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User Expresses Privacy Concerns After Software Update Replaces Default Phone App (martinruenz.de)
An anonymous reader writes: Since I am not living in my home country, I frequently use two different SIM cards and prefer having a phone with dual-sim support. This limits your choice significantly when buying a new device and last time I bought one, I opted for the Wileyfox Swift. It was cheap, had most features I desired and shipped with CyanogenMod (Android) -- which, I thought, might indicate that Wileyfox delivers a slim, privacy-aware system. Yesterday, I was delighted to see that Wileyfox provides an update to a new version of Android (7.1.1) and I didn't hesitate long to install the upgrade. Concerns that the hardware might not hold-up to the new system showed to be unfounded and everything seemed to work just fine. But when I realised that the dialler now labelled itself as 'truecaller' -- something I had never heard of, shoot, I didn't even know the dialler is an app -- it gave rise to a bad suspicion: Is some of my phone's core functionality now provided by a 3rd-party app? Indeed. Does it respect my privacy? No. Can I uninstall it again? No. Was I ever asked to comply with their terms and conditions? Of course not. On top of this, Truecaller doesn't seem to have a clean background. Here's how an Indian daily (Truecaller seems to be popular in emerging regions) described the app: Truecaller is a popular app that shows you contact details of unknown numbers calling you. It crowdsources contact details from all its users' address books. So even if you've never used the service, your name and number could be on Truecaller's database, thanks to someone else who's saved your contact details and allowed the app to access them.
Caught the fscking dialer thing trying to connect to both Facebook and Yandex after the OS upgrade at the weekend...just as well I've a Firewall installed on the thing in default block mode (though I'll bet there's a slimeball way round that..), just as well I have other OS options which I'll be exploring this weekend.
Not happy, quite a greasy move on their part.
Facebook works by having each account defined as a hierarchical tree of information for each person; comments, photographs, links, account image. These are updated by making HTTP/HTTPS transactions to graph.facebook.com and other servers. I often find applications connecting to facebook to check for updates and goodness knows what else.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
How many times must these devices betray you before you just go back to remembering things like you used to? Every week with some new mobile phone disaster is sure getting old.
MY whole family ditched our smartphones over 2 years ago. A mobile phone IS required for select things, over the course of maybe a week each... maybe twice a year. I buy a dumb burner phone with $3.00 worth of prepaid sim card when I MUST have one, I share the number with only the contacts that must have it, and store nothing in the address book. As soon as that's over it goes in the trash. I can summon emergency services online from any internet connection.
It's just not worth it, it's to invasive, and it's always listening. It costs way to much, It's designed from the damn ground up to sell you shit you don't need, it's terribly insecure, and worst of all, it is designed to be replaced within.. what... 2 years for another $1000? GTFO.
My personal data, contacts, whereabouts, shopping habits, political affiliation, favorite color, sexual preference, and whatever else they've begun to collect over the past few years are worth so much more to me (and them) than access to some shitty app-store full info stealing novelties and shitty flash games. My privacy and personal data trumps the convenience that comes with carrying somebody else's computer in my pocket. What a fucking terrible deal, and we pay for the pleasure.
My employer don't like it, I told them I'd carry a phone if they foot the bill. Off the clock means off the clock, and on call means on call.
People look at me funny, (or just don't believe me) when I say I don't have a phone number. I look at them funny when they fall over the curb looking for fucking pokemon.
Everybody around me is so in love with the screen that all I need to do is muse out loud, "I wonder that the answer to this question is?" and everybody falls all over themselves racing to google it, to justify the $1000 shitty gaming platform in their pockets, and show off expensive status symbol. Boy. The guy who answers first sure is a cool cat.
It's pretty disturbing after a while, once you break away from the thing yourself, seeing the way mobile phones consume the people around you. Waiting rooms absolutely disgust me now, and long lines for anything are 10x more terrible than they used to be.
There was a time, not that long ago, when people actually put in the effort to learn things.
I'm rambling now. Just do yourself a favor, ditch the smart-phone, it's making you dumber.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.