Comment by nbzso
4 years ago
Since Snowden I use my phone in minimalistic way. Phone calls. Minimal texting. No games. Banking apps if necessary.
Treat your phones as an enemy. Use real computers with VPN and software like Little Snitch when online. Use cameras for photography and video.
The benefits of this approach are immense. I have long attention span. I don't have fear of missing out.
If governments wan't the future to be painted by tracing and surveillance mediated towards people trough big tech - lets make it mandatory by law. And since big tech will reap benefits from the big data they must provide phones for free. :)
>Treat your phones as an enemy. Use real computers with VPN and software like Little Snitch when online.
I'm assuming your "real computer" is a mac (since little snitch is mac only). What makes you think apple won't do the same for macos? Also, while you have greater control with a "real computer", you also have less privacy from the apps themselves, since they're unsandboxed and have full access to your system.
They said "_software like_ Little Snitch"... Don't assume.
I get that, but on the other hand if someone says "if you care about privacy, you should use an e2e messenger like whatsapp", then I'll have serious doubts about whether you're actually knowledgeable or just spouting buzzwords.
Not the right logic here. Check your idea more seriously. Mac os is just an example.
Your advice might be sound with the proper operating system choice, but the fact that you made such a glaring error in your initial comment makes it hard to take you seriously. It also brings into question whether you actually have a good understanding of privacy/security, or are just LARPing.
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> Since Snowden I use my phone in minimalistic way.
Dude, you carry it around with you, with its radio enabled. You're just fooling yourself.
Yes, I am a dumb person obviously. Thanks for your invaluable input. Dude. But my use case is not to hide or remove digital exhaust. Creating habit of limited usage is more important and realistic. Funny part is that as a side-effect I don't cary my smartphone around so much. I have separate GPS system in my cars and dumb phone for emergency.
If you're treating your phone as hostile why would you skip gaming apps but use banking ones? That seems backwards if you're assuming your mobile is the weak point.
In the EU the PSD2 directive obliged banks to provide strong authentication for customers login process and various operations on the account incl. payments ofc. Most of the time mobile applications are being used in the result - for either login confirm or as software OTP generators (biometric verification is also supported); the lists of printed codes are rather obsolete now and some banks may actually charge your extra for sending you text messages with such codes. I know there are hardware security tokens but in all these years I haven't seen anyone using such here.
So, it's rather hard to avoid banking apps.
Also, the PSD2 directive implements the duty of providing API infrastructure for third-parties. [1]
https://www.ecb.europa.eu/paym/intro/mip-online/2018/html/18...
There still exist banks that provide you with an RSA token. If a bank does not give you the option, how can one (sorry) "of the right segment" have business with it? You look at the service provider, you see all kinds of bad signals, you hire it anyway: this is a big part of what is destroying us!
Restraining myself to write something very strong about phone security and general user expectancy and duly expectancy (low) - let us stress again the legal side: how do you prove to a bank that, in case of theft from the account, your device was safe? People who see their money stolen then have controversies with the bank about responsibility.
BTW: PSD2 has been, in many parts, a huge nightmare. Furthermore, healthy parts of it for some reason have not been implemented.
Actually we are the weak point. The phone stuff is just unregulated capitalism.
Sure, but that still leaves the question of why mobile banking and not mobile games w/ pc banking.
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