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Comment by ericd | Hacker News Reader

Is there any index of spyware free devices/products? Or I guess I should say products that haven't been caught including spyware yet. This is getting absurd.

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I often think the same thing. There needs to be a UL type company that certifies a product or service isn't spying on you.

> There needs to be a UL type company that certifies a product or service isn't spying on you.

We are the gears that make our world go around. Live the change you want to see.

Counterpoint: Pay me and I'll do it!

Is this a request for investment? I would be happy to help. Feel free to contact me.

Approximately 1.5 million NGOs operate in the United States. There is no even up-to-date list of OpenWRT capable home routers. Or of not phoning home (to Chinese cloud) CCTV cams.

> Approximately 1.5 million NGOs operate in the United States

.. what does that have to do with anything?

There are dozens of NGOs trying to save you from genetically modified crops, or raising awareness about chemicals in your soap, or fighting day and night to save cockroaches from extinction. The only one that absent is the NGO that would make a list of goods spying on a customer and bring it up on some website. Isn't that funny?

Mozilla kind of started one last year although I don't know if it's still maintained.

https://advocacy.mozilla.org/en-us/privacynotincluded/why-we...

What about Free Software Foundation?

https://fsf.org/ryf

Well, you could start one?

I would have thought this was within the remit of the EFF, but then so are a lot of other things.

Wouldn’t the list of config files in openwrt itself work?

For Uncle Joe? I doubt it.

Two recent purchases that I specifically avoided internet connectivity for:

—Eufy RoboVac 11S - Robot Vacuums

—Coway Airmega 300 - Air Purifier

I recently had a discussion about the iRobot Roomba line. I don't need a vacuum connected to the internet, yet every vacuum in the Roomba lineup now has an internet connection. Why? I cannot see a benefit to the consumer.

Anyways, I think this is a fantastic idea and have started to put a list here together here. Any other products I should add?

https://productdork.com/t/list-of-tracking-and-spyware-free-...

every vacuum in the Roomba lineup now has an internet connection. Why? I cannot see a benefit to the consumer.

Well, they do make pretty neat wifi coverage maps of your home. But I guess they could do that without actually going online.

For cars? Anything old and "unconnected" would qualify.

Yeah. At some point those pre-everything-connected era devices will fall out of the market, though

Not for certain cars, however, as it seems you can still buy just about any part, new or even enhanced, for common 50s-70s American cars --- which don't even have a computer.

It's useless.

For example, I can say to you now that apple, google and samsung devices are very high on spyware. Would you even start considering replacing your phone?

Yes i would. So, no it isn't. I wish Nokia stayed on the n900 path. Good phone that one.

The list would be extremely useful. And would drive paying customers to companies that are less crooked. Race to the top is a thing, it happens. Encouraging it is a good idea.

It's useful if there is an alternative. In terms of phones, you have to go so far down the stack you almost have to build it yourself out of bits of hardware before you get one that isn't actively spying on you all the time.

Yes... But what with?

Consumer choice for smartphones seems to be at an all-time low, when it comes to software. (Hardware seems as diverse as ever, with a few exceptions, such as the actual modules for talking to the cell towers.)

You have iOS, Android... And a few small OSs which only work on very specific hardware, that tends not to be available after a year or two.

What I want from a phone is fairly limited, which I think makes me more flexible, but I can't really find anything that doesn't spy on me.

* Calls

* SMS

* Phonebook

* Email (IMAP will do)

* SSH (with key support)

* Web browser

Anything I can find is either spyware-riddled, probably backdoored, or so out of date that purchasing it makes it as expensive as a flagship phone.

I run LineageOS with the F-Droid store.

The baseband is still untrustworthy, but I think that's about as good as it gets.

lineage os uses kernel and drivers as binary blobs from the oem themselves. not to mention most images ship with gapps anyway.

I didn't know the kernel and drivers are not open source, although I do of course run an image without gapps.

cough https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/ cough

Just because the majority of people use devices that disrespect their privacy doesn't mean that I have to. Even on the Android side of things, there are varying degrees of privacy-respecting ROMs that you can flash to try and curb the amount of spyware that your phone has.

It's narrow, not useless.

No, but I am already choosing to switch it off, install far less, and not always take it with me. Keep on trucking to "Tracking: everything, everywhere, always, across devices" and I'll be back on a dumb phone and second hand iPod.

Thanks to the GDPR importing everything electronic from Europe is starting to sound like a good idea.

Importing from China directly would be cheaper.

Europe gets a lot of its consumer electronics, even the big brand names like Sony, from a company in Turkey that manufactures in Spain, Poland, and I think Germany.

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