Whenever people ask about ways to make their smartphones more private or which is the most privacy-respecting phone to get, there’s always a few people confidently asserting “all smartphones are spy tools, get a dumbphone with no apps if you want to be private”. Which is ridiculous advice for a few reasons
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Dumbphones usually run either proprietary operating systems or outdated forks of Android. They’re almost never encrypted. They rarely get security updates. They’re a lot more vulnerable than even a regular Android phone
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With dumbphones, you’re usually limited to regular phone calls or SMS/MMS messaging. These are ancient communication standards with zero built-in privacy. Your ISP can read any text message you send and view metadata logs of any phone calls you make. In lots of places (like Australia where I live) ISPs are actually required to keep logs of your messages and phone calls
With even a regular Android phone you at least have access to encrypted messaging apps like Signal or Session so your conversations aren’t fair game for anyone who wants to read them. Of course there are better options. iOS (not perfect but better than most bloatware-filled Android devices) and a pixel with GrapheneOS (probably the best imo) are much better options; but virtually anything out there is going to be better for privacy than a dumbphone
Edit: Thanks everyone for giving your thoughts. Some really good points I hadn’t thought much about
If you’re willing to live with a dumb phone, you’re willing to live with a Linux phone (Or an open ROM without Google apps). AFAIK they can call and text just fine without installing anything else so any Linux apps you like are just a bonus.
It’s not about having a device that’s secure, it’s about having a device that you use less, to the point that it’s not much of an attack surface for surveillance capitalism or (possibly) hostile governments.
It’s much harder to profile someone if they aren’t fed a steady stream of what you say and what you click upon.
I think you’re conflating security with privacy. Not that they are unrelated, but something can be e.g. unencrypted but lack telemetry.
Not that dumbphones are inherently private, but I don’t think they’re less private either. They’re just what you use if you have no need for all the smartphone functions.
Idk, being locked in to using only communication protocols that are known to be roughly wide open seems like kind of a privacy non-starter, right? Sort of fails the attempt before you even start, no?
Edit: a wiser person than me reads the rest of the thread before a comment like the above, but I’m not them sadly. (AKA, plenty of good points made by others)
I suppose that begs the question of whether or not privacy (as used by this community) inherently means private in the colloquial sense, like the way a diary is private. Because to me, a e.g. public static website with no kind of profiling of its users is privacy-respecting, but obviously not private in the colloquial sense—it’s a public resource.
I do use SMS sometimes and I use it strictly for things that I’m happy to be basically public. Same for using other protocols like unencrypted email.
A stock smartphone is also locked in to mandatory telemetry, like a stock dumbphone. The practical difference is that there’s a much smaller community for installing custom FOSS OSes onto dumbphones compared to smartphones.
As others have mentioned, this is a matter of threat model. To be realistic, a sufficiently determined government will always be able to access your communications, but companies like Facebook and Google can only access them if you give it to them willingly. On the other hand, if other people you communicate with do this by themselves, then you’ve gone through all that effort for nothing. It’s also worth pointing out that it cannot be proven that a regular phone does not have corporate spyware installed, so this may be another way your information could leak to companies.
That said, it is pretty insulting that tech companies have decided that they’re simply entitled to everyone’s private communication data. That for me is probably the biggest motivator in trying to avoid their services as much as possible.
a sufficiently determined government will always be able to access your communications
If you use encrypted messages and both people using the messages have a phone with disk encryption then there is literally no way for a government to gain access to your messages. That is assuming the government isn’t going to torture you.
I guess the idea is that you wont be able to do a lon with a dumbphone, so it’s basically a paperweight that sometimes receives calls and with too much luck, an SMS. You have a tool for emergencies or specific events, but you don’t have your life on it, so you keep most of your privacy from ever reaching it. That’s my take, at least.
I always thought people used the term “dumbphone” to refer to old-fashioned devices that are just a phone and don’t run any OS.
even all old Nokias and flipphones and the like have an OS they’re just in house developed proprietary embedded software/firmware not open sourceish like android
its how almost any sufficiently complicated device that uses PCBs works even modern washing machines and such run atleast what it basically a firmware os
I figured that the point of using a dumb phone would be that there hopefully wouldn’t be meaningful accounts, information, and communication to really get at. Regular calls and SMS were already fair game, and there is basically nothing else on there. Nothing for evil megacorps to siphon up, no social media, not much of anything.
And your keystrokes are logged on phones where you use Signal…
Dumbphones are more private. Privacy is on a scale, and you have less apps and systems that track you and profile you on a dumbphone.
Do you want true privacy? Don’t use a phone…
Yup, no phone is the way to go. Obviously not practical 100% of the time in the modern day, but if you’re ever doing something you don’t want linked to you, leave the phone at home.
Nice thing is, usually the dumb phones have removable batteries. So just remove the battery when you’re not using it. Problem solved.
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Yes, sim calls and sms are not private, both on dumb and smart phones. They also connect to cell towers so your location might be found. Anyway, I think the hardware and software of a smartphone is more capable of surveillance you than a dumbphone. The only realistic way is to leave the phone home and keep a paper list of your contacts at you. And call them from a stranger if you need to. I did this and the biggest inconvenience is that I can’t take pictures or videos (I might buy a camera, I don’t know if they have location system incorporated).
