Poisoned wifi signals can take over all Android devices in range, no user intervention required

[wrecksdart]

@clifyt

So many of the phones that do come unlocked from China have chips that will leak spyware back into them even if you do happen to install third party software. So it almost doesn’t matter what Android you are using unless you want to get out an electron microscope and disassemble the chipset because you are going to get spied on.

This. I see third party ROMS for phones a lot like I see “rolling my own” encryption. Yeah, I could probably root my phone and install a third party ROM, but I’m not technically astute enough to run checks against it to see what’s working and what’s not, especially in terms of OS security.

@fuzzyfungus

Details aside, though, it all just makes me so tired. ‘Modern’ OSes may be easy to use; but using them is like dealing with a constant, gnawing, sense of motion in your peripheral vision, and the paranoid impression(alas, generally not delusional) that it’s wheels-within-wheels all the way down; and watching figures are flitting around just outside your vision.

Absolutely, 100% this. Besides, I have an Android phone and I use Google’s apps–if their advertisers don’t already have my “information”, then they’re probably never going to get it.