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Are There Any Smartphones That Respect Privacy?
An anonymous reader writes "After many years I am finally considering entering the smartphone era. Within the mainstream, there seem to be four OS choices: Windows, Android, Blackberry, or iOS: Android comes out as clear winner to me. However, all of the choices in one way or another require sharing a lot of personal information in the Cloud run by their respective corporations. Let alone Blackberry's centralized mail servers; there is no way to have an Android smartphone working decently without sharing all of your contacts, calendar appointments, and other stuff with Google. While Android is less intrusive than iOS, the lack of privacy remains quite annoying no matter how comfortable it is to have your own calendar and contacts centralized. In 2011 is there any option, other than living in a cave, to keep one's own life private while enjoying the wonders of modern smartphone apps?"
I seriously doubt that, since it has a locked-down app store and sandboxed applications (fairly restricted API's, no native code.) It should be at least as secure as iPhone OS, if not more so.
Either fill in the [citation needed] or you're just spouting very tired 10-year-old anti-MS FUD; which quite frankly is a boring topic these days.
At least do enough research to tell us what security holes Windows Phone 7 suffers from, or tell us from which tank of thin air you pulled the statistic "2 people in north america" from.
John
Sure it is a dead OS, but it's got a few years of support (Four solid years if you believe Nokia and Accenture). You can get a brand new unlocked Symbian^3 smartphone for less than $400: http://www.amazon.com/Nokia-Touchscreen-Featuring-Navigation-Camera--U-S/dp/B003ZX7RL4/ The N8 has a great camera, better than almost any other smartphone out there, an FM receiver as well as transmitter, USB on the go, and a micro HDMI out port. You can install and run whatever apps you like. you can tether it out of the box as-is via USB or bluetooth. sure some third-party apps want to call home, but the phone warns you when they do, and it's easy to disallow/disable.
Bullshit. Android's malware issue is there only due to Google doing a lousy job removing harmful apps from the market. Would Microsoft do an equally shitty job if they had a bigger market share? No one knows, but it seems unlikely as their terms are far stricter. Their app store just reached 40,000 apps, though. That's pretty good for a platform with supposedly no users, of which many seem fairly happy with their phones.
The problem is that most of the uneducated masses don't care about privacy and don't see a need for it. So they go for the number of Apps or GHz when purchasing a new mobile device, without caring that this device is a fully functional computer with all sorts of sensors that is connected to some sort of network 24/7!
There were a few attempts at true Linux mobile devices, but even the last two devices with potential (the Nokia N900 in 2009 and N9 this year) only got a lukewarm reception mostly due to crappy marketing and not enough people promoting truly open platforms that let users know what their devices are actually doing in the background.
The N9 is still up for graps. There is even an independent project called Mer being worked at that aims to be fully open, based on Meego, feel free to join if you have some coding skills.
Let alone Blackberry's centralized mail servers; there is no way to have an Android smartphone working decently without sharing all of your contacts, calendar appointments, and other stuff with Google.
You have got only partial information somewhere.
You can have pure Android smartphone, without any demands to share your privacy with Google. Period.
If you want to use Android market (market.android.com) then you need to activate your new phone first time to it. It does not mean you need to input your personal email address to it or bond your personal gmail to it. You only need to create a one for your Android market store profile.
You do not need to use other Google services at all.
- Not GMail for email, you can choose what ever just offers POP3/IMAP connection
- Not Google Calender, you can stick what ever just gives standard vcard sharing, even sync manually
- Not Google Contacts (GMail contacts), you can disallow the syncing contacts with Android profile account and keep them in phone only or in SIM card. You can even from contact book sync them with standard vcard to microSD and sync manually.
You don't either need youtube account or anything. Actually you don't even need a Android Market profile if you are willing to get your applications somewhere else than Android Market. Like Amazon store or any other third party who you can trust.
Android Market just makes it easy to install applications (via phone or any browser) to your phones and especially buy them (even that Google changed 24h return time to 15 minutes).
Corporations can at one step totally skip whole Android activation with Google. They can activate the phone to their own exchange environment (I could thing same thing would be possible to do with Linux servers).
So corporation IT department can manage the phone without Google knowing anything at all.
I have used GMail from the beginning when it was just in invitation mode.
I bought my first Android phone 9 months ago, it is a very cheap one (107€ with 2€/month for unlimited data speed and amount and the phone supports 7.2Mbits connection and nearly full speed (750-800KB/s) as hot-spot for computers with ping being 70-90 by avarage.
Before that I owned only a Nokia phones. Symbian before Symbian was terrible, I never used it for any things, even it was classified as smartphone (without touchscreen).
And now, I use Google services very much. Why? Because they integrate very well with the Android and I can really get many benefits from it.
If wanted, I could have kept contacts off from GMail or my calender off from there. But I don't have a home server what to keep online all the time or I don't want to start syncing contacts and other data with my own rented server.
If I would have home server, I would really use it for every thing what Android support.
Did you know that Microsoft has paid to at least one carrier in US to sell Android phones, on what every Google service is replaced with Microsoft own services and user can not install Google services back?
So customer is tied to Microsoft Bing search, Bing maps, Hotmail, Calender etc?
People believe that Android forces customer to Google. That simply ain't true. It is just the easiest and actually most secure way to use smartphone.
Google search .....
Picasa
Google Calender
Google Reader
Youtube
GMail
Google Docs
Google Maps
Google offers so many features and none of those need to even be used with your private contacts, emails, etc. You can just disable the sync or add a new offline account for those in phone.
When it comes to privacy, easiness and many other features. Android just is best, and not even Microsoft have nothing to offer in Windows Phone (7.5 yet... lets see what future shows us).
I'd put it at a medium level of difficulty. I run a personal Exchange server and am able to share appointments and schedules with my wife and access my calendar from my tablet, phone and computer, all without having to rely on someone else or about my privacy. And once set up, it just runs.
Note: I don't use it to send or receive external e-mail, I only use the calendaring service.
If thou see a fair woman pay court to her, for thus thou wilt obtain love
Google's business model is collecting and selling information.
Not true. Google's business model is collecting users and selling some advertising. They do not sell personal information, and there is no way for advertisers to get access to your anonymised profile. Wired said:
"For most of its existence, Google has largely decided that what you do on its properties -- such as search and Gmail -- will not be used for its ad program, which shows banner ads on third-party websites. That program uses tracking cookies on more than a million sites to create an anonymous profile of you in order to show you more targeted ads (click here to see your profile). By contrast, the ads you see in Gmail and in Google Search are targeted by the search terms you use, or the words in recent e-mails.
To date, the only Google site that feeds into the marketing profile is YouTube. Google has long emphasised that it won't use your search history to create targeted ads and that they use different cookies so the marketing cookie can't be matched with your Google user profile cookie -- despite the temptation of untold advertising riches for the taking by combining and mining such a rich vein of data."
You can easily use a 3rd party calendar app.
I also just discovered Permission Denied this morning. It (theoretically) revokes specific permissions from already installed apps. Handy for when you want an app that asks for location permission and such but you know it doesn't actually need it. Whether or not it actually does what it says it does, I don't know...
Yes, if one wants secure communications at a consumer price point, then Blackberry is really the only true choice. At the bottom of the list would be anything made by Apple, which- when caught not only collecting personal customer information and all sorts of personal data, without permission or disclosure and stored for years- blatantly stated that they intended to continue doing so, but now with the caveat that they will "only retain it for a year".
"The controversy surrounding Apple’s location-tracking stems from a discovery by two data scientists, who found that a file stored on iPhones and iPads (“consolidated.db”) contains a detailed history of geodata accompanied with time stamps.
From Wired - iPhone’s Location-Data Collection Can’t Be Turned Off - Brian X. Chen April 25, 2011
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/04/iphone-location-opt-out/
"Apple claimed in its letter last year that the geodata is stored on the device, then anonymized and transmitted back to Apple every 12 hours, using a secure Wi-Fi connection (if one is available). Although it’s thorough, Apple’s explanation does not address why the stored geodata continues to live on the device permanently after it’s transmitted to Apple, nor does it address why geodata collection appears to persist even when Location Services is turned off. Google does similar geodata collection for its own location-services database. However, it notifies Android users clearly in a prompt when geodata collection will occur, and it also gives users a way to opt out. Also, Android devices do not permanently store geodata after transmitting it to Google."
"While the collected geodata doesn’t reveal specific addresses for locations you’ve visited, it can still leave a pretty rich trail of a user’s movements. Combine this data with other pieces of information on the iPhone, like your messages and photos, and you’ve got a device that knows more about you than you do yourself, says The Atlantic’s Alexis Madrigal. Madrigal tested an iPhone forensics program called Lantern, which stitches together contacts, text messages and geodata into a neat interface that reconstructed a timeline of his life."
“Immediately after trying out Lantern, I enabled the iPhone’s passcode and set it to erase all data on the phone,” Madrigal said. “This thing remembers more about where I’ve been and what I’ve said than I do, and I’m damn sure I don’t want it falling into anyone’s hands.”
Of course they sell information. It may be anonymous but it is still your information. Claiming otherwise is not truthful.
You should probably post all of the context of that info as you seem to have cherry picked the ones that put things in the best light.
All arguments aside, Google's primary business is information. They make money from selling it. Trying to claim otherwise is disingenuous.
Sorry to go off-topic, but "single observers" have been able to piece together the full history of your walk since man started walking. It's called "following someone". I don't see how CCTV is any different.
FIrst of all - RIM ("Blackberry") are not running "centralized mail servers". They only connect your smartphone with your IMAP mailbox (say: your existing email account) and do the HTTP-push and wireless part. Their core business was (and probably still is) some sort of middleware between companies' email and calendar servers and employees PDAs and phones. Secondarily: Any smartphone that provides a regular IMAP client or lets you install one will perfectly meet your needs. Almost any smartphone will do. You'll just connect to your actual mailbox via SMTP through the internet, as you do now. No Google involved (unless you are using Gmail). My girlfriends stone-aged Motorola can do this out-of-the-box and so does my Blackberry (I use a BB, but not RIMs data service, just my wireless network provider's regular data plan)
Oh, the beautiful gloss of greality!
Came here expecting to see a link to this video of why RMS doesn't use cell phones: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGkNiRFwmOg. Left dissatisfied.
Stop spreading false information.
Android is possible to be configured from the beginning only to use any exchange server as well. You do not need to use any Google services or applications if you do not want to do so.
I'm afraid you're the one, that inadvertantly or otherwise, is spreading false information. Some models of Android phone will not let you even use the calendar or contacts unless you sign up with Google. One my Acer AOD255 I could not get anywhere without signing up with Google, but at least that doesn't have contacts from my SIM card to share. On my Acer Liquid Metal I found that the 2.3.5 image did indeed turn on sharing by default. It gives you the option not to sync contacts with Google but they're shared by default and there are a bunch of different options that will easily trip up even an experienced user. Background data, auto sync, then sync on each of Phone SIM and Google account.
What is worse is that import and export to SD card are broken - they put all numbers in US number format with dashes hard coded, which makes Australian numbers look wrong and is confusing for an Australian user use to dashes in different location. The stupid thing is import from SIM is not broken and does not do any such hard coding. The easiest way around it is to sync with Google and correct it there since trying to correct it in phone is awkward. When you try to delete a dash it also deletes the preceding number, so you have to delete it and re-enter that number (which is error prone and slow on a small touch screen - in fact if you have more than a handful of contacts it is unworkable). The only other way is to write an app to fix the number format. I found one that did just that but only to US number format. I also found the source but I don't have weeks to spend on a hobby project modifying someone else's code to fix a bug in the OS. So I caved and shared my data begrudgingly.
I accidentally shared my wife's data because I set her phone up while I was tired and picked the wrong option at setup (default is ticked to share data). Once done it was too late.
So yeah, please follow your own advice and stop spreading falsehood.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
for the most part. I use an iPhone, in part because the UI works for me, in part because Apple's "walled garden", while limiting, insulates me from an increasing range of malware that I would have to deal with on Android. iOS privacy issues are so far acceptable to me. Android is too open to malware, and too beholden to Google, whose business model depends on your surrendering all your personal information for their use. Blackberry seems like a sunset system, not much future to it. As for Windows, I have had so much grief with MS products over the years that I would never use one if there were any alternative. So for me, iPhone is an imperfect approximation to my ideal. YMMV.
You do understand that CyanogenMod was a recommendation rather than a requirement. You can perfectly well use your own mail server with stock Android.
(Incidentally, by "troubles" I can only assume you're referring to added features and more regular updates and improvements than you can get from a carrier for any device. And what warranty? You mean the text in the EULA for every piece of software on Earth that disclaims all warranties?)
It's the first, and the oldest smart phone OS
Enough said.
This is a Mac, what you have there is an embarrassment to your fellow computer users.
.... because running a software made by "anonymous hackers" is much more safe than original OEM version.
Except a) the hackers aren't anonymous; the guy is well known and has just taken up a job with a phone manufacturer. b) The people who write for the big companies actually are anonymous and often don't even work directly for the big companies c) most of the privacy violations we see are motivated by commercial interests which is before we even get to d) the thing about Cygenomod is that the source code is out there
c) that I mentioned above is the most important thing though. According to reviews, Windows Phone has no native contacts data store. This essentially means that you end up using Facebook (or linkedin etc) for storing data. This is a simple commercial decision which compromises the user's security in order to push forward Microsoft's partnership with Facebook and against Google+. It's very key to understand, at this point, that Microsoft's investment in Skype and Facebook tells us that the company's entire attitude to personal computing and privacy has changed. They will now do whatever they can to make up for the lost years when they allowed their own users to do more or less as they pleased.
Simply put, to have any chance of privacy at all we need something which has at most limited influence from commercial develpers and must have no influence from Microsoft.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
Have a Linux for smartphones?
Honestly, with the number of android phone cracked wide open why is there NO linux on them? OpenMoko was 90% there and all source available. Why dont we even have some "Linux for Droid" or other projects out there?
Honestly, a "Hardened" smartphone is something that many paranoid geeks would be all over, and the "uber 1337 hax0r's would wet themselves over such a thing.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Alas, it's also not in the cards short of rooting your phone.
First, Google owns AdMob, the largest mobile ad company out there. They sell in-app ads (Google knows your app usage habits bevcause of this). It's not in their interest to let you easily block it.
Second, developers for Android find that's the only way to make money - with Google Checkout/Wallet still not available everywhere an Android phone is sold, paid apps are a non-starter. Plus with ease of piracy, "freemium" is the business plan of the day for Android. If adblocking on Android becomes popular, the apps left over would be stratified between the free open-source stuff and the big companies. (It's also an issue on iOS, but people do pay for apps there - apparently even the Chinese as Apple allowed the yuan as a valid currency).
You know it's bad when RIM can easily claim that Blackberry devs make the second most amount of money after Apple.