The Jolla Phone Proved We've Been Using Smartphones Wrong All Along

Such irony that the site has difficult to opt-out cookie/tracking settings sharing everything possible about you with hundreds of "partners", and flashy, distracting ads between every single paragraph…

This article feels like it's written by AI. And from what it sounds like the switch just enables Airplane Mode.

I used to own (well, technicall I still own) a Jolla Phone when it was released in 2014 and what was way more beneficial towards my privacy as a user, was the fact that it was a full fledged linux phone where I could have potentially installed any piece of software I would have wanted, with full root access in a custom linux terminal with bash. I think I once tried to run a Minecraft Server on it.

I was hoping that they'd port aircrack-ng to it, like it was possible with the Nokia N900, but sadly that never happened.

> This isn’t tin foil hat paranoia. This is just honest engineering.

This sentence and others makes me think this article was written or edited by an AI. Anybody else get that feeling too?

I'm not sure if this article is factually correct in claiming the privacy switch to be a physical disconnect for microphone, camera and bluetooth. IIRC Jolla advertised that the user would be able to configure the exact function of the privacy switch, which would mean that there's some system software involved.

A bit of context: Jolla makes Sailfish OS, which is the distant offspring of the Linux based OS Nokia planned to ship with its Symbian-successor smartphone, the N9.

I think it's a wrong idea to focus so much on privacy, N9's OS (and Windows Phone too) correctly identified that users are looking for a much simpler experience than Android has provided (which is still true to this day).

I think the market gap still exists for people who don't want to run an iPhone, but prefer a simpler and more reliable experience than what the computer-in-your-pocket Android provides.

Especially, that nowadays I feel apps are becoming less and less popular, and everything's going back to the browser.

> hardware switch that physically disconnects your microphone

Might need disconnecting motion sensors, too:

AccEar: Accelerometer Acoustic Eavesdropping with Unconstrained Vocabulary https://arxiv.org/pdf/2212.01042

Spearphone: A Lightweight Speech Privacy Exploit via Accelerometer-Sensed Reverberations from Smartphone Loudspeakers https://www.winlab.rutgers.edu/~yychen/papers/%28WiSec%2721%...

A survey of acoustic eavesdropping attacks: Principle, methods, and progress https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266729522...

I kind of remember and Jolla like 5 years ago, but I think this is supposed to be a hype generating post OK. Try buying one though it is not so easy

1. More cellphone companies is a good thing, especially if paying lipservice to what consumers want. Which may not be ideal but steps in the right direction, consumers themselves need to take the next step their since it is their money.

2. Feeling like your phone is listening to you implies you lack self awareness to deduce why the things you think or discuss with others are reflected in your metadata. You use the internet as a sounding board for thoughts, there is a pattern to it and that is all happening non-verbally. Turning the mic off is unlikely to make this go away.

3. If this makes you paranoid, it should and that paranoia only becomes medically relevant if it impedes your ability to do things you want to do but is otherwise a healthy adaptation that in many contexts would aide in your continued survival. This might be worth keeping in mind, not trying to run away from. Quick fixes in life generally are just traps.

    > You know that moment when you’re chatting with a friend about needing new sneakers and then like magic, every app you open is suddenly plastered with shoe ads?

Sure don't.

This feels like a gimmick. Most privacy issues aren't from the camera, bluetooth, and microphone.

why flagged? is this site politically to the right of the theverge.com?

most of the comments are dodging the point of the article and looking for unrelated strawmen to attack. ok, maybe the site has cookies. who cares? the issue is the phone not the marketing site. so that is a weak point.

overall the idea sounds good. but is Jolla open source? Can we compile it and run it on the phone?

You guys are seeing ads?

This kind of articles is moot.

- Will the author use it daily? Forever?

- price point? Many people cannot afford that.

> Not Android with Google quietly running 47 background processes to figure out whether you’re sad enough to buy ice cream.

BS. Look at all the background processes in any device? Even stock debian or postmarket OS.

> According to research from the Electronic Frontier Foundation and multiple independent security audits. Open source operating systems like Sailfish provide significantly more transparency than closed source alternatives. You can actually see what the code is doing instead of just taking a company’s word for it.

No references.

EFF says this also:

https://ssd.eff.org/module/your-security-plan

Trying to protect all your data from everything all the time is impractical and exhausting.

In computer security, a threat is a potential event that could undermine your efforts to defend your data. You can counter the threats you face by determining what you need to protect and from whom you need to protect it. This is the process of security planning, often referred to as “threat modeling .”