Question about phones: Am I overreacting? (linux.community)

submitted 10 months ago by vestmoria@linux.community to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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I don't like so called smartphones (flashy devices to mine your data and other reasons) but my regular no touchscreen phone's microphone is no longer working as it should, making conversations difficult.

Enter a smartphone I received as a present, my phobia (for lack of a better word) to smartphones and my (misguided?) obsession with privacy: I don't want to use this smartphone as my default phone because I'm scared the carrier, ISP or google are going to mine my data and trace my calls.

Which might be an overreaction, because each time I use my regular cell phone, the carrier knows when I'm calling from, who I'm calling and how long the call lasts.

So I ask you: how much more data would I be leaking if I use my new smartphone for calls only, compared to a regular, no touchscreen phone?

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[-] anothermember@beehaw.org 1 points 10 months ago

I find they're a pain to use and I only have one out of social pressure, and privacy or not I'm constantly confused on why they're so popular.

I just use a throwaway account and have the rule of not putting in any data that I don't want to be read - which is barely anything any way because I do all my computing on my Linux laptop. I figure if they're collecting location data and recording me then they're just associating it with "random guy x" because I've never given it anything else. I should look in to one of the de-Googled Android distributions but I have so little interest and energy in anything to do with it, if it could be made totally private I would still rarely use it.

this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2023

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