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.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
Don't promote proprietary software
Try to keep things on topic
If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
Be nice :)

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How on earth is Google allowed to lock android using FRP and force everyone to sign-up using their phone number. Where is the EU ? (self.privacy)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by erranto to c/[email protected]

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I was looking at buying a new android device with either android 12 or 13. and I wasn't ready to see how all phones shipping with these versions have forced sign-up using a mandatory phone number. the step cannot be skipped , and workarounds are very tedious and sometimes require a PC.

Where is the EU when you need them. how is it acceptable to force people to sign-up to your spying software when they want to acquire a smartphone?

Are there no laws in place to forbid this type of bundling between hardware and forced subscriptions ??

Are there any privacy non profit organization that can take them to court ?

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[–] DrunkRobotMan 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Windows is becoming like what you report: you are forced to cough up an email address or phone number just to get it running

You can actually install windows 11 without a Microsoft account, but it is not at all obvious how to do it. You have to be disconnected from WiFi, run some commands in CMD, and reboot the computer. Then, and only then, the windows 11 installer will allow you to bypass the Microsoft account setup.

Edit: I know because I recently did this

[–] JubilantJaguar 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Yeah I did hear about this workaround. But really, I resent being made to jump thru hoops like this, and so do you. Besides, we all know the deal with obscure loopholes - they end up being closed as soon as few enough people are using them. So at what point are we going to refuse to play these games?

As an intermediate step, I'd say the best option right now is sabotage. Play Microsoft's game but give them a fake useless email. If and when the email validation step comes, then we should create and use fake useless email accounts. All while making sure to gum up their systems with as much fake useless data of other kinds whenever it is asked for, of course.

Other option: get organized and have a LInux boot USB ready before buying the computer. That solves the whole issue.

[–] DrunkRobotMan 1 points 1 year ago

Absolutely agree! It's really sad that I need windows for work, otherwise I would've fully committed to linux already.