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If you're running Windows 10, even "top of the line desktop PCs" engage in data collection these days - I have to turn off pages of settings and set group polic
by rightos 9y ago
If you're running Windows 10, even "top of the line desktop PCs" engage in data collection these days - I have to turn off pages of settings and set group policies to disable it all properly and even then there are still some things which can't be disabled, like the Bing hit every time you type in the search box even with internet search disabled, so I have to use hosts file blocking.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/08/even-when-told-not-to-windows-10-just-cant-stop-talking-to-microsoft/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/08/even-...
Android is pretty much as close as you're getting - I'd say it's quite comparable to the situation on desktop PCs today if not a little better because the open source community around it is quite potent. In fact, OnePlus is quite popular in these communities for making cheap, well-spec'd phones with unlocked bootloaders where you're free to have full control over your device.
And all this is missing one of the biggest sources of this spying - apps. Most apps send pretty much everything they can get their hands on when you start them, I launched a game the other day and had it connecting to 6 services for 2 analytics, ads, and crash reporting, all of which were contacted every time the app was started. For this I'm very grateful for tools like XPrivacy and LineageOS's privacy guard which all you to trivially block this and such tools are not commonly available on other platforms.
- amelius 9y agoYeah, but I can buy a motherboard, cpu, disk and whatnot, assemble them, run Windows or Linux on it. Of course, with phones it is more difficult to assemble stuff (everything is much smaller), but the whole concept of a standardized open platform is not there. Somebody should define the "PC Phone", and declare it an open standard.
- rightos 9y agoI guess it depends on what you mean by open platform. The platforms are well known, architectures are standardize, GPU drivers are often proprietary similar to the desktop world, but ultimately I can flash anything I want on my phone, I've run stock Android, several modified variants, Firefox OS, Ubuntu, Sailfish and others. From a software perspective that's all not too hard to achieve, the hardware side of things does lack standardization but that's because as you say, it's not exactly something you can hand assemble.
- jiggunjer 9y agoI doubt all non-gpu drivers are open source. We're talking oneplus right? If they are, people still need to port them to the new non-stock-compatible OS. Then you probably need to compile everything yourself. Then repeat when OS gets updates. And you'll still be stuck with the stock bootloader and baseband firmwares. Which will hardbrick your device if you flash the wrong way. But yeah, totally accessible.
- fps 9y agoIntel and AMD both embed monitoring processors with unaudited binary OSes in their CPUs: https://boingboing.net/2016/06/15/intel-x86-processors-ship-with.html https://boingboing.net/2016/06/15/intel-x86-processors-ship-... Intel calls their spy cpu "Management Engine", AMD calls it "Platform Security Processor." Both run code that sits between the OS you're running and the CPU, for the supposed purpose of remotely managing PCs in an organization.
- O_H_E 9y agoLike this for example puri.sm/shop/librem-5
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]