The thing is, even if you would not need to link your identity to your sim card, it would still be trivial to identify who you are if you use your phone like a normal human. Thanks to cell towers.
But yes this is just an excuse and does not stop much crime. If you want to break into a bank or hurt someone just leave your phone at home and you already circumvented this measure.
It’s even simpler than that; you probably pay for your SIM credit online / with a card, which is much easier to tie to a person than using cell towers for tracking.
It seems like a dystopian system, that we litterely can not hide from our governments without turning off our smartphones
That’s basically it.
However SIM cards that aren’t tied to people usually ends up scenarios like the US have where SIM swap attacks are common and you’ve a LOT of identity fraud. Note that we’ve an increasing number of services sending information and validation codes via SMS like banking apps and whatnot and you don’t secure the SIMs anyone will be able to get a replacement SIM because “I got my phone stolen” and you’ll have zero security.
I recently heard the episode of darknet diaries about it. I would think a simple PIN-Code that is mandatory would solve this issue? Or a letter send to the owner of the SIM?
Both solutions would make it safer, but not impossible to get around. Someone can get the PIN Code in some more analog (getting the paper with the PIN) or digital way (interception with physical access to a phone) and getting into the persons mailbox.
Even if those attacks wouldn’t happen there’s always the chance of something more complex like calling the carrier support and saying you’ve change your address and then a week later ask for a new SIM. It can go wrong very quickly, asking for a govt ID is the easy way to solve it all.
To be fair we can have a better solution, we simply force the fucktards that run banks and other places who send SMS codes to use a simple 2FA method without bullshit apps, just provide a QR code and live with it.
I think it’s actually the other way around. BECAUSE phone numbers are linked to our accounts and identities, it makes us vulnerable to SIM swapping. They should only be used for calling and texting people, nothing more. But nowadays we need to link our personal details to them, our accounts, which introduces this vulnerability because then it creates this incentive for an attack
If you live in a country where carriers are required to identify phone numbers and do identity checks for SIM swaps they’ll never, ever, allow someone to get a SIM with your number without providing valid govt ID. That’s why it solves the issue and its safe. Just look at the numbers / stats and you’ll find that the SIM swapping attacks happen on countries where no identification is required.
Honestly, it would just be nice if someone made a mobile computing device that wasn’t phone-capable at all. It is outdated functionality to have just one or two services use a totally separate protocol from everything else.
The ones I had which allow mobile data connections also allow use as a phone. Not to mention that most tablets are the wrong size to carry them around all the time.
I doubt most of the companies tracking people with their phone even bother trying to get at that data since finding your identity is so easy when there is some tracking in almost every app.
Regarding your question: Firefox Sync is end to end encrypted, so you don’t have to worry about it. It’s far better than Google’s browser sync, as it’s encrypted at all (only in transit, but this is standard and it means that Google can still see all of your data)
Since your post is in the privacy community, I have to say that I would never ever use any softwares from Microsoft for my own projects, not even open sourced and self-hosted ones. Everyone knows that Microsoft love to collect data and so do Google too, and Clarity uses Google Analytics.
Google Analytics is banned in some countries here in EU only because of the violation of ones privacy.
Apple gets your voice recordings which for various privacy laws they can’t resell. “Yay wiretap laws from the 50s”
As for typing, a quick search, apple support claims that the keyboard cache is only used for autocorrect purposes. How often you use a word and how you like to spell it.
Having it function as a keylogger would give them a headache, from data use, battery life, hackers exploiting it, etc.
And of course the warnings seem targeted at third party keyboards who can add on extra feature beyond IOS barebones.
Would have been better to run the script that edits posts, just to fuck with the data.
China and Facebook would probably buy it for their own profile databases on every person on the planet.
Chances of that though are unlikely. Both are more worried about short term things. For China spotting dissent and trends on the fly. For Facebook selling ads more accurately.
My Microsoft 365 subscription is expiring and will not be renewed thanks to you lovely people getting me on the Proton family of software and obsidian for note taking.
I mean… Why would you ditch a service you evidently NEED just because some stranger on the internet told you so?
That said, there’s plenty of offline programs that can work on .dock files, such as OnlyOffice and LIbreoffice (with varying degrees of compatibility with existing files). Good luck!
While I have little respect for Apple’s overall privacy practices, this sounds a lot like the CCP making something up to scare protesters and dissidents from using AirDrop. There’s no sensible reason they would be advertising such an exploit openly, especially when it could potentially be used to secretly spy on dissidents, protesters, or even used in foreign espionage. Something doesn’t sit right with this.
Well if Apple doesn’t fix it, like they haven’t fixed the iMessage flaws) they’ve known about for years, then it’s still useful.
And most people won’t even know of this issue, and they’d still use Airdrop anyway, saying “I’m not interesting enough to spy on”.
iMessage lacks forward secrecy, so if I get your RSA key which never changes, I can read all your old messages and any new ones too. And that’s just one issue with iMessage. And people don’t know about it, and still use it, thinking it’s secure. (it’s pretty good in my opinion, just wish Apple would fix the issues linked article).
All companies that have to pay for infrastructure, servers, employees and invoices naturally need income, as is logical and legitimate. Some use contextual ads, that is, tool ads on a DIY page. This may be annoying, but it does not put privacy at risk, but if it does, when the ads are based on the user’s history and data (surveillance advertising), this is what is massively used by US companies.
That there are other models to create income, for example what Proton does, with its Freemium services. The free Proton products (all of which are OpenSource, by the way), naturally have limited functions, but they do not require trafficking in user data, because they are financed through Premium services.
Andisearch, the first search engine on the market that used AI with its own language model, is strictly anonymous, no tracking or logging with sandboxed results, it is 100% free and private, for the future they plan to create a premium model for companies with specific functions for collaboration and special business functionalities, to finance the free version.
Vivaldi in new installations offers a selection of search engines (DDG, Ecosia, Startpage, etc.) and bookmarks, which pay a commission when the user uses them, if not, no, they are free to delete them, apart from a store with merch, upon insistence. from the users themselves sometime ago they also accept donations, probably also receive commissions from VAG, Mercedes, Polestar and Renault to include Vivaldi Automotive in their vehicles. All without trafficking in user data and without external investors so as not to lose independence, the mistake that Mozillla made when accepting Google as an investor. This is independent of having Google as the default search engine, since Google pays Mozilla and finances them, whether the user searches with Google or not.
It’s the surveillance policy, selling user data, which is the risk and will destroy the free internet if we don’t avoid it The ethics of a company respect to the user is the most important feature today, something that the big US companies don’t have.
I used to listen Michael Bezzel who is the owner of inteltechniques.com . Really nice and educational podcast but he is on a break atm. Check the website you will find bery useful information about privacy.
As long as Mozilla has a contract with Google, it will continue to share data with Alphabet Inc. Firefox or forks are OK, but only if you use it without the sync function, or use another provider that doesn’t share the data with others. Although Mozilla encrypts the synced data, the necessary account data is shared and used by Google to track those.
Are you saying Firefox shares data to Alphabet beyond Google as the default search engine? If so and if it applies to Sync (as if the question from OP here) can you please share sources for that?
Firefox don’t share data, well, if you don’t use the default Google search, but Mozilla does, sharing your account data. I hope that they finish the contract with Google, as they said, this Year.
Mozilla pays for a premium subscription to Google Analytics, which allows them to opt out of data usage by Google. So, obviously Google still aggregates the data, but only for providing reports to Mozilla. Google may not use the data for their own user analysis/tracking, as they would do without the premium subscription. Otherwise, Google would be in breach of contract, which would be an easy lawsuit with high punishment for Google.
I’m not disputing the results, but this appears to be checking calls made by Firefox’s website (www.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox/) and not Firefox, the web browser application. Just because an application’s website uses Google Analytics does not mean that the application shares user data with Google.
What do you think what googleanalytics and googletagmanager do and who logs this datas? Only Mozilla? And yes, as said before, Firefox is OK, but not so with an Mozilla account, with which Google said “come to Daddy”. I hope that Mozilla, as promised, can end this year the contract with Google.
The analytics trackers that you mentioned would fall under Mozilla’s Websites Privacy Policy, which does state that it uses Google Analytics and can be easily verified a number of ways such as the services you previously listed.
However, Firefox sync uses accounts.firefox.com which has its own Privacy Policy. There is some confusion around “Firefox Accounts” as it was rebranded to “Mozilla Accounts”, which again has its own Privacy Policy. There is no indication that data covered by those policies are shared with Google. If Google Analytics trackers on Mozilla’s website are still a concern for these services, you can verify that the Firefox Accounts and Mozilla Accounts URLs do not contain any Google Analytics trackers.
Firefox has a Privacy Policy as well. Firefox’s Privacy Policy has sections for both Mozilla Accounts and Sync. Neither of which indicate that data is shared with Google. Additionally, the data stored via the Sync service is encrypted. However, there is some telemetry data that Mozilla collects regarding Sync and more information about it can be found on Mozilla’s documentation about telemetry for Sync.
The only thing that I could find about Firefox, Sync, or Firefox Accounts/Mozilla Accounts sharing data with Google was for location services within Firefox. While it would be nice for Firefox not to use Google’s geolocation services, it is a reasonable concession and can be disabled.
Mozilla is most definitely not a perfect company, even when it comes to privacy. Even Firefox has been caught with some privacy issues relatively recently with the unique installation ID.
Again, I’m not saying that Mozilla is doing nothing wrong. I am saying that your “evidence” that Mozilla is sharing Firefox, Sync, or Firefox Accounts/Mozilla Accounts data with Google because of Google Analytics trackers on some of Mozilla’s websites is coincidental at best. Without additional evidence, it is misleading or flat out wrong.
Don’t get me wrong, Mozilla does a lot for user privacy and is certainly one of the most reliable alternatives for a user among the existing browsers. I’m just seeing that Mozilla has unfortunately made a contract with the Devil that prevents it from having the full freedom of protection that it would like. Mozilla deserves the independence of this company, which, at the moment, it does not have, which is why I said that I wish it could end this contract.
I use several browsers, but the list of existing ones with certain capabilities and functionalities is getting small.
Edge is technically a good browser, but certainly not recommended for those who appreciate privacy,
Chrome users could ask Google to write their resume directly,
Opera is perhaps the worst, using trackers that distribute your data to half the internet,
Safari It is not much better either and it is also becoming the new IE with its desire to stay with an engine that is becoming obsolete,
Brave is unreliable due to its business with shady crypto companies and the intentional redirections to them and excluding investors from the protections against trackers, Facebook among them,
Otter is an alternative, but fighting for its survival, which makes it not very reliable in the long term,
the same with some Gecko and Chromium marginal forks, which either lack sufficient equipment for sufficient maintenance, They are directly outdated or lack a consistent support community, - Mullvad browser is very private, yes, but it completely lacks the minimum functions for customization or modification, practically a Firefox left in its bones with 4 sections in the settings.
SSuite Netsurf, very fast and beautiful, but not very configurable, it does not even allow you to change the Groot search engine, which on the other hand is good and private, it also does not have extensions, only an Adblocker that it incorporates and it is also only for Windows, the only plus its extraordinary speed and that it works even on very old Windows (>XP) with few resources.
Well, there’s not much left, Firefox, Vivaldi, maybe Otter (if you want speed) and Mullvad, to choose from. The big companies are really destroying a free internet in their greed to control everything and using the user as raw material and merchandise for this. Tough times if we don’t manage to stop them. More than 70 browsers have already fallen by the wayside, discontinued and abandoned in this “browser war”
Are you saying Firefox shares data to Alphabet beyond Google as the default search engine? If so and if it applies to Sync (as if the question from OP here) can you please share sources for that?
You stated:
Mozilla does, sharing your account data
You also provided evidence that Mozilla uses Google Analytics trackers on the Firefox’s product information website. I mentioned that it’s not sufficient evidence of your claim as the trackers are independent of Firefox the browser and Sync. Additionally, the use of trackers for websites is clearly identified on Mozilla’s Privacy Policies and there is not much else mentioned on the Privacy Policies outside of those trackers and Google’s geolocation services in Firefox.
You’ve also mentioned Google’s contract with Mozilla, which is controversial for many people, but isn’t evidence of Mozilla providing user data to Google even in conjunction with the previously mentioned trackers. You then discussed various other browsers, but I’m not sure how that is relevant to your initial claim.
While it seems we can both agree that Mozilla and it’s products are far from perfect, it is looking like your initial claim was baseless as you have yet to provide any evidence of your initial claim. Do you have any evidence through things like code reviews or packet inspections of Firefox or Sync that hints Mozilla is sharing additional information to Google? At this point, I would even accept a user(s) providing evidence of some weird behavior like the recent issue where google.com wouldn’t load in Firefox on Android if someone could find a way to connect the weird behavior to Mozilla sharing data with Google.
Indeed, thanks for the mention because I wanted to go back on this. I wouldn’t quality any of this as evidence of Sync sharing usage data. Everything else is still correct, i.e defaulting to Google as search engine, some analytics, etc but it’s still unrelated to Sync. I don’t see how other browsers are relevant. It looks like they and OP are trying to show that Mozilla is not perfect, that they make money and share some private data and thus assume that any data used on any Mozilla product is shared with 3rd parties, including Alphabet, without providing any evidence for that. I’m not sure arguing more will help.
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