@
Debacle #
librem looks interesting for more trustworthy phone hardware. Related: I have also seen #
purism for trustworthy, open PC hardware.
I trust my phone hardware (on its own) to leak orders of magnitude less private info compared the OS and apps running thereon - although you're right, it's still a risk; data about what I do is available to my phone network, and from there to law enforcement, government and anywhere else it might unintentionally escape. I don't have the kind of threat model which means I need to go all-out with the tinfoil hat though
When running #
LineageOS and apps from #
F-Droid (especially #
Blokada) I expect some of my data is leaking via apps/OS, but much less than a bog-standard vendor-installed Android and apps installed at random from the Play Store. I installed #
OpenGAPPS so alas I have Google's tentacles in my phone at the moment - but I now know about
Yalp Store for the few apps I need that are only available via Google's store so I'll change that in future.
To my mind it's a trade-off; I (like a lot of people) like the features and convenience I get from my smartphone, but I dislike the loss of privacy that comes with it. I've made some changes to tip the balance to a level I'm more comfortable with, and am always on the lookout for ways to improve that further.
I'm also a Linux geek, by inclination and profession. I've seen some attempts to bring Linux to mobiles, but without much apparent success so far. Maybe one day there'll be an ecosystem there that's feature-rich enough for me to jump into - I live in hope, if not expectation.
