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Comment by r3vrse | Hacker News Reader

> In other words my current smartphone will be unsafe for everyday use after September 2018, but it may have some life left in it by protecting its operating system with some network level security.

I stopped paying attention when I read this.

Pi-Hole is an ad blocker and it is fit for that purpose. No argument from me. However, to give this advice to people for whom device and network security is not a major or even minor concern is frankly dangerous.

Buy an iPhone. Buy a Mac. Keep your Windows PCs updated. Get a mesh WiFi solution that takes care of firmware patches automatically. Run a browser-based blocker that updates in the background without interaction.

These are the low-hanging fruit that should be done long before you are trying to set up what is essentially MITM-as-an-appliance without any paid support or guarantee.

Who is this article actually helping?

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> Who is this article actually helping?

It seems to be primarily targeted at highly-technical people, such as those who might stumble on this article via HN, or who casually frequent websites with "crypto" in their name.

These audiences naturally would have a higher tolerance to technical adoption barriers than the average consumer, which is who your other advice seems to be targeting.

> Who is this article actually helping?

Those who cannot afford iPhones and Macs?

In what universe is an apple product helping you in any meaningful way?

In the 90's alternate reality where "Macs don't get viruses."

> Buy an iPhone. Buy a Mac. Keep your Windows PCs updated.

What?

An iOS device tracks a lot of what you do, especially if you don't opt out of anything iCloud. But the bulk of the tracking is done by one "evil" corporation, who takes the majority of its money from selling devices.

With a normal Android device, you are tracked every step of the way, by apps, by Google, by Samsung and their awful software quality or by random Chinese entities.

If you don't spend a lot of time, an iOS device is the lesser evil when it comes to tracking. An iOS device with automatic app updates turned off, no iCloud, and where you say no to most apps asking for permissions on first run, is pretty locked down.

There are downsides, of course. It's kind of sad that you can't buy a mobile device which is just a network node by default, not a spying machine by default.

Agree with this. Android is unfortunately a bit of a disaster in terms of privacy and security. The easiest security advice you can give to say friends and family would be to just buy an iPhone. As for asking them to buy a Mac - I can list a few dozen reasons why that is also a good idea.

It's the one of reason why dumbphones so popular on HN.

It's pretty simple: buy a device that is supported by the manufacturer for the lifetime of the device. The Nexus 5X was released in 2015, so it's abandoned after three years. The oldest supported iPhone is the 5s, which was released in 2013 and will be supported by iOS 12 which means it gets security updates until at least fall of 2019 (maybe longer).

A straight-from-Google Android phone is out of support after 3 years, while a comparable iPhone is still supported after 6 years.

How is a DNS server MiTM?

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