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[ 8 minute read ]
The Dead Chickens and the Runes
I won't keep evidencing my paranoia about who is listening to us. However, I bought my first SmartPhone yesterday, a Samsung Galaxy A32 with 5G capability. It is the first time I have ever been able to delve into the permissions that a SmartPhone gives to third party data miners. It took me about two hours, a beginner in where to look, to find where the permissions all lie. Of course, they don't lie, as in not telling the truth because they very much tell it how it is to Google on my phone. I have switched off permissions for everything I can find, including apps making changes to the system and running in the background. I am not sure, but I think that when someone's voice goes weird during a telephone call it is because permissions and apps running in the background are taking up a lot of the bandwidth. However, if I want to receive text messages I must allow Google to read them through Google Play. Of course, I removed the permissions from as many apps as I could find that seek to know the phone's location and 'maps'.
Google Play always knows what the person carrying my phone is doing; running; walking; cycling; in a car, train, boat, or aircraft. That means: predictions can be made as to my arrival time somewhere, by bad actors accessing my phone's system; that means in the first instance, Google. I cannot deny Google Play this if I want to be able to read text messages. Why does this matter? Because my choice in what I might buy along a course to a destination would be compromised by an ad payer using Google as a conduit to reach me with a message. Or someone might meet me along the route. Take for example Google's new phone that has an advertising message for it that says 'If the answer is on your phone, why not let your phone give the answer.' or something close to that. I have a text message from you asking for a business quote, so now I have your telephone number. 'Where does your mother live?' or 'What is your mum's telephone number?' Clearly, Google have no qualms about sharing personal information. If they don't share it, they will let you do it!
Good Crikeyness! I think it is probably too late for nearly everyone to recover from their openness or lack of paranoia, because even someone like me who already had a good idea of how easy it is to give information away, copied my contacts from a DumbPhone onto a Sim and then inserted that Sim into a Smartphone. Stupid me. Needless to say, once I realised my mistake, I took the Sim out again, and it is back in the DumbPhone. I will have to figure out some way to sort this out securely. I will delete all the contacts from the Sim while it is in the DumbPhone; there is no recycle bin there. I tried doing that while it was in the SmartPhone but it sends it to a recycle bin; which is accessible from the internet or Google which lives in the phone.
My Galaxy A32 wants to connect with WiFi to download updates as a default setting. There is absolutely no chance that I let that happen. If someone has access to WiFi it is because they already have other digital devices with storage capabilities that connect to the same WiFi. My phone automatically seeks other devices. I turned both of those settings off, of course. I also turned off the capability to send and receive data through the phone network. I don't intend to use the internet on a wild device I cannot fully control yet, if ever. I suspect I will never master a SmartPhone, though.
My Galaxy A32 is a second hand phone. I had to buy a fast charger, just in case there is a national emergency during which each of us has only a very short period of access to electricity. For myself, since I almost never use a phone anyway, I can charge it from my three laptops, but it is REALLY slow (more than five hours from 66% to 100%). Despite spending about three hours looking for specs on the wattage output of the USB ports I am still none the wiser. I will have to buy a multimeter. My DumbPhone charger gives out almost 3 Watts. A fast charger gives out 15 or twenty, even 30 Watts.
All told, £128.64 for something that will just sit in a drawer until 3G is disconnected later this year.
O2, my telephone service provider would only sell me a phone if I buy a data, minutes and texts plan with it. The total amount to pay was about £30 each month. I already have unlimited minutes and texts and 40GB for £9.80 per month. Today, I will receive a GiffGaff Sim (SIM) with unlimited everything for a monthly charge of £15 per month. Incidentally, the charge for only the phone through O2 with their big price plan is less than £9 a month over three years. So, if I could negotiate with 02 I should have been able to get a deal with them for £24 per month. They won't do it though. In fact, they even said that in upgrading my phone I would have to have a new plan that would negate my current plan with my personal telephone number. I have been using SMARTY for my laptops unlimited data for £20 per month. They rented 'Three' space and so worked on their network and were hugely preferable to Vodafone, a service provider I was with for nine years. But lately, Vodafone had a lot of bottle-necks and pinch-points at certain times so online study became fraught with impatience and irritability. That meant no more study for the rest of the day for me; resentment.
SMARTY were great until Vodafone merged with Three and now SMARTY have the same periodic and frequent bottle-necks as Vodafone, because Vodafone fill up the bandwidth for efficiency reasons that negatively impacts on the customers (really, really low download speeds that are less than 0.3 Mbs - mega-bits per second. A Gigabit is more than a thousand times larger). So, the rolling monthly contract with SMARTY is gone in favour of an 18 month contract with GiffGaff using the O2 network. Unfortunately, I didn't do my homework and have come to realise that O2 is now experiencing network problems with their websites since merging with Virgin Media, who I think is the controlling influence in the takeover.
It is also a grave mistake to have two plans on the same network. If O2's network is taken out, I will lose both telephone and data accessibility simultaneously. Fortunately, I did take note that my contract with O2 ends in November this year, and I can, hopefully, find an alternative telephone and text provider; but we are rapidly running short of them. Soon, we will have a choice of only two, I suspect.
I understand now why it is so difficult for everyone to understand how they are coerced into revealing all their personal information. It starts with the telephone service provider, who are complicit with the phone manufacturers who have a deal with Google and other bad actors. You all don't have a chance. That isn't an 'us and them' comment or a patronising or contemptuous statement. I don't have a need to communicate with family or friends. I eshew contact like that. So, I have never just followed the lead of others around me. There is no delight in unpacking a personal and highly mobile talking device with internet capability, for me.
I am only concerned with functionability. I need to be able to function in an environment that is shaped by the phone service providers and their stakeholders, and the public. It became clear to me when I was talking to the O2 customer service person just how differently I see things. The customer service person kept telling me that I don't understand, "You already have 40GB data per month!" I do, but it is on a DumbPhone, it is never going to get used, even when the SIM eventually goes into a SmartPhone. She simply could not understand that I don't want unlimited everything on a new SmartPhone. The unlimited everything is for my laptops. I won't use WiFi, and being laptops, I can control how they work. Telephone service providers and phone manufacturers have no say on what data Google can mine on my laptops. I also never use Google as a search engine. I can go walkabout with a laptop and access the internet from anywhere and still preserve my personal security. It was unfathomable to her that a SmartPhone is not enough. It is not the answer that I think we are all looking for. It is the answer that data-miners are looking for.
If it is addictive it is bad for you, financially; emotionally; psychologically; and physically, and good for the controllers, or manufacturers. A rudimentary study of marketing tells us that.
Ordering stuff, especially food-stuffs, online allows us to be less active. Whoa! you say, 'I am busy and don't have the time to shop'. You don't get to meet real people outside of your bubble of work colleagues or family. That, I suggest, is expensive. The £128.64 (SmartPhone and Fast-charger) I spent on something that is now in a drawer is tiny compared to the price many people pay for their phones and the cost, in terms of impact, it has on their lives.
Just saying.
Now that I am aware of some of the complexities of digital social interaction and how difficult and time-consuming it is to safeguard ourselves, I shall not be posting anything on digital social interaction or protecting my personal data again. I apologise if my previous posts have been supercilious or conceited or even patronising. Let's face it, I have a blog that is accessible by the world population, and a website, to boot. I have set myself to never again be approached by GCHQ as being interestingly silent.
Anyone logged into the OU can email me if they want my weird opinion; Scroll up to the top of the page and click on 'view site entries', find any of my posts and click on my name at the start of the post to view my profile.