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Privacy is a double-edged sword. If you want perfect privacy, you also throw away a lot of potential optimizations. For example, you may leak information about

Privacy is a double-edged sword. If you want perfect privacy, you also throw away a lot of potential optimizations. For example, you may leak information about sites recently visited, updates applied, etc. if you have a local proxy cache and subsequently look at response timings.

Istof 11y ago
is it even possible to get perfect privacy with a smart phone?
- ultramancool 11y ago
  Yes. http://repo.xposed.info/module/biz.bokhorst.xprivacy http://repo.xposed.info/module/biz.bokhorst.xprivacy
- x5n1 11y ago
  Nobody cares about perfect privacy, but people do care about Total Information Awareness. This is going in TIA direction, in fact it's already there. It's sickening. So I am happy to be a Linux user, and it's the right time to switch. Say goodbye to your corporate overlords and come on down here. The privacy is fine.
  - jackweirdy 11y ago
    The parent comment was in the context of smartphones though. Do you have a smartphone & how happy are you with the privacy it gives you?
    - cJ0th 11y ago
      There is Jolla's Sailfish OS that has been built on Redhat Linux. However, the phone isn't exactly great hardware-wise. A better phone with the same OS is about to be released later this year by an Indian company (Intex) but I don't know whether it will be available globally.
- bratch 11y ago
  The biggest problem with mobile phone privacy (assuming you seek it) is that no matter how trustworthy and privacy respecting the operating system and its software is, the baseband modem is usually at the behest of the network provider and also generally has full access to the main CPU and memory. There is one project I am aware of that is looking to address this problem - the Neo900 [1]. The platform should hopefully be 100 % trustworthy (from an "it's free software so I can inspect it" point of view), as long as you do not choose to use a non-free graphics driver. [1] https://neo900.org/ https://neo900.org/
  - Istof 11y ago
    A WiFi-only cellphone with Ubuntu, Cyanogenmod, FirefoxOS or Sailfish as an OS along with a mobile hotspot device that provides a WiFi access point might be able to get around this issue of the baseband modem having access to your CPU and memory [1]. 1. https://blog.torproject.org/blog/mission-impossible-hardening-android-security-and-privacy https://blog.torproject.org/blog/mission-impossible-hardenin...
    - bratch 11y ago
      Correct - by using two separate devices you can cheaply get around the issue today. This gets you a setup that I could agree to be trustworthy and privacy respecting. The convenience of one device is a big sell though, plus I think a device with a built in cellular modem is more fairly called a "phone".
- mtgx 11y ago
  Let's not talk about "perfect privacy" when we could still be happy with "reasonable privacy". Just because not everything is private by default, doesn't mean we should be okay with the ever more invasive privacy policies of these companies. It reminds me of the argument that "of course NSA spies, that's what it does" completely merging together the spying on dangerous targets for national security with the spying on every single person on Earth and for economic, blackmail and so on purposes. Reality is more nuanced than that.
  - Istof 11y ago
    lets aim for perfect privacy and see where that gets us, how about that....
cm2187 11y ago
The last time I have seen a proxy was in the 90s. Who still use proxies outside of corporate proxies which are there more to watch the traffic than reduce it?
Silhouette 11y ago
If you want perfect privacy, you also throw away a lot of potential optimizations. That depends on what you mean by privacy. We share information, sometimes sensitive information, with other parties all the time when we interact with them. I believe the essence of privacy is more about being able to choose when and how and for what purposes information is collected and shared and used. I can't make a purchase using a credit card without the card company at least knowing who I'm paying and how much money I'm giving them. There's not much point going to see a doctor if you're not going to discuss your medical situation with them. If I go out to visit friends, someone passing me in the street is going to know where I am at that moment in time. That doesn't mean anyone else needs to know any of those things, or that they need to be used for other purposes or correlated with other data. In any case, with a lot of information sharing that is going on with software and networked systems these days, it is far from clear that many of those "potential optimizations" are actually in users' interests at all. Obviously some facilities do need to analyse relevant data sets to make useful predictions -- personal assistants like Siri and Cortana, say, or recommending new material that is similar to what you've accessed before on Amazon or Netflix. But even there, the limitation is often that the technology isn't powerful enough to do the same things locally yet, not that the organisations running these services inherently need to know lots of data about you.
- pjc50 11y ago
  > the essence of privacy is more about being able to choose when and how and for what purposes information is collected and shared and used This is the core of the EU data protection principles. It's a very concise way of expressing things. There are two limitations: - figleafing: the "cookie law" problem where everyone is made to agree to a useless dialog box, supposedly signing away their privacy in order to look at any web page with ads on - it conflicts with the very strong American free speech principles, in which you can say anything you like about anyone on any basis. Privacy enforcement necessarily means silencing people talking about other people. The bad end of this is UK libel law. It's still present in the US "product libel" laws, although fortunately "ag-gag" was recently struck down.

Istof 11y ago

is it even possible to get perfect privacy with a smart phone?

ultramancool 11y ago
Yes. http://repo.xposed.info/module/biz.bokhorst.xprivacy http://repo.xposed.info/module/biz.bokhorst.xprivacy
x5n1 11y ago
Nobody cares about perfect privacy, but people do care about Total Information Awareness. This is going in TIA direction, in fact it's already there. It's sickening. So I am happy to be a Linux user, and it's the right time to switch. Say goodbye to your corporate overlords and come on down here. The privacy is fine.
- jackweirdy 11y ago
  The parent comment was in the context of smartphones though. Do you have a smartphone & how happy are you with the privacy it gives you?
  - cJ0th 11y ago
    There is Jolla's Sailfish OS that has been built on Redhat Linux. However, the phone isn't exactly great hardware-wise. A better phone with the same OS is about to be released later this year by an Indian company (Intex) but I don't know whether it will be available globally.
bratch 11y ago
The biggest problem with mobile phone privacy (assuming you seek it) is that no matter how trustworthy and privacy respecting the operating system and its software is, the baseband modem is usually at the behest of the network provider and also generally has full access to the main CPU and memory. There is one project I am aware of that is looking to address this problem - the Neo900 [1]. The platform should hopefully be 100 % trustworthy (from an "it's free software so I can inspect it" point of view), as long as you do not choose to use a non-free graphics driver. [1] https://neo900.org/ https://neo900.org/
- Istof 11y ago
  A WiFi-only cellphone with Ubuntu, Cyanogenmod, FirefoxOS or Sailfish as an OS along with a mobile hotspot device that provides a WiFi access point might be able to get around this issue of the baseband modem having access to your CPU and memory [1]. 1. https://blog.torproject.org/blog/mission-impossible-hardening-android-security-and-privacy https://blog.torproject.org/blog/mission-impossible-hardenin...
  - bratch 11y ago
    Correct - by using two separate devices you can cheaply get around the issue today. This gets you a setup that I could agree to be trustworthy and privacy respecting. The convenience of one device is a big sell though, plus I think a device with a built in cellular modem is more fairly called a "phone".
mtgx 11y ago
Let's not talk about "perfect privacy" when we could still be happy with "reasonable privacy". Just because not everything is private by default, doesn't mean we should be okay with the ever more invasive privacy policies of these companies. It reminds me of the argument that "of course NSA spies, that's what it does" completely merging together the spying on dangerous targets for national security with the spying on every single person on Earth and for economic, blackmail and so on purposes. Reality is more nuanced than that.
- Istof 11y ago
  lets aim for perfect privacy and see where that gets us, how about that....

cm2187 11y ago

The last time I have seen a proxy was in the 90s. Who still use proxies outside of corporate proxies which are there more to watch the traffic than reduce it?

Silhouette 11y ago

If you want perfect privacy, you also throw away a lot of potential optimizations. That depends on what you mean by privacy. We share information, sometimes sensitive information, with other parties all the time when we interact with them. I believe the essence of privacy is more about being able to choose when and how and for what purposes information is collected and shared and used. I can't make a purchase using a credit card without the card company at least knowing who I'm paying and how much money I'm giving them. There's not much point going to see a doctor if you're not going to discuss your medical situation with them. If I go out to visit friends, someone passing me in the street is going to know where I am at that moment in time. That doesn't mean anyone else needs to know any of those things, or that they need to be used for other purposes or correlated with other data. In any case, with a lot of information sharing that is going on with software and networked systems these days, it is far from clear that many of those "potential optimizations" are actually in users' interests at all. Obviously some facilities do need to analyse relevant data sets to make useful predictions -- personal assistants like Siri and Cortana, say, or recommending new material that is similar to what you've accessed before on Amazon or Netflix. But even there, the limitation is often that the technology isn't powerful enough to do the same things locally yet, not that the organisations running these services inherently need to know lots of data about you.

pjc50 11y ago
> the essence of privacy is more about being able to choose when and how and for what purposes information is collected and shared and used This is the core of the EU data protection principles. It's a very concise way of expressing things. There are two limitations: - figleafing: the "cookie law" problem where everyone is made to agree to a useless dialog box, supposedly signing away their privacy in order to look at any web page with ads on - it conflicts with the very strong American free speech principles, in which you can say anything you like about anyone on any basis. Privacy enforcement necessarily means silencing people talking about other people. The bad end of this is UK libel law. It's still present in the US "product libel" laws, although fortunately "ag-gag" was recently struck down.