For consideration by the privacy conscious folks out there, tired off being raped wholesale by the Google silos...

Before I begin this little phone rant, haber you read the great news about #Vivaldi categorically rejecting Google's latest insidious advertising scheme? I wonder if #Firefox will need able to resist? They get a lot of their dev money from Google y'know

Okay then... What are some kewl choices that help protect your privacy where phones are concerned?

There's https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/ it's got physical switches to turn off the cellular radio and can even be completely removed and replaced (for a different IMSI - not to be confused with #IMEI which is tied to the SIM).

The battery is removable as well - w00t !! So not even the NSA can turn your phone on remotely lolz, and it will accept a whopper 2TB Micro-SD.

Do you ever lie awake in bed at night wondering why you can't get a phone with a removable battery?

I don't either anymore!

There are other physical kill switches that can turn off GPS, Wifi radio, and the mic/camera.

Imagine that though... Changing out your #IMSI in less than a minute without changing your OS or three configs for your installed applications! That's the one thing you can NEVER change on any other phone - meaning, there's no such thing as a #burner_phone (meaning, swapping out SIM cards is pointless) and anyone who thinks so.... OkayI'll be nice (I'm practicing being family friendly.... at least part of the time). But now there is a true burner phone, you quite literally can swap that puppy out Easy Peasy!

There's also the Pine Phone:
https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/

The #Pine_Phone is privacy respecting in the sense that it isn't actually an Android by any measure at all, but rather, a handheld Linux computer (pick your distro, I prefer #Slackware or #Debian). It can also function as a phone secondarily. I use a small #Bluetooth keyboard that can switch between three devices, and that would be a really handy setup for this er... phone, right? ;) Or you can use a full sized wireless combo keyboard/mouse and monitor for a #Linux box that fits in your pocket when you walk away from your desk.

Do you need it to do something really special? Tell me, what can't you do with a real Linux machine? Okay, you can't chop wood or do laundry.

Really though, how kewl is that???

Neither are the best of any world though, but they are best in breed IMNSHO.

Let's look at pure #Android solutions now, k?

For #ROMs I prefer #CalixOS:
https://calyxos.org/
https://invidious.fdn.fr/watch?v=jdazCQemwqQ&local=true

A de-googled #Pixel 3 XL with 128GBytes of storage is a pretty good and inexpensive platform for this which your can pick up all over #eBay for really cheap

It uses the #Aurora repo/store for closed source proprietary software (so you're de-googled) and of course you use F-Droid to install #FOSS or get the #APKs directly from the devs at their #Git repos (best way for some software, like #Fair_Email, for example).

There's also #GrapheneOS (https://grapheneos.org/), and it has a lot of supporters, but I don't find it as performant as CalixOS. Both are, however, fantastic.

Here's a tidbit about the so-called #MiFi pucks that you're entitled to when you're a member of the #Calix Institute... You're listed as Calyx Institute to the broadband provider - only you and the #Calyx_Institute know your identity because it's on their bill lolz, and that's kept secret and has never been compromised, because they maintain an active warrant canary. So if you use one of those and a #Librem_5 with the cellular radio turned off or removed, and using your own #Asterisk server for #VoIP, you're truly just an IP addy surfing the internet while you're talking on the phone.

Of course... You'll need to do all this without your Candy Crush. But... There's always APKPure in conjunction with #NetGuard from F-Droid

I hope that helps! Please feel free to share this around with a #boost to raise awareness that, well... All is not lost, and #damn_the_torpedos!

And remember, you can haz #Cheezburgerz!

#tallship #Vger #OpenSource @OpenSource @eric



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