this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2024
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DeGoogle Yourself

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The technical mechanism:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.devicelock

update


To be clear, I am not the OP who experienced this problem. I just linked them from here.

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[–] marathon@liberdon.com -1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

@coffeeClean
Won't disabling that not allow me to find my device and to disable the phone remotely if stolen?

[–] coffeeClean@infosec.pub 1 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Probably. But if you want that anti-theft feature, I wonder if you could disable it and then install another app for that which serves you alone. Whatever you install probably wouldn’t be baked into the kernel but probably a good trade-off.

[–] marathon@liberdon.com -1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

@coffeeClean
I don't know but that article probably only applies to 'murica, if it's even accurate. I'm doubtful. Doesn't apply to Canada, that's illegal practice hete I'm sure.

[–] coffeeClean@infosec.pub 1 points 7 months ago

I think the author said he was in Australia.. but he felt like it’s an encroachment by the US in some way.

[–] marathon@liberdon.com -1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

@coffeeClean Not sure. I wonder if these other roms support the crypto in the Google Pixel chip or support the camera well. Somehow I doubt it. 15 years ago I was into playing with custom roms, but they usually didn't support the hardware completely, especially the camera. I mean it would work, but the quality wasn't good as the native rom.

[–] coffeeClean@infosec.pub 1 points 7 months ago

I wouldn’t choose a custom rom on the sole basis of anti-theft. My ½-baked suggestion was simply disable the playstore framework (so it’s present but just dead code) and installing an app on the side.

Anyway, I have no interest in anti-theft bricking myself. I don’t envision ever having a phone where i would care about the hardware and would not likely spend more than $50 on a phone. Exceptionally I could one day get a Fairphone. But remote bricking does not tempt me. Making the phone a brick more quickly gets the phone into a landfill as it becomes useless for everyone.

It’s worth noting why phones get stolen. Even cheap phones are getting stolen. It’s not for the hardware. It’s because SIM registration makes it hard for criminals to get anonymous burner chips. So they steal phones just for GSM chips that are registered to someone else.