this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2024
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DeGoogle Yourself

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submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by azerial@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/degoogle@lemmy.ml
 

I, switched from Google FI because of lack of customer support and services that were getting less and less, but more costly and costly. I went to T-Mobile. Good service, much the same as Google fi is a first party mvno. Anyway I use a private dns. NextDns. T-Mobile had no clue what a dns was and the super had to Google it. They SEVERELY THROTTLE if you use next dns.

I HATE THAT. What do you use as privacy conscious individuals?

edit: not that! What

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[–] TheButtonJustSpins@infosec.pub 8 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Mint Mobile, though that's more as a wallet conscious individual. I VPN back home for DNS while I'm out.

[–] azerial@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 4 months ago

That might be what I'll have to do.

[–] Andromxda@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Couldn't you just use a VPN? Hiding your IP address also increases your privacy. Mullvad VPN is one of the best, most private and trustworthy VPNs, and it's just 5 bucks a month. You don't even need an email address to sign up, and you can pay anonymously with crypto.

[–] azerial@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 3 months ago

Sounds like that's the way I'll have to go. Unfortunate, I hate increased layers of complexity, but I think that's the move.

[–] shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 3 points 4 months ago

Controld. Just set the free one in your systems private DNS section.

[–] cyberic@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I use Tailscale on TMobile that connects to my home network as an exitnode, which allows me to use the DNS configured in my home router.

[–] azerial@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

That sounds ideal, but I don't currently have the resources to set up a home network. :⁠-⁠\

[–] ____@infosec.pub 1 points 3 months ago

No reason it has to literally live 'at home' - you could just as easily use a VPS via LowEndBox for five or six bucks a month, though of course trust in providers varies widely.

[–] j4k3@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I disable all data and still have issues with T-Mobile garbage. Metro was better for me but I got forced into a family plan with these scumbags as a provider. T is constantly trying to gain WiFi access without consent. My whitelist drops them every few minutes even with 5g and data off. They are like the nonconsensual anal of service providers IMO.

[–] shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Sounds like you're using one of their phones with their applications or something on it. I don't have their application on my device and run lineage and I don't get that stuff.

[–] j4k3@lemmy.world 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Graphene, with no google, no extra garbage either. You're likely getting the same thing too. It's why I mentioned the issue. Not many people actually monitor their logs, and fewer whitelist their network.

[–] azerial@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Right, it's like the commentor above asking why I would use a private dns. Check the logs. I posted a screenshot above. A private dns is a great tool.

[–] j4k3@lemmy.world 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

When you say private DNS, I don't think you have a way of determining what connections are made with the cellular modem. Please correct me if you have a better understanding than I do, or a better understanding of the real scope of potential threat actors. I do not inherently trust government, business, carrier, server infrastructure, or hardware manufacturer. I do not mean to sound like a conspiracy theorist or paranoid. I simply hold a mild skepticism and use my awareness as a foothold for learning casually.

As far as I know, all cell modems are binary black boxes, as are all SOCs, so their operations are untrusted in any absolute sense. Indeed, this is how Graphene OS describes their posturing and coding practices, as untrusting in the hardware, and their reasoning for only supporting devices with a Trusted Protection Module similar to UEFI Secure Boot on personal computers.

I have no mechanism to absolutely monitor the connections from the cellular modem, because they have a lower ring access to the hardware than I do. Everything could easily pass through a forked pipe and I would never know about it or have any way to detect this.

The reason mobile devices are shipped with orphaned kernels are many, such as theft of ownership through planned obsolescence. However another key factor is subcontracted software development where there is no ongoing development or support. The development is not some ongoing thing. They only patch the orphan kernel in cases where they are forced to do so. All custom ROMs except those that are based on a TPM chip are using CVE exploits on these ancient orphaned kernels to gain root access to the device. The entire business model is a skyscraper built on a foundation of swiss cheese. Cellular carriers have proven that they take security about as serious as a crack whore views abstinence, and still, I feel like I should apologize to crack whores everywhere for that comparison.

So if the hardware is neglected and designed for profiteering (legal piracy), the connection itself is untrusted, and the connection maker is an absolute shit show of bad actors and clowns, I simply try and avoid all connections through them most of the time. At least in this case, if they are running a forked pipe or other nonsense, they are clearly doing so illegally as I have used every tool available to me in an effort to maintain my autonomy and rights to citizenship in a democracy when that right is being stolen by this neo digital feudalism and digital slavery used for exploitation and manipulation of the third pillar of democracy Judicial/Legislative/Informative Press aka freedom of information. With only two relevant web crawlers that all search engines query directly or indirectly, there is no freedom of information. These results are not deterministic and there us no transparency about how they bias or bowdlerise results. Data mining stalkerware is at the scale of individual manipulative potential as is the potential of compute.

I'd love to feel confident that this all adds up to some remote and unlikely chance of no merit, but I simply can't see an intuitive reason why stalkerware is so damn profitable or even viable when everyone I know never clicks on ads of any kind, and yet we seem to be a primary target of such systems. The ads and targeting do not align entirely to the bottom 5% of stupid people like I would expect if they were driving the cycle by themselves. The stalkerware practices do not seem to align with commercial interests alone like what I expect from open market capitalism, thus implying some other mechanism at play. While it's speculative and broadly correlative, something seems fishy in this mixed bag of garbage, so I chose to keep the bag at arm's length out of caution. I don't fault others for their priorities or think anyone should adopt my perspective or values. I just don't see how a private DNS alters the landscape when it comes to cellular data connections run by dystopian clowns. However, I have a whitelist firewall on a third party device and rarely leave home. It is easy for me to maintain that connection.

[–] ____@infosec.pub 1 points 3 months ago

Visible has worked well for me recently - it's wholly owned by VZW as I recall, and exclusively uses their network. In most areas, VZW is objectively the best coverage of any carrier.

$30/mo and I have yet to see throttling, even with heavy use. It "just works".

Yes, I'm effectively handing that data to VZW, but I have no illusions that any MVNO I chose would behave any differently. One way or another, they're all reselling the same 3 carriers, who by definition must have some base level of access to your data.

VPNs go a long way towards mitigating that, but using a carrier is likely to leak some level of data. While I have a great deal of respect for RMS, my own life doesn't really fit within his internet usage model and I'm forced to make choices. (Sacrifices, really, but informed ones.)

[–] WhyFlip@lemmy.world 0 points 4 months ago (2 children)

On Google Fi now. What support did you find lacking? What services got "less and less"?

What's "mvno"? Why do you use a private DNS provider?

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 6 points 4 months ago

Yeah I'm not a huge fan of Google, but Fi has never treated me wrong. My bill was cut down to a third of what my Verizon bill was when I joined 7 years ago, and I don't think I've had any increases in that time. Their support is shit, I'll admit that. My card was stolen and I told them how I'd been a customer for (at the time) 5 years, never missed a payment, and that when my new card came I'd pay the past due amount happily - and they threatened to suspend my service.

That being said, all carriers are terrible, it's a lesser of multiple evils game.

[–] azerial@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

A mvno is a Mobile Virtual Network Operator, thus MVNO. They don't own the network, they lease it.

I use a private dns for privacy. I don't like my data and metrics being shared without my consent. It also blocks ads. Win win

edit: they had some sort of billing issue with me where my bill was consistently 40-50+ bucks over what it should be. So it would be correct one month then the next it would be like 200 bucks and back and forth. When I called, the garbage support had zero clue, and now that I have cancelled, they say they owe me 40 bucks. When I went to pay my bill, it was always 2 payments. Why? I called, again no clue. They did away with Google pass, well you want to know what they also did away with? The insurance on my phone and didn't tell me. So with i needed it, I was not insured. Cool. Hard pass for me.

Edit: here's an example of why a private dns is useful:

[–] WhyFlip@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Good reason to leave any service provider. Fortunately, I haven't had any issues so far.

As for DNS, I do run pi-hole which has been great over the years at blocking a lot of the telemetry on my network. I would by no means consider my network "private" though.

[–] azerial@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 4 months ago

Ooo a pihole! That's on the list.