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Can these Linux phones prevent the mobile phone company ( i.e. Verizon, AT&T or the owner of the tower) from tracking you and selling ( or "renting" ) your loc

• LinuxBender 6y ago
  No. Cell sites will always know your location. Additionally, in the U.S. all cellphone are required to support E911 which requires GPS location. Any phone out of compliance can have its IMEI blocked on that network. The benefit of open source phones in this regard could potentially be additional control over which apps can access GPS or additional visibility into which apps are requesting it. This already exists on closed source phones, but the devs could make permissions more obvious and potentially give more privacy tips if they so desired. Maybe even do something cool like have a red icon on your home screen that warns you may be giving apps too many permissions or if permissions changed without your interaction.
  • tinus_hn 6y ago
    Cell sites have coarse location information only. E911 does not mean your phone is using GPS all the time, only while calling emergency services.
    • LinuxBender 6y ago
      Agreed, I just meant that the phones baseband is required to be connected to a GPS receiver. With an open hardware / open source phone, you might have more visibility into what is going on.
• marcodiego 6y ago
  I think it has nothing to do with privacy. Pipewire is like the 'new soundserver" for linux distros. Just that.
• gsich 6y ago
  Location from cell towers is not as accurate as GPS. I wonder for what purpose they sell the data. They need to track you, that's a technical requirement of a mobile network. (Ie someone calls you, the network needs to know where your mobile device is to forward the call)
• fsflover 6y ago
  Yes, if you use the kill switches (but then you will not have mobile connection).