would care about the hardware and would not likely spend more than $50 on a phone. Exceptionally I could one day get a Fairphone. But remote bricking does not tempt me. Making the phone a brick more quickly gets the phone into a landfill as it becomes useless for everyone.

    It’s worth noting why phones get stolen. Even cheap phones are getting stolen. It’s not for the hardware. It’s because SIM registration makes it hard for criminals to get anonymous burner chips. So they steal phones just for GSM chips that are registered to someone else.

  • motivation to deGoogle: Creditors can lock your Android remotely if you are delinquent.

    Jump

  • I think Fairphone did not exist when I last bought a phone. But you make a good point; I overlooked that. It will probably be my next phone whenever I reach a point where open street maps no longer updates on my phone.

  • motivation to deGoogle: Creditors can lock your Android remotely if you are delinquent.

    Jump

  • I think I read somewhere it’s normally 13, and that’s what worked for me. Thanks for the 'list users' command.. that confirmed it on my phone.

  • motivation to deGoogle: Creditors can lock your Android remotely if you are delinquent.

    Jump

  • This has nothing to do with Google.

    Google welded anti-consumer logic into the kernel. Of course that’s on Google. Just like Intel started making CPUs with a management engine that can only work against non-corporate consumers, basically saying fuck the individuals’ needs.. putting individuals at unconscionable risk without their knowledge or consent.

    Consumers have decisions to make. Is a consumer happy to feed a supplier who sells them something that works against them? Some are. I’m not. Going forward they fail to earn my business because they have too many masters.

    You going to ditch Linux because they support remote management too?

    Linux is not locked down. Users can remove anything they want from it.

  • motivation to deGoogle: Creditors can lock your Android remotely if you are delinquent.

    Jump

  • I think the author said he was in Australia.. but he felt like it’s an encroachment by the US in some way.

  • motivation to deGoogle: Creditors can lock your Android remotely if you are delinquent.

    Jump

  • Probably. But if you want that anti-theft feature, I wonder if you could disable it and then install another app for that which serves you alone. Whatever you install probably wouldn’t be baked into the kernel but probably a good trade-off.

  • motivation to deGoogle: Creditors can lock your Android remotely if you are delinquent.

    Jump

  • As for PayPal, well, your cc / bank also shares lots of data.

    Paypal is not a bank. Paypal is an additional MitM. Using Paypal adds another surveillance capitalist to the chain along with your bank and credit network. But indeed, the banks and credit cards are shit so I am fighting the war on cash quite hard. I’ve already been dragged into court for insisting on paying a creditor in cash. I won that case and will continue insisting on cash payments.

    If your threat modelling is that severe

    My threat model simply includes mass surveillance. Which is in the threat model of everyone who understands and embraces privacy. It’s worth noting that it’s not purely and infosec stance. I also object to feeding a supplier who is acting against me. The moment I detect that a supplier is working against me, I walk on ethical grounds. They have failed to earn my business. The snooping just happens to be the manner in which they are working against me.

    your best bet is Tor Craigslist,

    I was doing that at one time but something pushed me off. I don’t recall what.. whether it was SMS verify or CAPTCHAs or phone numbers or fussy email address verifiers... something drove me off.

  • motivation to deGoogle: Creditors can lock your Android remotely if you are delinquent.

    Jump

  • Ethical consumers patronize the lesser of evils, and go without if it’s feasible given only quite shitty options. Affluenza-driven OCD consumption is the unhealthy obsession that ethical consumers manage to avoid.

  • motivation to deGoogle: Creditors can lock your Android remotely if you are delinquent.

    Jump

  • I think someone mentioned this is in the Playstore services stuff that’s hardwired in to the platform. Which means if a device is unrooted you can possibly do: $ adb shell 'pm disable --user 13 com.google.android.gms'.

  • motivation to deGoogle: Creditors can lock your Android remotely if you are delinquent.

    Jump

  • To be clear I linked to someone else’s post. I don’t have the Pixel phone.

  • motivation to deGoogle: Creditors can lock your Android remotely if you are delinquent.

    Jump

  • If I were to simultaneously demand:

    • a phone with a relatively non-evil brand (thus obscure), and
    • a rootable phone (thus a mainstream one)

    that leaves me with no phone at all. Because only popular mainstream models get rooted and they’re all made by the worst companies.

    When my current phone loses its usefulness I might even go without. Or possibly get one 2nd hand although the 2nd hand market still supports the 1st hand market.

  • motivation to deGoogle: Creditors can lock your Android remotely if you are delinquent.

    Jump

  • I must say Paypal shares customer data with over 600 corporations among other scummy things, so I boycott them. I also boycott eBay because the javascript required to use their website port sniffs your LAN and feeds that back to them, apart from other evils.

    But most importantly, I’m not necessarily worried that I would personally get burnt by this. But just like my unwillingness to buy an Intel CPU with a management engine (or AMD’s flavor of this), I am unwilling to buy a product that was designed to work against me. I do not want to finance anti-consumer suppliers. ATM I don’t know how to check whether my version of AOS has this “feature”.

    (BTW, I’m not the OP; I just linked their post here)

  • motivation to deGoogle: Creditors can lock your Android remotely if you are delinquent.

    Jump

  • Someone in the original thread said this swindle does not apply to the US. Though I’m a bit surprised.. it’s the first place where I would expect this to happen.

  • Situations where a Google account is essential -- feedback wanted

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  • Startpage is certainly more favorable than Google. But it’s worth mentioning that Startpage is a Google syndicate so Google still profits from the use of Startpage. There are a number of searx instances out there that provide Google results by scraping Google instead of paying for API access. That’s a way to get Google results without feeding Google.