Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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Is pixel 4a too old for a new phone? (lemmy.world)

submitted 4 months ago by Dop@lemmy.world to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

124 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Hi,

A friend wants to degoogle his phone, so I suggested the OS I'm currently using. The one we can't talk about... He wants a small/compact phone, so I suggested pixel 4a (not buying second hand though), but I'm afraid that planned obsolescence may kill the phone rather soon. What's your opinion?

Cheers and thank you for your help,

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[–] AnxiousDuck@feddit.it 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Can someone explain to me under what circumstances would using an old phone be risky (under a common reasonable threat model)?

[–] tty5@lemmy.world 4 points 4 months ago (2 children)

No security fixes once the device reaches end of life. For pixel 4a end of security updates was 10 months ago. That mostly is a problem with malicious apps - there were some privilege escalation bugs in those 10 months - but sometimes you get a banger that can get exploited by simply loading a page or opening an image.

[–] ReveredOxygen@sh.itjust.works 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Wouldn't those be typically handled at an OS level? If you're using an OS that actually gets updates, you're only vulnerable to attacks at the kernel or driver level

[–] tty5@lemmy.world 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

If you are on stock software on EOL device you are not getting os updates either.

Also a bunch of recent vulns were in SoC specific stuff - outside os.

[–] AnxiousDuck@feddit.it 2 points 4 months ago

I get it about malicious apps but what about just using mainstream apps and surfing the web with adblockers?