Hi,
A friend wants to degoogle his phone, so I suggested the OS I’m currently using. The one we can’t talk about… He wants a small/compact phone, so I suggested pixel 4a (not buying second hand though), but I’m afraid that planned obsolescence may kill the phone rather soon. What’s your opinion?
Cheers and thank you for your help,
Could you explain how phones are insecure by design?
How long is your password? Do you ever type it in public?
You can use two factor, fingerprint plus pin and have the pin layout randomize each time.
That’s extremely insecure compared to a computer
How?
So you’re saying that, in order for me to steal everything on your phone, all I have to do is stand behind you in a supermarket and film you unlock your screen once. Then, on the way to your car, I quickly pull a knife on you and force you to tap your finger on your phone, then I hop on a motorbike and ride away.
Hope you didn’t have any banking apps or crypto on your phone, because now that’s gone.
QubesOS on a laptop is much much safer.
If you have GrapheneOS, I’m pretty sure you can randomize the numbers on the pin. You can also set a password instead of a pin and disable biometrics if you use stock Android. All the more difficult to obtain access.
For banking/crypto, I assume a wallet app would allow you to set an app password/pin.
What does randomizing the numbers do? I just film you tapping them, and it doesn’t provide any security.
I suppose you are correct there. Maybe try a privacy screen protector or use a password. It would be harder to catch each symbol with either of those.
Qubes is immune to the knife to the throat threat model?
They would need to kidnap you to type multiple different passwords. The point is that they can’t quickly unlock the device. Mobile phones are literally designed to be easy to unlock.
I think phones are the MOST secure devices most people have. They are locked down, they run software in very restricted containers, they have more restrictive feature allowance. for 99% of the people the phone is the most secure device, full stop.
Can you do better on a computer? Sure, but it takes a bunch of work and isn’t the out of box experience
Common misconception
Please help me understand your point of view. So far all you have said in this conversation is that other people are wrong. That may be, but your not helping us understand you
The key to encryption is to have your key encrypted with a strong passphrase.
Phones are literally designed to be convenient. Convenient is the antithesis of security.
You want a 20-100+ character passphrase to symmetrically encrypt your private keys, and you want to never type that in public.
Most people have 4 digit pins on their phones, and they constantly type them in public, in plain view of others. And its super easy to snatch out of their hands and run.
Phones are, by design, not secure devices. Marketing teams trying to sell you something say otherwise. Don’t be gullible.