[toastal]

> your most private device

What? A smart phone is just a computer—they are the same thing. Everything from private chats to TOTP tokens are on both my phone and my laptop. The only difference is my bank cries if I’m rooted on my phone and says nothing about it on my laptop.

[themacguffinman]

A smartphone is a computer that is more involved in your private activities. For example, a phone is likely to be on your body when you move around the city and talk to other people so it is exposed to more private information about you than a stationary desktop will be.

[kuschku]

So don't keep location services on and don't give microphone/camera permissions to apps you don't trust?

You'll very likely have much more personal data (personal emails, tax returns, banking data, etc) on your PC than on a phone that's just got a few social media apps on it.

[amatecha]

Right, it's in your pocket while you are having private conversations, it's on the bedside table while you're... well, in bed. Surely this gets the point across. You probably don't ever want to be running some malicious actor's software on it.

[toastal]

You haven’t met me but my laptop basically goes everywhere with me and has for the last dozen years. It also has cameras and mics I have to deal with. And with 5G coming to laptops and how to get those speeds the signals have to target your device, we will always be tracked as long as we touch cell networks... just as you can being on WiFi or having an IP address. I don't feel my phone is closer to me in any way.

[hansel_der]

not to disagree, but imo the main point here is that almost everybody has a smartphone but only a minority has a desktop computer, so it makes sense to care mostly about the phone thingy.