Privacy

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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.

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Unlocking Samsung bootloader worth it? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 2 weeks ago by velvetbutterfly@lemmy.ml to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

38 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Is it worth unlocking the bootloader on my phone? It's a Samsung with One UI 7.0 (I've been avoiding upgrading to 8.0 since they don't let you unlock it after that). I just want to avoid having Google Services and AI installed. I use my phone to take photos of my art / send it to friends on signal and hate the idea of it being scanned by AI. I use a camera and gallery from fdroid but somehow the default photos app still has access (I know because it makes GIFs of pictures I took even though I marked permissions as "not allowed"). I also would love to get rid of the default apps I don't use. While I can unlock the bootloader (for now), I can't install a custom ROM because there are none compatible with my phone, so will I just be forced into using 8.0 at some point anyway? :( ATP I'm pretty much ready to give up smartphones and get a digital camera for anything I don't feel comfortable feeding to tech companies.

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[–] lemmyreader@lemmy.ml 5 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Besides having a go at removing apps you can install NetGuard https://f-droid.org/packages/eu.faircode.netguard and then block all apps including system apps from using network. From there allow only the apps like Signal you want to give network access to. Drawback is that NetGuard needs an internal VPN connection to work so you can't use a VPN services and NetGuard at the same time.

[–] kalpol@lemmy.ca 4 points 2 weeks ago

Thats kind of a big downside

[–] selokichtli@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Can't you use AFWall+ as a traditional firewall anymore?

[–] lemmyreader@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Thanks. Requires root though. https://f-droid.org/en/packages/dev.ukanth.ufirewall

[–] selokichtli@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 weeks ago

I thought that was the whole deal with unlocking the bootloader.