Privacy

40902 readers

746 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
Don't promote proprietary software
Try to keep things on topic
If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
Be nice :)

Related communities

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

Question about phones: Am I overreacting? (linux.community)

submitted 2 years ago by vestmoria@linux.community to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

33 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I don't like so called smartphones (flashy devices to mine your data and other reasons) but my regular no touchscreen phone's microphone is no longer working as it should, making conversations difficult.

Enter a smartphone I received as a present, my phobia (for lack of a better word) to smartphones and my (misguided?) obsession with privacy: I don't want to use this smartphone as my default phone because I'm scared the carrier, ISP or google are going to mine my data and trace my calls.

Which might be an overreaction, because each time I use my regular cell phone, the carrier knows when I'm calling from, who I'm calling and how long the call lasts.

So I ask you: how much more data would I be leaking if I use my new smartphone for calls only, compared to a regular, no touchscreen phone?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] xilliah@beehaw.org 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Well I've had a smartphone since 2012, just to try it. Honestly I don't feel it has added quality to my life. Having specialized devices such as a camera, GPS, mp3 player and so on is actually more convenient and not more expensive. For example a GPS has a longer and more reliable battery life.

[–] BearOfaTime@lemm.ee 3 points 2 years ago

Lol, having separate devices is more convenient?

The smallest camera I can pocket weighs 5x my phone, is about 10x thicker.

GPS, same.

Mp3 player, about the same as my phone.

Computer/web browser? Well, nothing is as small as a phone.

I get all that in a single device with a phone weighing 8oz, measuring 6"x3"x3/8".

Separate devices is better if your use-cases for them have strong independence (e.g. Only use GPS in the car/on motorcycle, only use a camera when doing dedicated photo shoots, etc). If anything I'd say multiple devices is less convenient even then, it's just that those devices work better for those use-cases, making the tradeoff of less convenient worthwhile. I'd much rather use a dedicated camera sometimes (and do), when I'm taking lots of pics and want to go faster.

But for most people, these activities are strongly related, and occur throughout their day. It would be far less convenient to carry multiple devices and have to pull them out and handle for these activities.

[–] halm@leminal.space 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

2012 was 11 years ago, so out of curiosity: do you still have the same smartphone, and why are you still using one if it hasn't improved your life?

[–] xilliah@beehaw.org 2 points 2 years ago

No at some point they become uselessly slow or won't receive necessary updates. Like even some dumb chat app requires a ton of resources. And I've also had an iPhone that worked just fine until there was an update. After that it wasn't practical to use any more and I switched back to android.

I've had 4. And I've used each one until it was completely useless.

I bought 2 of those 4 for my work. I do vr/ar and some clients require ar on the phone or tablet. And I needed one of them when I had an Airbnb, because you need the app for that. The again you can replace that with android running on a pi or sum.