Privacy

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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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The Freedom Phone is not great at privacy - Matthew Garrett (mjg59.dreamwidth.org)

submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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A bit of background...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umidigi_A9

The device is marketed at a price of US$500; in comparison, the Umidigi A9 Pro retails for US$120, a little less than a quarter the price of the Freedom Phone. The Freedom Phone website did not initially publish specifications for the phone, but incomplete information was later published. Finman confirmed to The Daily Beast that the Freedom Phone was manufactured by Umidigi.

In a review of the product, CNET said that the $500 Freedom Phone appeared to be "nearly on par with a $200 budget Android phone."

The phone comes with rebranded Aurora Store and calls it " 'uncensorable' Freedom Phone app store"

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/07/the-maga-targeted-freedom-phone-has-a-breathtaking-amount-of-red-flags/

As pointed out by XDA's Mishaal Rahman on Twitter, the phone's "PatriApp" Store appears to be no more than a rebranded Aurora Store, an open source client for the Play Store.

As far as getting "censored" apps onto the Freedom Phone, the plan seems to be to preload them. The phone ships with apps for right-wing outlets and services like Newsmax, OANN, Parler, and Rumble.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

The "Freedom Phone" seems to me like either an elaborate joke or a grift.

I feel inclined to point out that ACRA, the crash reporter he mentioned, is a libre crash reporter that is commonly used in libre Android applications including the F-Droid client itself, generally in an opt-in manner and using a local email client instead of making a call to an external http server. Its presence isn't necessarily an indicator of evil although since they do not publish the source code for this Signal fork, it isn't clear (pun intended) how ACRA is being used here. Note that they aren't obligated to publish the source code to the public, but they are required to provide attribution and a written offer for the source code to anyone who obtains the binary. None of that is present in the download page or in the screenshots provided although it may be hidden somewhere in the app itself, but I don't feel inclined to look for it personally.