Question about phones: Am I overreacting? (linux.community)

submitted 11 months ago by vestmoria@linux.community to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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I don't like so called smartphones (flashy devices to mine your data and other reasons) but my regular no touchscreen phone's microphone is no longer working as it should, making conversations difficult.

Enter a smartphone I received as a present, my phobia (for lack of a better word) to smartphones and my (misguided?) obsession with privacy: I don't want to use this smartphone as my default phone because I'm scared the carrier, ISP or google are going to mine my data and trace my calls.

Which might be an overreaction, because each time I use my regular cell phone, the carrier knows when I'm calling from, who I'm calling and how long the call lasts.

So I ask you: how much more data would I be leaking if I use my new smartphone for calls only, compared to a regular, no touchscreen phone?

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[-] floofloof@lemmy.ca 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

With a regular phone they can also fairly accurately tell where you are, and read your texts. The main difference is the information goes to the carrier but not straight to Google or Apple.

[-] BearOfaTime@lemm.ee 2 points 11 months ago

They can do so with a smartphone too, they both use the same cellular network, so same voice calls, same plain-text text messages (SMS is a feature of the cellular network management, messages are injected into the cell management frames).

Even worse, smartphones use AGPS, so download from AGPS servers (providing another point of location data) and using that ephemeris data to improve location update times.

this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2023

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