Is Monero hard to buy there? Are you doing so on Haveno?

Yeah, there is a whole “separate OS”, but, to my knowledge, there hasn’t been evidence of it casually being able to collect arbitrary data from the actual phone’s OS.

My issue with that is that Pixels are expensive, and in some places are not sold officially (meaning they can only be bought from smaller resellers with usually much less generous return policies). The newest models are outright unaffordable new. The only ones below $150 are either secondhand or out of support, so that’s what poor people are left with? Plus, no headphone jack.

I use Graphene myself, but I dislike absolutism. I don’t in the slightest regret buying my Pixel even though $300 is a painful sum to spend on a phone (and it was on the cheaper end if we’re talking about up-to-date models!), but I know that my mother would never spend this much on a phone - so I look into Divest or Lineage on more common and affordable phones.

Funny how involved I was on Twitter and especially Reddit prior to summer 2023, yet barely noticed when I deleted my accounts.

I am less interested in ranking them based on what they do (because we can assume they just vacuum up everything anyway), and more in a ranking based on how easy the surveillance is to remove. Apparently for some cars the telematics module can be easily unplugged at least, losing you some non-critical functionality, but on others it may be integrated tighter.

We have several major social media banned here, and they’re still popular. All a ban would do would be teaching people what VPNs are… As well as exposing a lot of them to malware, because most people would not be doing research and instead of legitimate, charity-run free censorship evasion tools, they’d be using shady apps from the top of Play Store search results.

If the ban comes from “up top”, people’s desire to use it will not suddenly disappear. If the people decide to leave en masse on their own - now that’d make an impact.

Yes, absolutely! But that wasn’t the point - rather that the spyware ones are popular for some reason, and thus can serve as a sad example of “low-hanging fruit to make an example of”.

(TBH I don’t get the need for a separate app in general, seems gimmicky, I just use a normal calendar)

The only solution to that is permanent airplane mode (on an OS you can trust to do so) and just not having the phone on you most of the time.

I’ll remove the DCM module from the vehicle before bringing it in.

Why don’t you remove it right now then?

A similar argument I hear is “If they want me, they will find and arrest me no matter my precautions”.

Kinda yes… But why are you talking about threat models that include someone deliberately hunting you down? We are not high-ranking dissidents or criminals that they would put effort and money into finding. Our concern is passive surveillance - maybe the collected info doing us a disservice (like being leaked for scammers or sold to an evil ex), maybe even something mundane getting flagged and us being arrested just to serve as an example.

Yes, that was exactly my point. You would not treat any mail service like they would cover you during your unprotected use, and Proton is not an exception. So I don’t understand why people are taking issue with them cooperating with LE - but I take issue with some other qualities.

I guess the issue here is overselling the safety of the service. Wouldn’t rely on them encrypting the mail for you, for example. It’s probably fine if you treat it just like you would any other email service - assuming you’re fine with being unable to use a mail client at all on the free plan and using it in a weird roundabout way on the paid plans.

Yes, I am aware of such technology - they announced similar capabilities in our existing surveillance system. I know that it is most likely not as advanced as China’s, because that’s how it usually is here. However, it is not clear just how good it is in practice - at least in some cases, they’ve been overselling it (at least in regards to recognizing obstructed faces). So I am not sure just how dangerously accurate said gait recognition is, especially since they have much better facial recognition to depend on.

Yeah, but I don’t see the point of driving here at all.

Depends on how advanced the surveillance systems are. Yeah, I would consider driving to be impossible to do anonymously - but when it comes to walking or using public transport, depends. I am not sure just how well they can track a person with a covered face on those.

I wouldn’t trust them not to store the initial one as well tbh. Nothing technically stops that and it’s in their interests.

From the context of your previous comments, it seemed like you were talking not about not having a mobile phone in general, but rather a SIMless phone. Using it over Wi-Fi only is indeed doable - but you’d need an Airplane Mode on an OS you can trust, just having no SIM would not be enough.

Also no, I did not have such a job - I don’t understand how this question relates to the conversation.

Yeah, but the operator would see an identifiable IMEI.

I also have not seen Zcash accepted as payment nowhere nearly as frequently as Monero.

An IMEI moving around.