3 ms·

Pinephone doesn’t solve the carrier problem.

by kitotik 6y ago

fsflover 6y ago
Purism does: https://puri.sm/products/librem-awesim/ https://puri.sm/products/librem-awesim/.
- megous 6y ago
  You do one self-identifying thing (from the PoV of the mobile network operator) on your phone over network and your IMEI is forever tainted with your identity from then on. (Say someone or some corp sends you a two-factor SMS that includes some identifying data) Purism doesn't have this solved either. And from the PoV of governement surveillance, lol. Just forget using a PSTN.
  - fsflover 6y ago
    It's impossible to solve all problem at once. You solve them one by one. Also security is not a boolean (secure or not secure): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security-in-depth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security-in-depth.
    - megous 6y ago
      Yes, you're stating the obvious, but this service by Purism solves nothing if you think you're hiding from the mobile network operator this way, without taking other quite extreme measures on top. And whether you've revealed your identity or not is in fact binary. This issue is not about security, but privacy.
      - fsflover 6y ago
        > whether you've revealed your identity or not is in fact binary No, it's not. It is equal to the price/time to find it out. Even though you are right that Purism does not protect from that fully, they do make it harder/more expensive.
- squarefoot 6y ago
  No cellphone can eliminate tracking by association. For years you go to work driving the same roads or taking the same bus along with people with their cellphones, associating with the same towers and hotspots and stopping by at the same shop to buy a newspaper. Then one day you buy a PinePhone or a Purism phone with a new SIM thinking they'll lose all your tracks. Well, no. If you bring your phone along for enough time, it will do the same things the former one did, so that a simple query asking for new phone numbers producing the same metadata will return your new number along with some new others, which can be easily filtered away by conditioning the search to those associating for example with a tower where you usually spend holidays, or almost identical tower connections with a phone close to yours (wife, for example). Cellphones such as the PinePhone or the Librem aren't intended to hide that you are you; that will be discovered in hours anyway and it's not even worth attempting; they're rather intended as a way to avoid direct data access and surveillance by corporations and governments. That is, they will immediately know it's you and where you are with coarse accuracy, but what you are up to is another story: they need to access the data directly by sneaking malicious software into your phone, which its Open Source nature will made extremely difficult to achieve.

Pinephone doesn’t solve the carrier problem.

fsflover 6y ago

Purism does: https://puri.sm/products/librem-awesim/ https://puri.sm/products/librem-awesim/.

megous 6y ago
You do one self-identifying thing (from the PoV of the mobile network operator) on your phone over network and your IMEI is forever tainted with your identity from then on. (Say someone or some corp sends you a two-factor SMS that includes some identifying data) Purism doesn't have this solved either. And from the PoV of governement surveillance, lol. Just forget using a PSTN.
- fsflover 6y ago
  It's impossible to solve all problem at once. You solve them one by one. Also security is not a boolean (secure or not secure): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security-in-depth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security-in-depth.
  - megous 6y ago
    Yes, you're stating the obvious, but this service by Purism solves nothing if you think you're hiding from the mobile network operator this way, without taking other quite extreme measures on top. And whether you've revealed your identity or not is in fact binary. This issue is not about security, but privacy.
    - fsflover 6y ago
      > whether you've revealed your identity or not is in fact binary No, it's not. It is equal to the price/time to find it out. Even though you are right that Purism does not protect from that fully, they do make it harder/more expensive.
squarefoot 6y ago
No cellphone can eliminate tracking by association. For years you go to work driving the same roads or taking the same bus along with people with their cellphones, associating with the same towers and hotspots and stopping by at the same shop to buy a newspaper. Then one day you buy a PinePhone or a Purism phone with a new SIM thinking they'll lose all your tracks. Well, no. If you bring your phone along for enough time, it will do the same things the former one did, so that a simple query asking for new phone numbers producing the same metadata will return your new number along with some new others, which can be easily filtered away by conditioning the search to those associating for example with a tower where you usually spend holidays, or almost identical tower connections with a phone close to yours (wife, for example). Cellphones such as the PinePhone or the Librem aren't intended to hide that you are you; that will be discovered in hours anyway and it's not even worth attempting; they're rather intended as a way to avoid direct data access and surveillance by corporations and governments. That is, they will immediately know it's you and where you are with coarse accuracy, but what you are up to is another story: they need to access the data directly by sneaking malicious software into your phone, which its Open Source nature will made extremely difficult to achieve.