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A security company called Trustlook has discovered that Android phones made by 43 Chinese manufacturers have a piece of spyware pre-installed. The spyware in question sends text messages (content, not metadata), call logs, contact lists and location information to a Chinese firmware company, Adups. Most of those manufacturers are small and almost unknown, but the list also includes Archos, ZTE and Lenovo.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3152012/ ... -apps.html

I have a two year old ZTE and from the start I was very suspicious of the amount of traffic generated by some of the pre-installed Chinese only system apps, so I made the switch to a CyanoGen based ROM developed by an Italian -- behold the marvels of globalization...

I think my wife uses an Orange branded ZTE... I'll ask the Chinese if she's compromised in any way...

SYSTEM wrote:Android phones made by 43 Chinese manufacturers have a piece of spyware pre-installed

Very frustrating. I hope Cyanogen keeps coming to the rescue on so many of these issues but at some point either their support can't cover all devices or firmware tools will start blocking it.

webfork wrote:I hope Cyanogen keeps coming to the rescue ....

Seems doubtful https://cyngn.com/blog/cyanogen-services-shutting-down

lintalist wrote:Seems doubtful https://cyngn.com/blog/cyanogen-services-shutting-down

That's disappointing.

webfork wrote:

lintalist wrote:Seems doubtful https://cyngn.com/blog/cyanogen-services-shutting-down

That's disappointing.

• Some encouraging news:
  
  • CyanogenMod Is Dead, and Its Successor is Lineage OS
    http://lifehacker.com/cyanogenmod-is-de ... 1790554964

Librem 5 – A Security and Privacy Focused Phone @ https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/
Quick facts

• Does not run Google Android
• Does not run Apple iOS
• Runs PureOS by default, can run most GNU+Linux distributions
• World’s first ever IP-native mobile handset
• End-to-end encrypted decentralized communications via Matrix
• 5″ screen
• Security focused by design
• Privacy protection by default
• Works with 2G/3G/4G, GSM, UMTS, and LTE networks
• CPU separate from Baseband
• Hardware Kill Switches for Camera, Microphone, WiFi/Bluetooth, and Baseband

Planned delivery - January 2019

Somewhat related: Samsung phones soon can run true GNU/Linux distributions, article on Ghacks:
https://www.ghacks.net/2017/11/08/samsu ... ributions/

I'm not optimistic about the Librem 5 phone as there are a lot of efforts that have come before it, but I'm glad someone's trying. The Samsung effort meanwhile sounds great.

I hope they succeed anyway, or at least some of their ideas (the kill switches) - another alternative mobile OS - if you have a Sony Xperia phone that is - is Sailfish OS, an OS you have to buy - currently only in selected countries more info at https://jolla.com/

Also: from KDE Plasma developer "4 reasons why the librem 5 got funded" https://vizzzion.org/blog/2017/10/4-rea ... ot-funded/