Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

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Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
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If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
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Without a Trace: How to Keep Your Phone Off the Grid (themarkup.org)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

17 comments fedilink hide all child comments

We answer the questions readers asked in response to our guide to anonymizing your phone

About the LevelUp series: At The Markup, we’re committed to doing everything we can to protect our readers from digital harm, write about the processes we develop, and share our work. We’re constantly working on improving digital security, respecting reader privacy, creating ethical and responsible user experiences, and making sure our site and tools are accessible.

This is a follow-up article. Here's the first piece, if you'd like to read that one as well

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

I have often wondered if you can take an android phone, drill and rip out all the sensors and radio transmitters, and use wired Ethernet through a VPN router and still be able to use just banking apps as that seems to be one thing I keep a proprietary phone around for.

Edit: I forgot the speaker and the mic though the mic could be classed as a sensor

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (2 children)

you're still traceable because every phone CPU is directly associated with it's IMEI. Although that's probably not an issue for you since you're planning on using banking apps anyway.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

But is that a problem for the threat model of banking as your bank logs everything you're doing and will gladly share that with the government anyway. My question is is there any other possible data they could gather besides the VPN server's IP address and what I'm doing with my bank?

[–] [email protected] -1 points 11 months ago

You can change IMEI at will. IMEI doesn't do shit.