Melody Fwygon

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  • 212 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 1st, 2023

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  • Melody Fwygon@lemmy.onetoPrivacy@lemmy.mlWhat is the most private phone?
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    13 days ago

    I actually don’t agree with this video; and firmly believe it is more than a little biased.

    For example, the Pixel, AOSP and Android are given several undeserved points due to lack of proper information or understanding of how certain features work. I imagine this is the case too for the iPhone; if a bit less so.

    The review apparently doesn’t deep dive into settings or attempt to maximize privacy by turning off unwanted ‘features’ when settings switches are available to the user; nor does it assume that you set up accounts in as private of a manner as reasonably possible or toggle off as many default-on consent switches as needed.

    While I would support scoring and dinging each case or instance for “Privacy Settings that don’t actually work”…this video really doesn’t do a lot of legwork and leans on the anecdotal evidence of scary news stories too much.

    Worse was the fact that the entire video felt like they were shilling for Graphene OS; which is known to have a slightly unfriendly maintainer and community surrounding him to say the least.

    No mention of Lineage or other privacy oriented Android ROMs were analyzed. AOSP too, was unfairly lumped in and dinged for specific points of the Default Pixel configuration…and yes there are major differences between AOSP and Pixel Android; even though Google tries to be less in-your-face invasive than the other OEMs. Not enough credit is given for the “On-Device” smart features implemented properly on the Pixels.

    Out of personal experience; I’d actually rate a proper Lineage OS install of 4 whole Android versions ago to be more private than stock. Not quite as private as Graphene; but not quite as invasive and much more enforcing of privacy. The debloating provided by a clean AOSP-like ROM, such as Lineage, as opposed to a “Stock Android” configuration from a major OEM is stark.

    Most importantly I personally feel that the privacy model chosen for the video is far too thickly detailed for an average person. Most of the privacy concerns listed on each card contained concern points that might only tangentally apply or don’t apply at all to mobile phones. The way that each card was scored and applied felt low effort. None of the points on any of the card(s) were weighted with average users in mind.

    I really hope someone goes into a much deeper dive; this video is basically clickbait that parrots the commonly parroted advice in the privacy community; which isn’t even good advice, it’s just ‘One-Size-Fits-All’ style advice which gives the user no room to make necessary ‘Privacy vs Convenience’ tradeoffs that they themselves could have made if they understood proper threat modelling.



  • I think there’s a problem with the ‘C only’ devs refusing to be accomodating to the Rust developers. Instead of being stubborn; why not provide them what is needed and help the Rust team learn how to maintain what is needed themselves?

    None of the reasons I’ve seen mentioned are legitimate reasons for refusing to at least help them a few times, and helping them to learn how to do the onerous task themselves so they can keep it off the main plate for too long.

    C devs do not need to learn Rust to provide critical information; they need only be present and cooperative with Rust devs to help them find, convert, and localize data structures for Rust use. They can stand to sit and pair code with their Rust Dev counterparts long enough to teach a Rust Dev counterpart how and what they need to look for in C code. It’s not that big of an ask, and it’s not something that really is a large ask. Provide the bindings for a short period of time, and work on training a team of Rust Devs to maintain the bindings.

    That way both sides are stepping up to meet the others and the data isn’t being sat on by the C-only Devs.


  • I use SimpleLogin; and for the most part they don’t show up like this most of the time.

    That being said; I also don’t deeply do investigation unless the emails being sent from the alias vary from that alias’ purpose.

    Typically as long as the emails remain from the same relative sender (From: field in header) and the subject matter of the emails do not materially differ from what I initially get on the alias; I don’t really fiddle with them.

    But since the alias typically is a fixed sender; I also have them configured to include the actual From: header in the alias From: fields. This allows me to quickly block with granularity from my inbox any stray emails that might wander onto an alias without making it necessary for me to kill the entire alias. (Assuming the alias is still in use and worthy of preserving)

    But then again I don’t have nearly the spam problem that most do. I have segmented inboxes for various needs; and my GMail catches most of my crap being the biggest inbox. Between SL and GMail spam filters alongside of additional inbox filters I have setup there; most of the spam I get is generally funneled to the correct place and spam is minimal.




  • I can already see how Advertisers AND Websites will collude and break this one.

    • Specifically placed ads; targeted at specific website pages which a majority of their target grouping will visit.
    • Generate an ad that will specifically reside on a page deep inside of the site; think 4+ clicks deep; which is intensely personalized to their target. 1
    • Ad will trigger; register “Impression” and be boxed up into Differential Privacy set by the DAP.
    • Since that’s the only ad targeted for that specific page, any impression is an answer of 1 or ‘True’.
    • Through microtargeting of these deep pages they can learn a lot about what people do online and could potentially break Differential Privacy.

    1 - In this example the URI being targeted could be something like https://www.example.com/zhuli/do/the/* in such a way that when you visit https://example.com/zhuli/do/the/thing/order.php is always recorded.



  • All research based on smartphones is based on anecdotal evidence.

    It’s even worse if phones are on even without any sort of notification, like vibration.

    This is false. There is minimal acceptable evidence that a phone that is online, in a pocket or purse, in a complete silence mode configuration, with no vibration or sound, affects anyone negatively.

    I thought you were for banning use during instruction time.

    All time spent at any K-12 school institution or local country equivalent; including transition time; is considered instructional time. At least it was by any school principal I’ve ever spoken to, many of whom were holders of American PhDs in education. Laws in all 50 states reflect this typically.

    I think children must be taught how to self-regulate with phones for sure. Much like anything and everything; children must be taught how. I personally never struggled with this because all campuses in my home town would confiscate it at least until End of Day. Sometimes they’d attempt to hold the device longer; but that just resulted in parents going to the police and them being forced to return the item. They’d sometimes hold the item until your parent retrieved it however; and that was allowed as long as they returned it the moment the parent requested it. So you really couldn’t rely on parents retrieving it too many times.

    I did however get the entire district policy hard limited from “on school grounds” to “In building, from bell to bell” because of the aforementioned involvement of police.

    Similarly I will point out we had devices like Game Boys and other portable consoles growing up in the 90s.


  • Having a smart phone in their pocket is damaging.

    There is not enough scientific evidence of this; and oftentimes studies of this nature are not randomized and controlled; but instead rely on anecdotes and self-reporting by parents.

    Outside of class time sounds good, but it really means that students become fixated on checking all their notifications between classes. This is an experience blocker. Instead of engaging with their peers or teachers, they’re screen zombies caught in addictive dark patterns, generating anxiety constantly all day.

    If you read; you would know I already advocate for the students being unable to use their phone during school hours. Their phones would remain locked up; much like the article mentions; for the entire school-day.

    The only thing I advocate for is for them to have a phone in general so that they have it for when they need it; either in case of emergency or otherwise. Yes; that does mean they have access to it before the schoolday begins and after the final bell rings. That’s intended.

    I do believe it is possible to raise children to resist the addiction; but it has to start early.

    As for inflicting a ‘dumbphone’ on a child; I do think that’s not necessary all the time. it depends on the child and is definitely one way a parent can control a child’s screen time.


  • Melody Fwygon@lemmy.onetoPrivacy@lemmy.mlThreat Modelling 101
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    5 months ago

    While I don’t understand how people could possibly fail to remember ONE PASSWORD; since it is brilliantly easy to remember whole sentences and phrases that resonate with you; I do understand that laziness is profoundly common.

    For this kind of laziness; I do think Password Managers should routinely scan the local disk(s) for documents with strings that can hash into being the ‘master passphrase’. When found; you’re instantly greeted with a requirement to change your password to a new one that isn’t one you used in the past.

    We do need to punish laziness like that in password managers at least. Similarly; OSes need to do this too with their own passwords.



  • While I do agree that rules that are clear oversteps; like “No Talking in the halls”; should be curbed; I don’t think depriving students of their phones is on the same level.

    Kids should be required to pay attention when they are a student. Banning things that disrupt classrooms from functioning is a fundamental thing we all should agree needs to be done. In short; the child should have learned something that was being taught before leaving that classroom if reasonably possible.

    Do I think that means schools must run like prisons? Hell no. But I do believe the teachers and administration need the ability to contain disruptions in class.

    I’d be all for phones in schools if they were school-issued devices that were tailor-made to be educational and actively contributed to the classroom and learning environment…but those sorts of implementations are very sparse and unlikely these days; and tend to be scoffed at because of their cost.


  • In general; I don’t think banning them will help. By all means; confiscate phones which do not get put away during class and return them after class. Give teachers and administrators the authority to do this.

    Offer appropriate places to securely store and charge phones in each classroom until the teacher releases them. These places remain “locked” or “inaccessible” until class is over.

    Do this from a young age and teach the children how to have moderation through this method.

    I do not believe children should be deprived of their devices before and after school. If a student is found to be bullying other kids or students online; then charges can be filed in a school-based court and a Judge can consider ordering the bullying kids to have limited or no access to any smart device unsupervised. This puts the burden on the parents to manage any kids who are misusing the tech outside of school. Similarly the troublemakers can be transferred to other schools.

    Students who are being bullied online can simply report this to the teachers or admins and get relief from their tormentors. If they can’t also learn how to get the adults involved in actually troublesome situations; that’s also a problem that needs addressing.

    I would encourage students to be open with their parents and teachers about things and definitely also focus on things like social media literacy and how to navigate through tricky situations as well.

    Various apps and software tools could be used to manage a student’s phone (During school hours) as well; if and only if needed. They could make this mandatory; but it would only be restrictive on phones of students who misuse their phones; and thus are identified as needing ‘management’. This would ideally only enforce appropriate usage times and optionally; iff the student is being penalized for bullying or misusing; provide a way to disable various apps and browsers while preventing new ones from being installed without parent or teacher consent.

    TL;DR: If the kid follows the rules; their phone isn’t going to be locked down. If they don’t; they get the lock-down experience while the adults ensure the kid is educated as needed.

    Even if that sounds dystopian; it’s also a way to integrate phones into the school experience which addresses all the issues…and ensures the adults in charge of the students has ample opportunity to educate the kids about how to use their phones correctly…and intervene with a student’s usage if needed while still allowing them to have phones for emergency and necessary use.




  • So we have:

    • Ad Blockers
    • ‘Ad Blocker’ blockers
    • ‘‘Ad blocker’ blocker’ blockers
    • ‘’‘Ad Blocker’ blocker’ blocker’ blockers
    • ‘’‘‘Ad Blocker’ blocker’ blocker’ blocker’ blockers
    • ‘’‘’‘Ad Blocker’ blocker’ blocker’ blocker’ blockers’ blockers; and finally;
    • ‘’‘’‘‘Ad Blocker’ blocker’ blocker’ blocker’ blockers’ blocker’ blockers; with;
    • ‘’‘’‘’‘Ad Blocker’ blocker’ blocker’ blocker’ blockers’ blocker’ blocker’ blockers

    in development.