Librem 5 Secure/private smart phone - legit?

BOSS1 · Jul 21, 2019

Greetings,

I'm not tech savvy enough to fully follow, but I do know if you have an iPhone or Android, pretty much everything thing you do and everywhere you go is tracked and utilized by tech somehow.

Not affiliated at all, just wondering if it might be a legit alternative, and how 'private' it would be...

https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/

Boss

gadgetgeek · Jul 22, 2019

Probably not at all. Thing is, android and ios have huge groups of people looking for flaws. These guys won't have the funds to roll out updates in a timely fashion, and even if they did, there are probably a dozen third party apps that you'd rather use than just web based. Weather, banking, email, all of those will have to be made to work with this extra OS, and that's hard. Locking down ios or android is pretty simple, and you can run your web traffic through a VPN which will help. This phone will not do any of that on its own, sure the phone may be secure, but its only going to be as good as the connection.
If these guys manage to get a phone to market, approved for sale, and manage to keep it going, I'd be shocked. They may, but I highly doubt they can do what they want at that pricepoint. The other phone that went this route was oneplus and they are flagship level prices.
That you are tracked is a given. How you are tracked and with what info is what changes. Unless you plan to scrub all your digital traffic on every device, its better just to look after the things you can control, good password hygiene, limit info, lock down your credit. If you are worried about being profiled, well, its already happened. Facebook does "shadow" profiles for people who should exist, but don't have an account. Basically if there is a void of info that should be a person, they can figure it out to a reasonable level, at least enough to be able to sell ads.

kreole · Jul 22, 2019

If you want more security from corporations, ISP, advertisers, and the like, Purism's OS and phone are good choices. If you're looking for nation state APT level protection, neither this nor Android or iOS will get you there.

Scott321 · Jul 22, 2019

I think it really depends on what you expect to do with your phone. There's a line between convenience and privacy that is different for everybody.

GermanyChris · Jul 29, 2019

BOSS1 said:
Greetings,

I'm not tech savvy enough to fully follow, but I do know if you have an iPhone or Android, pretty much everything thing you do and everywhere you go is tracked and utilized by tech somehow.

Not affiliated at all, just wondering if it might be a legit alternative, and how 'private' it would be...

https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/

Boss

Yes they are legit but it's probably not the phone for you.

gadgetgeek said:
Probably not at all. Thing is, android and ios have huge groups of people looking for flaws. These guys won't have the funds to roll out updates in a timely fashion, and even if they did, there are probably a dozen third party apps that you'd rather use than just web based. Weather, banking, email, all of those will have to be made to work with this extra OS, and that's hard. Locking down ios or android is pretty simple, and you can run your web traffic through a VPN which will help. This phone will not do any of that on its own, sure the phone may be secure, but its only going to be as good as the connection.
If these guys manage to get a phone to market, approved for sale, and manage to keep it going, I'd be shocked. They may, but I highly doubt they can do what they want at that pricepoint. The other phone that went this route was oneplus and they are flagship level prices.
That you are tracked is a given. How you are tracked and with what info is what changes. Unless you plan to scrub all your digital traffic on every device, its better just to look after the things you can control, good password hygiene, limit info, lock down your credit. If you are worried about being profiled, well, its already happened. Facebook does "shadow" profiles for people who should exist, but don't have an account. Basically if there is a void of info that should be a person, they can figure it out to a reasonable level, at least enough to be able to sell ads.

They don't need to roll out updates it's a full linux distro so updates will happen as they happen up stream.

Sid Post · Jul 29, 2019

Depends on what you are after. Cell Tower providers and Satelite phone services still know you are connecting to the network (which node) and when. Whether they know where it exits is a different topic.

If you want privacy from Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc. that is a different topic as well and can be addressed by a lot of different techniques and applications.

gadgetgeek · Jul 29, 2019

GermanyChris said:
They don't need to roll out updates it's a full linux distro so updates will happen as they happen up stream.

Wouldn't someone still need to package the updates to maintain hardware compatibility though? I'm not up on my linux, but someone still needs to make things happen, and I thought that process was a bit more involved with linux, or at least that the other OSes had streamlined that from the provider end.

GermanyChris · Jul 29, 2019

gadgetgeek said:
Wouldn't someone still need to package the updates to maintain hardware compatibility though? I'm not up on my linux, but someone still needs to make things happen, and I thought that process was a bit more involved with linux, or at least that the other OSes had streamlined that from the provider end.

Any piece of software compile arm64 will be available packaging doesn't take much happens every day all the time. This company was founded on free software ideals and sell other produces and all of it is FSF approved therefore the community is huge.

Having said that this phone isn't for everyone there will be few to no apps people are used to and it being a phone and free software only will make the issues doubly hard. This is a phone by nerds for nerds and it's expensive. They have zero economy of scale and the hardware in it has to be open as well I will say though that if this phone is built as well as their laptops it should last a good long time.

gadgetgeek · Jul 30, 2019

GermanyChris said:
Any piece of software compile arm64 will be available packaging doesn't take much happens every day all the time. This company was founded on free software ideals and sell other produces and all of it is FSF approved therefore the community is huge.

Having said that this phone isn't for everyone there will be few to no apps people are used to and it being a phone and free software only will make the issues doubly hard. This is a phone by nerds for nerds and it's expensive. They have zero economy of scale and the hardware in it has to be open as well I will say though that if this phone is built as well as their laptops it should last a good long time.

Cool, thanks for adding some real knowledge, all I had was speculation.

phatch · Aug 12, 2019

I've got one on order. But i run Linux as my daily PC so I'm used to the environment.