Beyond this, quite a few Android phones require a hardware key in order to put a third party OS on them…making them useless. 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. In the end, we have to depend on trust models and I don’t trust companies that sell below cost and that can’t explain how they are actually staying in business. I do know Apple makes enough money selling at a premium – and that this premium would be forever tainted if they betrayed us. We know where they make their profits…us.
This is an answer I gladly accept. My initial comments were for the Cory-types that need to slam the iPhone at every single chance. I have a few Android devices at home. They really don’t work for me as a daily device, but they are fun to hack and cheap enough that I can throw in a $5 prepaid only data card and use in a way that I wouldn’t care if it disappeared or not.
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.
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.
I try not to get carried away with the pro or anti fanboy mentality. For every opinion shitting on iOS i’m sure there’s an equally compelling counter opinion on Android.
My phone works for me and i’m happy, if something in particular was driving me bonkers that was a problem inherent to Android and not just my particular phone i might make the switch. Thus far i have not run into such a thing.
Ugh. I hate it when companies cater to those people. Get a fucking clue grandma!
It’s almost like some people have other things to do than dick around with their phone/PC all day.
Nice… Another boing boing “the sky is falling” post with zero mitigation strategy and no list of affected devices. Why bother if you don’t have any actual constructive information?
Oh I believe there is! It just unless you are an otherwise-clueless grandma, you’ll probably miss it!
The linked article didn’t have many specifics either beyond the wifi chipset. One could research what is in their particular handset, but then again what would be the point if there’s no patch?
If you don’t think Apple hasn’t already “betrayed” you to advertisers, I have a bridge you may be interested in.
Keep on flippin’ that chicken!
Apple has made it abundantly clear they aren’t in this business. And have published / presented how they protect us from themselves and others.
Paranoia seems to suit this site, and it is that same paranoia that blinds them from Occam’s Razor. Apple publishes how they obscure data, researchers go out of their way to break this…occasionally they do and Apple fixes it. Google? They straight up tell you that they are selling your information wholesale and that there is nothing you can do about it, but trust them…they aren’t ‘evil’.
I consider myself technically literate and I evaluated a MS phone solely for the reason it gets timely and frequent updates. I’m tired of being left out in the cold by the chain of parties involved in the OS on my phone. The MS phone was horrible so I returned it but it’s still my goal to have a device that won’t get neglected the way Samsungs (as an example) are. The Pixel will probably be my next phone (once I can justify the cost) for this reason.
Alternative ROMs don’t seem like a valid option to me after looking into installing Cyanogenmod on my Note 3. From what I can tell that particular build of CM relies on one or maybe two volunteers to maintain it which isn’t a real confidence booster. I don’t mind getting my hands dirty when it comes to computers except for my cell phone.
I believe it attacks the code running on the Broadcom chip which is separate from Android.
I decided to check if my phone was affected (a Wilyfox Swift), and as far as I can tell, it’s not, because it uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset, as do a lot of Android phones these days.
Either way, I assume this will be fixed in the next update for LineageOS, which is the new name for Cyanogenmod.
Atheros in the S5 to hand got all those patches in '14-16, so surely some characteristic has been put upon the way it was previously vulnerable, like just not crashing working communications layers. Screen sharing, DLNA, Bonjour and whatever else is jamming with the WiFi of the moment will have to plow one teensy language environment at a time into acting infected… Maybe the ‘Ya phone infect!’ messages can at least go away in favor of ‘This Tab3’s touchscreen-companding DLNA is also roleplaying a L.2 human reaver with 15 CON. Hardening it to just work in context of AndoKrita…with dbus filtered.’
How did the ‘you have a lot to answer for, Python’ in JWZ’s blog not make it to the list of canny poisonings, by the way? N-Gate’s re-digest of Hacker News is also pretty funny.
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