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this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2024
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DeGoogle Yourself
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Don't buy a phone on collateral credit (like from a cell provider that "gives" you a phone with service). If you must, ebay a phone and use paypal.
If you can't afford a $1200 phone by paying for it in "cash", you need to aim lower.
I must say Paypal shares customer data with over 600 corporations among other scummy things, so I boycott them. I also boycott eBay because the javascript required to use their website port sniffs your LAN and feeds that back to them, apart from other evils.
But most importantly, I’m not necessarily worried that I would personally get burnt by this. But just like my unwillingness to buy an Intel CPU with a management engine (or AMD’s flavor of this), I am unwilling to buy a product that was designed to work against me. I do not want to finance anti-consumer suppliers. ATM I don’t know how to check whether my version of AOS has this “feature”.
(BTW, I’m not the OP; I just linked their post here)
Sniffs your local pc to look for remote desktop and vnc ports on it. I can see this being useful in finding RAT risks, but the portscan thing is something the browser should be blocking or sandboxing.
As for PayPal, well, your cc / bank also shares lots of data.
If your threat modelling is that severe, your best bet is Tor Craigslist, a couple blokes packing heat and a briefcase of money in a place with no parking lot surveillance.
But then at that point security and safety is on you and your mates to implement.
Paypal is not a bank. Paypal is an additional MitM. Using Paypal adds another surveillance capitalist to the chain along with your bank and credit network. But indeed, the banks and credit cards are shit so I am fighting the war on cash quite hard. I’ve already been dragged into court for insisting on paying a creditor in cash. I won that case and will continue insisting on cash payments.
My threat model simply includes mass surveillance. Which is in the threat model of everyone who understands and embraces privacy. It’s worth noting that it’s not purely and infosec stance. I also object to feeding a supplier who is acting against me. The moment I detect that a supplier is working against me, I walk on ethical grounds. They have failed to earn my business. The snooping just happens to be the manner in which they are working against me.
I was doing that at one time but something pushed me off. I don’t recall what.. whether it was SMS verify or CAPTCHAs or phone numbers or fussy email address verifiers... something drove me off.
Can't help you there. Buying stuff isn't anonymous, even brick and mortar stores have cloud surveillance cams now.
Most of my shopping is done at street markets. When a big parking is filled with vans and portable tables on a weekly basis, there is no surveillance. But if I need something very particular then the cash option gets threatened. E.g. I would like to have a Flipper Zero but these are never at street markets and not even on any shelves anywhere.
I have a Flipper Zero (and case and the extra components) that I'll 99.99% likely never use. I'd love to get cash for it but I'd be asking twice what it's worth because I like having it on 'what if' grounds.
But I feel you, it's unfortunate about the state of things. The EU just banned privacy coins. US is soon coming I'm sure. They won't allow people to legally use them after the release of a central bank coin.