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Ask Slashdot: How To Safely Use Older Android Phones?
An anonymous reader writes: Like many people reading this site, I have several older phones around as well as my newest, fanciest one; I have a minimal service plan on one of these (my next-to-most-recent), and no service plan (only WI-Fi, as available) on the others. Most of them have some reason or other that I like them, so even without service I've kept them around to act as micro-tablets. Some have a better in-built camera than my current phone, despite being older; some are nice on occasion for being small and pocketable; I like to use one as a GPS in the car without dedicating my phone to that purpose; I can let my young relatives use an older one as a camera, etc. Besides, some people have only one phone at all, and can't reasonably afford a new one -- and that probably means a phone that's not cutting edge. So: in light of the several recent Android vulnerabilities that have come to light, and no reason to think they're the last of these, what's a smart way to use older Android phones? Is CyanoGen Mod any less vulnerable? Should I be worried that old personally identifying information from online transactions is still hanging around somewhere in the phone's recesses? I don't want to toss still-useful hardware, but I know I won't be getting any OS upgrades to 3-year-old phones. How do you use older phones that are not going to get OTA updates to address every security issue?
hopefully some clever x-google employee or a current google employee will so do some work on the side at home and build a customized debian or slackware port that is easily installed in any android device, most are locked down so this cant happen but i bet somebody has the key to unlocking these android phones that have so far been uncrackable at the firmware/hardware level
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
An insecure old phone for rural Africa, where the first application is probably online banking, is not that desirable. Dumb phones are probably more secure and sufficiently poor people are willing to repair them.
Well, millions of discarded smartphones would be ideal too, with people willing to do a LCD replacement job, battery job, soldering a connector etc. but the OS sticks out as the main issue, like that 233MHz iMac I put back in the junk after I failed to boot a linux installer (perhaps something could be done but I didn't know better)
Actually, the security issues have been vastly over-stated by click-bait driven media. Ever notice how we don't see stories about vast Android bot-nets or millions of people being the victims of exploits? The only successful malware relies on the user enabling installations from other sources and ignoring all the warnings, and even then on any 4.x version the OS will scan the app for known vulnerabilities.
The OP unfortunately doesn't say what version he is running, but my advice would be to install Cyanogen if available (simply to get the latest possible features and minimal bloatware) and not worry about it. If the OP is really paranoid there are anti-virus products for Android, but they are not really necessary.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
An ipod touch costs 3-4 times as much as a non- contract cheap Android phone for Virgin or Boost or whomever that you never activate. The Android phone also has an SD slot, and you can even skip registering it with Google and sideload or use the Amazon app store if you like. The lonely little niche in the store with the ipod display is an "are you kidding?" deal. Apple probably pays the stores for wasting the space.
My first mobile device was a 32g iPod touch. I would NEVER do that again.
It's not just possible, it's easy. It does, however, cost a little bit. You'd need to have the system and the user data area on separate flash devices, so that you could use the hardware write protection on the device. Android already sees these as separate things, even when they're just separate partitions of the same flash, so there's little to no software work to be done there.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"