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Phones can only last so long and my admittedly ancient BlackBerry Curve took one-too-many tumbles and now needs to be replaced. Thanks to recent changes in the cell-phone market, I'm looking to purchase a phone, outright, and get a month-to-month plan for it.
I am very privacy conscious and have, so far, avoided Apple (walled garden - blegh) or Android (tell Google everything). I suspect there are fellow Soylentils who hold a similar perspective. (My current cell provider is US Cellular. I'm open to change, but would like to avoid AT&T and Verizon --- have heard too many horror stories.)
Background: I've been programming computers since the 1970s. I've tried using Apple products, but it seems they are user-friendly to the extent that you want to do what they have already decided is okay. They seem to expose a bare minimum of controls to allow customization. That would frustrate me to no end.
So, that leaves me with Android as the other major alternative. I am leery about giving any more info to Google than necessary -- given a choice, I regularly choose an alternative over a Google product (i.e. DuckDuckGo for search, openstreetmap, etc.)
My thoughts, at the moment, are to get a phone and load cyanogenmod on it. I've read good things about the privacy capabilities it provides; especially fine-grained allow/deny access permissions. Added bonus is ability to apply updates more frequently than a telco-branded phone would provide. I have no experience with rooting/flashing a phone, so I need this process to be as idiot-proof as possible. Also, I'm leery of getting a phone only to see support for it dropped shortly thereafter.
[Continues...]
Must-have: SOLID cellular reception (my apartment seems to have plaster walls - the BB still got great reception), removable battery, removable storage (micro-SD card), WiFi, LTE (USA), good camera, and fine-grained permissions control.
Nice-to-have: hardware keyboard, tethering (i.e. use my phone to get an internet connection that I'd share with my laptop), FM Radio.
REALLY nice to have: Ability to bring up a terminal window and have full CLI ability (e.g. bash) where I could edit/run custom scripts/programs.
Size/specs: I do not want or need a phablet or the latest/greatest processors. I'm reminded of the adage to buy last-year's top-of-the-line model. For some degree of future-proofing, would like to be able to view 1080p content on it.
Other: What did I forget? What things do you wish you knew that you only found out after you got your phone?
My main system runs Win 7 Pro but I could also run a live CD with some Linux distro.
What have your experiences been? Both positive and negative? Please save me from making a mistake that you have already learned from!
I'm looking to replace my phone within the next day or so. I've been impressed with the shared knowledge of this community -- please help!
(Score: 2) by khakipuce on Thursday April 21 2016, @08:33AM
So the government, assuming they at all give a sh!t about you and your data (what the hell are you doing in your spare time anyway?) see a burner phone with a large amount of encrypted data emanating from it. A few months later that stops and a new burner (what? if they have the level of tracking that your paranoia suggests, they surely know which phones have registered addresses and which don't) appear in the same area with the same volume of encrypted data.
You better not be a Muslim or look at all like you originate from the middle east.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Thursday April 21 2016, @06:42PM
I'm attempting to create a system whereby people can exchange burner phones and specific helper programs to simulate behavior on those burner phones. The burner phone itself is reduced to a device providing an untrusted route. Nothing more, nothing less. The behavioral programs are designed to make all burner phones look the same, in so far as their consumption patterns. If successful, then we all appear to be operating a TOR network across burner phones. That's NOT ILLEGAL, so they come ask me what I'm doing at any time and I have a perfect excuse :)
Yeah, sometimes some people have to take a hit for the TOR network, but I look at that as a badge of honor should it happen.
And? They are all practically unregistered. Most people getting these things are purchasing refill cards for cash. In any case, if you have over 10k+ participating devices across the country that are unregistered that gives you plausible deniability. The same principle upon which TOR operates. The fact some phones may be registered is immaterial to providing the plausible deniability network.
The new burner phone can be somebody else's old burner phone too, which is really the point. All of the burner phones in the system are being exchanged, preferably across large geographic areas. Remember, the only thing you care about is having an untrusted route for your real device. Security considerations are fairly minimal if you are exchanging often, and you can trust a stranger far more than you can trust a wireless carrier or the government. In other words, the TAO will have a real hard time figuring out how to target you specifically. Any compromise will be treating you as a general target, not a specifically chosen one. Since you *are* treating this as an untrusted route, your real device is strongly protecting itself via firewalls and tunneling of all real communications across heavily encrypted connections. You face the same dangers with the device that you face at Starbucks.
That's extremely highly unlikely to have the same volume of data, and is trivially easy to randomize your total bandwidth usage.
Yeah, I guess not. However that has more to do with Donald Trump than anything else. There are millions of Muslims in the United States, and they live peacefully enough. I don't care what I look like to anyone.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.