It is so difficult to find modern electronics without telemetry and ads. Smartphones, laptops, TVs, home routers, security cameras, cars, game consoles, e-readers, projectors, 3D printers, fitness trackers, speakers, and even some printers. Why can’t customers be free from this data collection and advertising? It’s not that we don’t care about it. There simply aren’t many alternatives, and the few that do exist are either more expensive or offer fewer features. Seriously, we need a list of products we can buy without worrying about telemetry or advertising.
The following list is updated at https://lemmy.ml/post/52706206
- PC: DIY + Linux (But don’t forget chip backdoor Thank you @geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml)
- Laptop: Framework Laptop, System76
- Smartphone: Brax Phone
- Smartwatch: ?
- TVs: ?
- Game consoles: ?
- Routers: ?
- Security cameras: ?
- E-ink devices: ?
- Projectors: ?
- Wireless headphones: ?
- Speakers: ?
- 3D printers: ?
- Cars: ?
- Anything else that doesn’t come with ads or telemetry built in?
Robert Braxman is a fraud and so is his Brax Phone.
Anyway stop buying or caring about brand new “products”, creating e-waste, and feeding this stupid exponential growth economy and extractive capitalism. You don’t need everything to be the latest version. Engage in the local circular economy, buy used on local marketplaces, reuse and repair old devices. Give second life to old things we already produced.
You don’t even need to try hard to be private with old, used stuff. Bought an old laptop? Good, it only runs Linux. Bought an old MP3 player? Good, it doesn’t even have Spotify or internet. Bought an old gaming console? Good, you can find any torrent you could ever want, any genre, completely for free, offline.
If you use a robot vacuum, it might help to get one without a camera, only Lidar.
(I also made a point of buying a smart tv without a microphone, but it was already hard to find one in 2023, I imagine it’s even worse now.)
E-ink devices: I think you can put all of them in flight mode, at least that’s what I do, and upload books via USB cable. No need for network features.
Speakers: Just buy a cheap and basic wired one?
Smartwatch: How would one work without telemetry? It’s kinda the whole point 🤔 I guess you can try to replace the software with Gadgetbridge.
Mozilla created such a list: Privacy Not Included.
the link doesn’t work?
Unfortunately they have stopped providing that list. 🙁
As the post I linked to says:
Privacy Not Included was launched in 2017 to help you understand the privacy risks of tech products that connect to the internet. We are continuing that work in the form of Product Reviews at our magazine Nothing Personal, where our privacy experts do hours of hands-on testing and research on the most popular consumer tech items and their privacy features.
It’s not that we don’t care about it
That’s not true. People who give the slightest shit about it are in the minority. My supposedly tech savvy relative told me I am “overthinking” smart TVs by never wanting one connected to the internet. The next day after that conversation, the most recent LG scandal came to light. I sent them a link to the video. I saw that they were supposedly typing for a few seconds and then they never responded. I suspect they considered arguing with me about it being a problem and then realized it was going to be a tough argument to have. I doubt that made them think twice about getting more Internet connected devices though. They’ve personally overseen installing Alexas in multiple homes and they think I’m absurd for seeing those as bad for privacy.
This is why regulations exist. Expecting the average corpo to not do evil shit, or the average consumer to understand why this is important is never going to happen.
Once I get more politically active it will be an absolute nightmare to scrub my house.
Tasks to do.
-check my RCA tv, disable all RF connectivity.
-audit Nvidia Shield and decide if the frequency of telemetry is palatable, likely replace with a Pi5 streamer box. Not sure if that has eARC so maybe adjust my whole stereo setup.
-move Phillips hue bulbs off the first party hub to a ZigBee hub.
-remove Google home devices, set up echo dots or whatever they are named and finish setting up the home assistant stack for voice assistant, find cheap tablet for HA dashboard.
-audit Honeywell home, set temp via home assistant integration only.
-same with Emporia power devices, local integration only.
-degoogle phone.
-replace ubiquity WiFi AP with something else probably
-replace Synology NAS maybe.
-shut down Milestone VMS and windows server in favor of an open source VMS, audit POE CCTV cameras for telemetry.
-audit BAS-IP video doorbell. That should work SIP only, I could probably snag access to their internal code base through work connections, the founder is a really nice lady and the rest of her team is cool too.
-Remove Windows from gaming PC, Linux steam or wine compatible games only.I’m sure there’s more. I probably shouldn’t list all the stuff I use like this but whatever, if I’m tipped over right now there’s not going to be any compromat/ opsec implications.
Just because your “tech savvy relativ” says you should not overthink does not mean the relativ does not care about it.
It just means your relativ does not assume that its privacy gets invaded by every device.
This are 2 different things.
With all due respect I know how they think and I’m not sure why you think you do? This is a “I’ve got nothing to hide” person
I am mostly referring to the first 2 sentences since the other text does not comment on anything that he actually said or did.
Just because someone is naive enough to think that a smart device does not spy on you or downplays what they know does not mean they do not care about privacy.
In order to say that the relative does not care about privacy, the relative would have to know the exact extent on what they collect and what they can do with it. You cannot assume that a normal person or even “tech savvy person” understands what is possible.
It is possible that what you said is applicable for your relative but in general this does not apply.
It’s interesting that instead of assuming I have any basis for saying what I did, you’re trying to educate me on how to interpret someone’s actions I have known my entire life. I can assure you I’ve tried to have this discussion with them several times. They dismiss every privacy concern brought up if it relates to tech companies. They care about privacy insofar as they think it’s wrong when the government violates it, but if they get a free service out of a deal, they dismiss the idea that the trade off could potentially not be worth it.
Tldr; your drive by guess at what may have been said does not override information you do not have.
I never said that you are wrong. You have misinterpreted that. I simply say that in general, that what you said about your relative is not enough to assume that the relative does not care about privacy.
I never have said anything else. More information was not given.
We are talking about a specific person that you quoted how I described them as if I might be making shit up. The fact that I said “my relative” is enough information for any reasonable person to know I probably have a long history with them. I never once said this applies to every person. I only mentioned they are tech saavy because they absolutely have the capability of understanding and being shocked by privacy invasions, they just decided long ago it wasn’t worth caring about. And I know this due to the dozens of interactions with them on the topic. Including essentially telling me I’m wasting my time caring of my TV spies on me. More history there is that I’ve told them about real cases of this happening years ago also and they dismissed that as not mattering then as well
Weird interaction.
We are talking about a specific person that you quoted how I described them as if I might be making shit up.
No, thats just you beeing offended. Never once did that.
I never once said this applies to every person.
But with the quote at the start you implied that there a lots of ppl. It should be common sense that there is almost never a 100% complete agreement within such a broad undefined group.
Raspberry Pi? Fairphone 6? I love my ancient iPod Classic. Also, OpenWRT One router? Wired headphones? Get monitor instead of TV?
We really do need a list.
Good thing framework doesn’t advertise Racist arch dotfiles. /s
No, of course not. They just have a big tent that happen to include Nazis, misogynists, and racists. Very different
Linux home computers are where this starts.
Sadly most chips contain backdoors especially Intel and AMD. Unless a performant open source RiscV chip comes along everything has spyware
Any source?
Well, that’s frustrating. But if we want to break free from all this, we have to start somewhere. We can’t have a computer without a chip, but at least on the software side, we might be able to find manufacturers like Framework for other devices that don’t come with ads and telemetry.
Framework does actually support a RISCV chip already which is admirable. They’re doing good work in that regard. But that is very much a development laptop, it can’t run serious work yet. Even for basic browsing it’s nearly unusable.
How do we start a class action lawsuit for violations of the fourth ammendment?
What happened?
I don’t know a ton about it, but I’ve been looking at the Brax phone recently for this reason
Brax phone and their company is really scammy-looking, I wouldn’t recommend it.
Graphene OS is the only private mobile OS worth the hassle, all other “private” phones usually introduce more untrustworthy 3rd parties than they get rid off, and overall are a downgrade in privacy compared to an average phone.
If can’t use GOS for any reason, then the only alternative is to use the normal phone you already have as little as possible, and just treat everything on it as not private, and use airplane mode more often.
