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"Technology reveals the active relation of man to nature" - Karl Marx
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File: 1747107268736.png (445.22 KB, 918x532, phones.png)

 

I recently got a smartphone again and things are worse than 5 or 6 years ago. I got an Android because they have inexpensive ones and I don't believe in paying around $1k for a phone.

Turns out you need a Gmail account and a whole Google relationship for the phone to work. Then you can't even send texts without your legal name and email address being linked to your number. For anyone you contact to read.

I'm no paranoid nut or anything, but this is far more involved than it used to be. And there's simply no way to opt out. It may be different with Apple phones, but I remember when I had one of those they wanted me to link up a bunch of shit too. It was similar but different.

Not to mention you kind of already need a phone to activate a phone. Because without some texted code to cell phone you can't get the new one going.
I know I'M the problem here because I'm questioning and not just agreeing to all their shit, but I want to understand it.

Do you guys know what's up with all this and if there's any way around it? I had a flip phone for a long time but each year it's more and more of a hassle to get along without having the same as everyone else. And everyone INSISTS on communicating via text message, so there's really no dealing with that on a little flip with just numbers. And I checked; they don't even fucking MAKE Blackberry type smartphones with physical keyboards anymore. If you can find one it won't work with any current carrier. The phones are all very big and they don't offer small smartphone options unless you want a folding one which is even more costly.
The cheapest I could get was $200 and I still feel ripped off.

If you want out you'll need to put a custom rom on your phone nowadays

Seems you don't necessarily need a custom rom, but you have to do the bulk of the work to degoogle anyway.
Got a used smartphone not too long ago, mine was for less than 50 USD.
Am waiting on an unlock code to do degoogle and install a rom on my phone

https://xdaforums.com/t/guide-degoogle-any-device-and-install-microg.4058743/

File: 1747112541985.jpg (49.94 KB, 610x402, ,escalation.jpg)

>>29685
>>29686

Thank you. But will I still be able to use it for everything? I already don't use membership websites because they want you to verify yourself.
Just look at this image. Reddit now wants people to sign in with their fucking PHONE NUMBER.
What is this? What's the end game? Eventually is the idea that anyone online can be traced back to exactly who they are? Or that other people on forums can contact you directly?

Is this some sort of accountability thing?
The argument is always "if you don't have anything to hide…", and I don't. But I don't understand why there should be this kind of transparency.

Does anyone understand the bigger picture? Is this about advertising dollars or worse?

You can't even get an email address without having an email address or a phone other than a landline. Landlines are nearly useless now. And yet anything OTHER than a landline is useless when the power goes out.

So I went to that DeGoogle link which is 5 years old and it's all pretty complicated.
Can I take my phone into a computer repair place and pay someone to do something like this? Will it fuck up my service with my network provider?

>>29691
>pay someone to do something like this
Think unless you've got a young techy relative probably not.

>Will it fuck up my service with my network provider?
If you use Google Messanger for RCS chat with IOS users it would probably feel broken.
Supposedly you can use an old version to work with MicroG, but haven't yet been able to try.

>>29689
>Eventually is the idea that anyone online can be traced back to exactly who they are?
Think it's sold for "security" and moderation; sadly U2F keys didn't takeoff.
Obviously having a single identifier makes it easier to issue target manipulations.
For most users it's as anonymous as signing in with an email address however.

>>29683
I cheaped out instead of buying a pixel and I'm really regretting it. If I had known the 9a would come out like two weeks later, i'd have bought that instead. Although phones basically just 2fa keys for me.

>>29696
>For most users it's as anonymous as signing in with an email address however.
Went ahead and removed my phone from Amazon, and Google, and deleted whatever accounts could (there are a decent amount of undeletable ones from college and job applications). Probably going to jettison the better part of these when migrate my accounts over to pass.

>>29689
phone number is all about contact tracing. Once a site has your phone number you're basically pozzed because they can now geo-locate you, contact trace you to find out who you know, how often you're around them, meta data the S out of you to learn basically everything about you and then tie it all together as well as purchase information that has already been tied together. It's why companies push 2 factor so hard, they pretend its about security but it's all just user profiling and Contact tracing.

If you care about privacy phones are kind of just not an option in my personal opinion. The only way you can actually make them private is by essentially turning them into a decentralized tablet which defeats the purpose of them largely.

>>29721
proofs? tried even to use geoip to get timezone data once but the data wasn't accurate enough. something like 50% accuracy for city.

>>29721
Yeah, I haven't left the house with it. Someday I'll need it for GPS or something I imagine. I'd like to just buy a GPS for my car like I used to have that always works, no signing up or anything. Just a random guy using the thing for directions and it doesn't know who I am and isn't tracking me. Garmin. They still make those? My last one looked like a CRT TV, as deep as it was wide, suctioned to my windshield. I miss that thing. Would it still work? Remember those days?

>>29724
>>29724
>proofs?
here's this weeks proofs
https://mastdatabase.co.uk/blog/2025/05/o2-expose-customer-location-call-4g/
this isn't a demoralization post. understand the fucking ridiculous amount of data they're taking from you

>>29823
Well then.

>>29683
>Turns out you need a Gmail account and a whole Google relationship for the phone to work.

Uhmm… no you don't?! My phone is like 3 months old and I am using it completeky without a Google account. You can just skip the account creation.


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