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> Buy an iPhone. Buy a Mac. Keep your Windows PCs updated. What?

• jacobush 8y ago
  An iOS device tracks a lot of what you do, especially if you don't opt out of anything iCloud. But the bulk of the tracking is done by one "evil" corporation, who takes the majority of its money from selling devices. With a normal Android device, you are tracked every step of the way, by apps, by Google, by Samsung and their awful software quality or by random Chinese entities. If you don't spend a lot of time, an iOS device is the lesser evil when it comes to tracking. An iOS device with automatic app updates turned off, no iCloud, and where you say no to most apps asking for permissions on first run, is pretty locked down. There are downsides, of course. It's kind of sad that you can't buy a mobile device which is just a network node by default, not a spying machine by default.
  • sgt 8y ago
    Agree with this. Android is unfortunately a bit of a disaster in terms of privacy and security. The easiest security advice you can give to say friends and family would be to just buy an iPhone. As for asking them to buy a Mac - I can list a few dozen reasons why that is also a good idea.
  • paulcarroty 8y ago
    It's the one of reason why dumbphones so popular on HN.
• freehunter 8y ago
  It's pretty simple: buy a device that is supported by the manufacturer for the lifetime of the device. The Nexus 5X was released in 2015, so it's abandoned after three years. The oldest supported iPhone is the 5s, which was released in 2013 and will be supported by iOS 12 which means it gets security updates until at least fall of 2019 (maybe longer). A straight-from-Google Android phone is out of support after 3 years, while a comparable iPhone is still supported after 6 years.