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.

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

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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 :)

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planning on buying a phone, what should I use for privacy? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

63 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I broke my phone a few months ago and I hadn't use a phone since I didn't need it until now. I'm willing to buy one that's around under 500$. I'm thinking of getting google pixel maybe, any recommendations?

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (2 children)

woah. you can replace the camera and It's not bad at all. for privacy what's the benefits of using this phone?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 years ago (1 children)

It's well-supported by LineageOS and will probably remain supported for longer than most other phones. That's the only benefit that I'm aware of, but that makes it already better than like 99% of phones on the market.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago)

Well yes! It is dead easy to have a de-googled phone. You can then do all the things in firefox etc. you do to enhance privacy. Install apps via F-Droid store (open source apps only). Some VPN provider have their apps on F-Droid as well.

If you still need some level of Google services, I suppose you could install MicroG. I haven't tried that though.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 years ago (1 children)

No privacy nightmare ui (like miui) and no bloat or privacy invasive apps (no Facebook preinstalled and suchlike). And if you ever want to switch to a degoogled phone using microg it will be easy (a degoogled phone means of course Google will not be able to spy on your notifications, locations, apps, etc.). You can try to check /e/ system phones, or iodè phones too (both degoogles), but you really need to know what you're doing and which of the apps you use will not work (those are rare, but exist)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (1 children)

Just a nitpick:

microg is optional mostly. You can install most apps from the playstore via e.g. Aurora store. However if you don't have microg or something similar, some of the propriety ones won't work.

I rarely run into an issue with this, and I'm using LineageOS without microg or similar for many years. The only issue that was a bit annoying was the local contact tracing app, which didn't work and which, for a moment, made me think I may not be able to visit a sports game.... turned out well though and didn't need the app to get in :)