Imagine a day without dozens of geo-tagging cameras, wide spectrum microphones, and micro-location sensors monitoring everything that you do.
Imagine books, maps, and dictionaries made out of paper instead of super-retina displays. Imagine relationships made out of heart-beating humans instead of Tinder scam bots.
Believe it or not, all those radical things are still within reach.
Want more privacy? Then do more of what humans do. Human nature is naturally private.
But I digress. This is an article about phones. So let me start again with a humble caveat.
I’ve learned a thing or two about privacy over the years, but I’m no expert. This article may have inaccuracies and omissions. You may not like my views on some things. If that happens, don’t get your panties in a twist. Email me and change my mind.
Back to the question at hand.
How can we reclaim our privacy in a world that’s drowning in smartphones?
In theory, it could be as simple as getting rid of them, right?
But simple doesn’t necessarily mean it’s easy. To survive and thrive without a smartphone you probably need to:
- Live in a non-Westernized location. Billions of people are still unbanked in the so-called developing countries. Entire economies still run on cash. You can function in those worlds the old fashioned way. Even without Apple Pay.
- Live away from big cities. Smaller towns and villages are easy to navigate and get to where you want to go. Even without Uber.
- Have a fixed home base, so you can know your terrain and remember where everything is. Even without Google Maps.
If you meet these criteria, you can, and should, live without a smartphone. Keep a dumb-phone handy for emergencies and if you’re serious about it all, get a ham radio.
As it stands, however, the vast majority of people are beholden to their smartphone: their public transport needs contactless payments, their supermarket needs QR codes, their bank is mobile-only, and the vast expanse of their city needs Uber and Google Maps.
A smartphone is the price of admission to some parts – the ugly parts – of modernity.
So, if using smartphones is a necessarily evil, is there anything – anything at all – we can do to protect our freedom and privacy?
That’s a simple question, isn’t it?
See, most people out there are busy running their lives. They don’t have the time or inclination for technical deep dives. They just want simple answers.
The emergence of privacy phones is just that: a simple product in response to a simple market demand. But before you reach for your wallet, please understand:
A privacy phone won’t move the needle for you.
Not if you are on Facebook, Google, Instagram, Whatsapp, TikTok, Tinder, Uber, and so on. It really won’t.
Here is what a privacy phone is not: a magical solution to privacy.
“Okay, okay, I get it. Privacy phones are not a panacea. So what on earth are they good for?”
Glad you asked.
The makings of a privacy phone
Privacy phones are for those who are aware of what smartphones truly are: a rug-pull; a Trojan horse; a pill of tyranny, sweetened with some trivial utility for the unwashed masses. Yes, they help you order pizza, find a date, and pay at the supermarket, but all those niceties are nothing but cheese on a mouse trap.
The singular goal of smartphones is to track, monitor, and geolocate you 24/7. Airplane mode won’t help. Switching it off won’t do much either – no wonder you can’t remove the battery, right?
What privacy phones attempt to do is relieve those problems. Remember, they don’t solve them; at best, they mitigate them. Surveillance is a symptom of tyranny. Tweaking our smartphones is not gonna fix tyranny – just sayin’.
Ok, with our expectations set, let’s take a closer look at 3 types of privacy phones.
1. Disposable “whatchamacallit” handsets
Just walk into any physical store and buy an old smartphone. Switch it on, avoid logging into any accounts and you’re good to go.
“Wait a minute,” you say. “That doesn’t sound like a private phone.”
Hear me out.
Anonymity is way more important than privacy. Why? Because no product or app can guarantee your privacy. Indeed, privacy is compromised all the time.
Privacy breaches often happen under the guise of innocent software bugs that expose unintended yet very convenient backdoors which are exploited well before those bugs are discovered. It’s called plausible deniability and your favorite privacy tech is not impervious to it.
Don’t believe me? Just follow the money.
Many privacy projects are funded by the very entities they claim to protect us from. All you need to do is click on their funding page and keep pulling the string of convoluted foundations and non-profits. It’s all about human rights, until it isn’t.
In any case, privacy is at best elusive. Anonymity, on the other hand, is under your control.
As long as you don’t tie your real identity to anything you do on that phone, then any privacy loss is not a showstopper. And because you are using old, second-hand handsets, they are semi-disposable too.
Which brings us back to the advantage of anonymity over privacy. The former can be achieved for free; the latter not so.
Privacy may require tools, and money to pay for those tools even if they don’t work. Anonymity is different.
You’d be surprised at how far you can go without logging into any account on a smartphone. The iPhone comes pre-installed with Maps, Safari, and Camera, all ready to go without an iCloud account. On Android you can download software from alternative app stores. You can even sideload the in
