[kwlug-disc] phone privacy news

[Doug Moen]

Not being an iPhone user, I had no idea that Apple displays ads on the iPhone, using personal data they gather to choose what ads to display. Bloomberg says Apple is planning to expand the scope of its on-phone advertising.
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-08-14/apple-aapl-set-to-expand-advertising-bringing-ads-to-maps-tv-and-books-apps-l6tdqqmg

In other news, we all know that turning on the LTE radio on your phone exposes you to tracking by cell phone service operators. (That's why I keep my phone in airplane mode when I'm not using it.) But there is a solution to this problem in development.

     https://invisv.com/articles/pretty-good-phone-privacy.html

Some university researchers have discovered a way to protect the privacy of your phone when the LTE radio is turned on. In order to implement their trick, they needed to set up themselves up as an MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator). You install special software on your Android phone, and all of your cellphone data traffic is routed through their MVNO. Their hack ensures that the IMSI that uniquely identifiers your phone to the network is changed regularly, and is decoupled from the stable user identity that they need for billing your account for cell usage. WIth their setup, they physically have no ability to track your phone. It works on GrapheneOS and CalyxOS (I didn't ask about other Android OSS distros, but probably yes).

There are limitations.
 * It's data only, no voice or text. You can use services that run over the internet for those other things.
 * Their business only offers service in the U.S., and in those European countries where it is legal for a U.S. company to offer these services to European customers.
 * The whole system has yet to be audited by a third party that I trust. There are multiple unanswered questions on Lobste.rs and Hacker News that I would like to see answers for.
 * No iPhone support, because Apple doesn't allow this.

Discussions:
 * https://lobste.rs/s/u3by7e/pgpp_pretty_good_phone_privacy_beta
 * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32429419

So it's a positive development, but not fully baked yet.
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