Quoting Rohan McLeod (rhn@jeack.com.au):
Assembled cogniscenti;
I'm interested in opinions and experiences with mobile-phone OS's alternative to Android;
Mu. (http://catb.org/jargon/html/M/mu.html) About smartphone security. Ahem: https://blog.torproject.org/mission-impossible-hardening-android-security-an... https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/replicant-developers-find-and-close-sams... Note that the key and unsolved challenge is the baseband controller, a remotely vulnerable blackbox device that prevents any smartphone OS, no matter how good and 100% ope source, from having reliable security against even a modestly funded opponent (such as, these days, a motivated medium-sized business). Personally, my interim solution is to _eschew_ smartphones and, for now, use a 2000s-decade Motorola 3g flipphone without any sensitive data on it and assume that the device could be compromised and put under remote control by a motivated opponent via its baseband chipset. Sensitive data I have remain entirely on other, non-cellular-based devices. The Tor Project people mentioned a clever workaround: Install/configure hardened Android such as they describe on a wifi-only tablet computer, and use it on cellular networks only via a separate (e.g., USB-connectable) mifi 'modem'. Which means that the baseband controller cannot compromise the Android device's security from underneath, and you can always just disconnect the mifi 'modem' any time you want to make sure it can't do anything with/to the tablet at all. want to Otherwise, IMO, cellular device 'security' is a mirage.