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Ask HN: Are there 5G “Feature Phones?”
There have been several stories posted to HN this week on the theme of apps and mobile operating systems spying on people, phoning home with data about the user. As we move into the 5G future are companies still making non-smart phones/devices that simply don't have the attack surface for surveillance capitalism to exploit?
- emteycz 5y agoEven feature phones have OS today, most common is KaiOS. It's not spying as much, but it's still capable of it.
- usrn 5y agoThe network equipment is compromised worse than the phones (network operators have the same issue smartphone users do where they can't actually get shells on their own equipment) and it already knows enough about you to be an issue. Anything that connects to the cell network is always a problem.
- msh 5y agoAny phone, even a dumb phone have an attack surface. It's probably worse than a high end smartphone as they are cheap phones without much focus on code security.
- tintedfireglass 5y agoSecurity is different from privacy. Dumb phones/feature phones or whatever you call it might not be Secure but they are PRIVATE. The phone application doesn't send everything to google/truecaller/xiaomi/whatever else and your USAGE is not tracked by anyone.