Comment by seviu

10 hours ago

One of my best friend has a Jolla phone.

He never had WhatsApp. He refuses to use google. Only till recently he started using signal. He has been using an old Nokia phone till he was forced to upgrade by his operator. He is European and here in Europe WhatsApp dominates. Despite all that and having a very social life, driven by work, he manages.

I recently ordered a Jolla phone. I don’t want to know about android. I might tolerate iOS. But shelling thousands of $ for a phone that is controlled by an external company…

I am looking out for messaging alternatives. I am at a point where I think linking your identity to a phone number is not right either.

Let’s say we should all wake the fuck up. This is not right. Having a phone with such spyware is a potential attack vector I don’t want to have on the most important device I own.

It's all good until your European bank starts requiring unrooted Android and iOS for their mobile banking app, then tries to force you to use that app instead of letting you sort things out at their building. Then the government starts requiring you use unrooted Android or iOS to sign into their website for administrative tasks, and so on.

  • The endgame is that I will keep a phone in a drawer next to a 20 yo hardware token I still use to access a bank. When on the move, we will see.

  • If that ever happens (what am I saying we all know it’s happening). Then just a phone in the drawer I use it just for such administrative tasks.

    • Right, until you have to use a mobile app to pay for parking or validate your bus/train ticket and so on. Yeah, "I can use my physical card", for now. Long-term we need a better solution than keeping an extra up-to-date phone.