Invasive Israeli-founded bloatware is harvesting data from Samsung users
Invasive Israeli-founded bloatware is harvesting data from Samsung users
smex.org
Invasive Israeli-founded bloatware is harvesting data from Samsung users in WANA - SMEX
21 comments
21 comments
Real question:
Anyone know which phone brands/manufactures are made 100% in China for Chinese population consumption primarily and 1) work in NA and 2) are easily set to English as the UI language?
I figure it may be better to just accept whatever possibility of backdoors Chinese intelligence may build into their electronics as opposed to western (mainly Israeli and US) intelligence backdoors.
I've seen some brand recommendations in the past but figured some of you nerds might have some knowledge on such things. My understanding is it's sometimes difficult to get the phones connected on NA (US) providers.
Maybe look into a Pixel and install GrapheneOS. It's not Chinese, but still a good compromise I think.
This is the recommended method by Richard Medhurst, specifically a Pixel because they have better hardware security (latest tech). Chinese manufacturers don't prioritize or worry about security at all, it's apparently just not a priority for them.
@Justice@lemmygrad.ml
This is what I did and I couldn't be happier - ironic that a phone made by Google can be the most privacy-respecting one out there with the right OS
I'd say try a fairphone with lineageOS degoogled. It's private & with driver support for ages edit: i havent had it but itll probably work
It's definitely better. I say all the time to libs: even if you think China will spy on you, what can they actually do to you if you live in a western country? Nothing. Even if China was as malicious as liberals think, they still can't do shit to you so long as you don't go to China. But your own government definitely can.
If you live in the US, your biggest danger is the US government and the corporations that spy on you on behalf of the US government. The same applies if you live in a country whose intelligence agencies collaborate with the US and that has extradition treaties with the US. Even if you hate China with a passion, western tech corporations and governments are objectively by far the bigger threat to you, your privacy, your data and your personal safety.
Personally I use Xiaomi. (Before that, I used Vivo. Both are Chinese companies btw) Their phones are pretty high quality despite their cheap price compared to other phones of similar quality, but they put ads in their system apps (But this can be mitigated through various means) and have a few analytics-related settings, but you can turn those off after snooping around in settings if you're concerned about privacy.
Frankly it doesn't matter where your phone is manufactured or where the company's headquarters are. Even a backdoor in your modem is not gonna infect any modern operating system. Sure they can pinpoint your location but they can do that anyway just using cell tower triangulation. If you're concerned about that, just use airplane mode as much as possible.
Use GrapheneOS on a Pixel 8 or later. The reason why it only runs on Pixels is because no other phone manufacturer meets their security standards. Get it second hand if you don't want to support Google. The reason why it should be a Pixel 8 or later is because that's when they added support for hardware memory tagging, making it exponentially more difficult for you to get infected by Pegasus and other spyware. Honestly it's probably the most powerful hardware security feature developed in the past decade.
The only other phone with support for memory tagging is the brand new iPhone 17, nothing else supports it at the moment. Sure I guess this means you could also use an iPhone as long as you enable lockdown mode on it and make sure advanced data protection is enabled on your iCloud account.
A Chinese phone won't protect you against Israeli spyware. It just isn't designed for that from a technical perspective.
I'd love to know as well, as well as which ones I'd be able to run most common apps on. Unfortunately, you're also tied into an ecosystem here. For example, I end up having to use stuff like Slack for work.