The question remains open: WHAT has been done in SFOS that makes it confidential? We are discussing only the principles of ensuring security, and not the specific steps taken by the developers of SFOS.
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I don’t think that cooperation with the Russians could somehow provide additional security. Everything depended on the agreement, on the NDA. Who knows what they could have added there together.
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True! That’s also a possibility.
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Define confidential. I don’t think that is an applicable or even correct term here.
This reads like you want to continue the current general discussion. I do not, and i hope that’s what you really meant to say.
SFOS is “fundamentally uninterested in your data”.
This is all the privacy respecting one needs.
Supplementing this it has regular bog-standard permission handling for things like contacts, passwords and whatnot.
As for active measures, there is basically only one to my knowledge - it runs native apps in firejail to do whitelist permissions rather than blacklist permissions. So lots of things that apps don’t need to be accessing is plain just not there for them.
The Android runtime is in a container, so anything going on there can’t break out into the real OS.
It has VPN support too of course, but that’s just a tool like any other - contrary to popular marketing they are not magic cloaking devices.
Security is not a feature, it’s designed in. Not to be confused with buzzword over-hyped countermeasures.
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Use maximum means to manage application restrictions. Ability to flexibly configure, for example, provide access to contacts, but not to SMS. Is this in SFOS?
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Provide tools so that to identify a user in a crowd, you have to use expensive big data. Confuse those who are trying to track me by technical means. Complicate it as much as possible. Yes, a random MAC is one of such means, but it is not the only means. And yes, other OS have had it for quite a long time, it is not an individual need.
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Distinguish applications from each other. They should not know what other applications are installed on the device.
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Stop attempts to make an OS fingerprint.
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Provide a firewall, the ability to view network requests of applications, block by mask.
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Careful moderation of applications in the official store. Removal of old, unsupported applications.
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Display some indicator on the screen if the camera is activated.
This is the first thing that comes to mind.
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If you have to override what the application asked for you have already lost (in that you are using an untrustworthy application, and worse, insist on combining it with anything else). You need to recalibrate your expectations to what open source means.
Just turn off WiFi if you are so inclined. Mac spoofing alone does not do much good - it’s a gimmick.
Again, you already lost with using untrustworthy applications in the first place.
Of course it has a normal firewall.
Having to mess with what individual apps are allowed to do like is fashionable on Android… again, you already lost by putting yourself in that situation.
That one is pretty basic, for sure. Speaking as an actual developer.
Now this actually isn’t half stupid. But i know too little about the architecture to know if that could be done properly or would just be a circumventable gimmick.
Sooner or later i will revisit cellular protocol logging and we might be able have something akin to https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.srlabs.snoopsnitch&hl=en&pli=1
Though many of the problems that’s originally built to guard against are actually solved [for modern technologies]. The question is what remains.
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So, is SFOS confidentiality just words?.. The best protection is to simply not turn on your smartphone, or ideally not buy one at all?
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You did not define what you mean with that term. It’s not like it is an industry standard one in the context you use it.
Insisting to use shoddy apps and then fight them for each and every privacy problem they bring is a fight doomed to fail. If this is your primary definition of what you want (since you keep coming back to it), you will find no solution anywhere. Only gimmick nonsense claiming to help.
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But the developers of SFOS claim that it is their OS that protects privacy. And not the fact that there are so few applications for their OS that no one needs to collect analytics through them.
— Billy?
— Yes, Harry?
— What was that, Billy?
— It was the Uncatchable Joe, Harry.
— But why is he called the Uncatchable Joe, Billy?
— Because nobody has caught him yet, Harry.
— And why nobody has caught him yet, Billy?
— Because nobody is catching him, Harry.
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This is the essence what I gather from this strange discussion: You come from a distorted world, where you use apps which track your behaviour etc. and as countermeasures you use other apps which promise to alleviate that (which they cannot really, because a stock Android and iOS prevent them to perform tasks at OS level). This is a cat and mouse game you cannot win against Meta etc. And you do not have the slightest chance against Google or Apple, because their OSes control you, not you them.
If you insist on using Android apps from other sources than F-Droid, you already gave up privacy. “Privacy-enhanced” AOSP derivatives as GrapheneOS, CopperheadOS, CalyxOS, DivestOS may slightly alleviate some things locally, but will not (because they cannot) prevent any corporation from tracking you across their services, starting with things as simple that your requests come from the same IP address, to more sophisticated tracking mechanisms.
What SailfishOS offers you is control over the OS and the ability to customise everything. Additionally, if you know Linux / Unix well, to have basically the same environment on your phone as on your desktop or laptop computer.
And yes, privacy is primarily the lack of surveillance. You seem to take surveillance as given and believe that a set of tools can alleviate that: No they cannot, if the OS and / or the apps you are using are spying on you.
The decisive point you have not revealed yet is, what do you want to do with this smartphone? Make calls, write e-mails and SMS? Or use Meta’s original Facebook app?
P.S.: As @attah already denoted, most of these “privacy enhancing mechanisms” as e.g. MAC-address randomisation are of very limited utility, mostly just a security / privacy show which also bears some drawbacks, if you look more closely what they technically do. E.g. MAC-address randomisation prevents a router (usually a WLAN / WiFi router) to recognise your device again, but only if that router does not use other fingerprinting mechanisms; consequently its utility is minimal. IMO it is better to generally not contact WLAN access points you do not trust.
The same line of arguments can be applied to other “privacy enhancing mechanisms”.
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We constantly discuss the issue of privacy in a broad sense. But that’s not what the topic is about. It doesn’t matter what software I use. The question first of all is what tools does SFOS specifically provide so that its creators can call the OS protecting user privacy?
Let’s say I need some highly specialized software that takes photographs. But this software, in addition to access to the camera, for some reason asks for access to the Internet, requests access to contacts and phone numbers, and geolocation. Then I am surprised to find out that the geolocation is included in the photo, and my entire phone book is stored in the metadata. And I send this photo somewhere, completely unaware that I am leaking complete information about myself.
What will an OS offer that cares about user privacy? It will invite me to decide for myself what rights to grant. I can refuse to grant all rights except direct access to the camera. I can also choose to have the phone book contacts for this app generated randomly, as well as geographic coordinates. And turn off Internet access altogether, because I send a photo via messenger or e-mail.
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Why would someone use such an application? You have to trust the application you use. Do you trust all your Android hiding apps? Do you trust Android itself? How can an apo hide some information from the system if it diesn’t have the same rights as the system is it running on? If you want to use Googke ir Metas software you need to trust them, if you don’t, do not use it.
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You look at the situation very simply. For example, there are banks that do not have a web version of their personal account. There are work applications imposed by management from above. Ultimately, we again move away from the topic of a specific OS declaring itself confidential to the topic of confidentiality in general. I don’t want to get to the point of discussing which mask is best to wear so that the street camera doesn’t recognize me by my face. That’s not what this topic is about.
I don’t think that i’m looking simply at the situation. If i couldn’t use my bank account like i want, i would switch the bank. I also wouldn’t use my private phone at work if i have to use software i don’t trust i would buy a cheap android phone just for work.
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And 3 other things you didn’t think of, or with underdeveloped permission handling, plus their own secret-sauce fingerprinting. By using such an app you already lost. Demanding band-aid levels of compensating for it is not productive. Geolocation alone would have been reasonable as a feature (and of course comes with an off-switch since forever).
Again, you are misusing this word to mean something you made up. Define it or use something established. Jolla never used this term.
No, it is you being upset that Jolla isn’t handing out masks that keeps the conversation going in that direction. I.e. completely missing the point that needing them in the fist place is nucking futs - and gate analysis is a thing.
You are demanding to be facilitated in walking down that one camera-laden shithole with clown-shoes and a ski mask. We are building nice things elsewhere instead.
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After analyzing the responses, I came to the conclusion that the SFOS does not have any tools to ensure privacy at all. All solutions come down to external ones: a separate phone for each application, change jobs, change banks.
I also come to the conclusion that Android, despite the fact that it is made by a corporation that makes money by selling personal data, is currently a much safer system because it can do everything within a single device. Even separate containers that completely isolate applications from each other. I am not even talking about monitoring traffic and application access rights, this is self-evident.
Well, that’s what I wanted to know. Thank you all for your answers! The topic can be closed.
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I suppose you need an Android emulator (or fork) full of gimmicks to control application behaviors and provide misleading information to daily use apps you can’t avoid, not an OS different from Android. Flyme claimed to have some privacy features such as giving fake locations and empty contacts, but I doubt the system itself collects more data than Google. Maybe going for a trusted software company for security solutions helps you more.
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When your bank and workplace finally implement rectal identity checking, remember this day - when you gave up on being part of an alternative.
Or maybe you will just demand someone make better rubber asses…
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I just wanted to understand how SFOS compares to other OS, how to hide from big brother is a question for another topic. 
You apply everything to me, and I just give you examples from the real world (and there are many, many more). It seems that SFOS is so lacking in any functionality that it shapes the thinking of its users, and they, the users, have never had the need to launch anything other than a calculator. Therefore, they are surprised that such a topic was created by someone - who would need such things? Right? Banking applications? Social networks? For them, there is a PC, and a phone is only for making calls.
Therefore, I do not want to develop the topic further.
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