[uph]

> People with security, budget and privacy concern go for flip phones.

No. That ensures you can't send encrypted messages or do encrypted calls.

Also see one of the reasons Signal moved to sending encrypted messages as data and stopped supporting encrypted messages sent as sms.

> SMS and MMS are a security disaster. They leak all possible metadata 100% of the time to thousands of cellular carriers worldwide. It's common to think of SMS/MMS as being "offline" or "peer to peer," but the truth is that SMS/MMS messages are still processed by servers--the servers are just controlled by the telcos. We don't want the state-run telcos in Saudi, Iran, Bahrain, Belarus, China, Egypt, Cuba, USA, etc... to have direct access to the metadata of TextSecure users in those countries or anywhere else.

https://whispersystems.org/blog/goodbye-encrypted-sms/

[jacquesm]

Well, they at least they no longer leak them to the servers of every application provider on their smartphone.

[uph]

Apps on your smartphone only get access to your messages if you give them permission.

[jacquesm]

Apps routinely ask for many more permissions than they have reason to and users have been conditioned to just 'get it over with'. Technically you are right, in practice users hand over the keys to the kingdom without a moments pause to think of the implications.

Now, you could of course argue that they only have themselves to blame.

[uph]

I'd argue that if someone wants to get a flip phone for privacy reasons they should be able to not download shady apps and give them permissions without thinking.

[jacquesm]

Flip phones have some of the best protections available: the sensors aren't there. You can't leak your location if there is no GPS module in your phone, you can't have your camera hacked if there is no camera and so on.

I'd prefer all this stuff came with physical switches so it can be enabled/disabled in a hack-proof manner.

[icebraining]

You can't leak your location if there is no GPS module in your phone

While not as precise, you can definitively leak your location by scanning for the surrounding cell towers, especially in a city, which usually have hundreds or thousands of them (Manhattan alone has eleven, for example). I used to run a Python script on my Nokia phone that logged the tower ID, and I could reliable tell when I got to work, home, etc.

And that's just for people who control your phone. Your operator has U-TDOA¹, which is typically accurate to 50m.

The camera part is true, but tape is cheap :)

¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U-TDOA

[uph]

Location tracking is possible without GPS module https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone_tracking

What's your threat model? https://ssd.eff.org/en/module/introduction-threat-modeling

For most people mass surveillance is a more realistic threat than the NSA hacking their camera.