Re:Your Phone Is Your Castle
by g_p on Monday September 14, 2020 @05:06AM
(#24468197)
While I agree with this, I fear it requires legislative action. Third party doctrine effectively says you have no reasonable expectation of privacy (in the US) if data is transferred to a third party voluntarily.
That means most cloud or other "hosted" systems (which smart devices and phones have become near inexorably tied to, for the average user) offer users no expectation of privacy.
To regain this, you'd have to avoid backups to the cloud, or using any hosted service... Not easy for most users when it comes to email, or even storage. That seems to be the first logical step.
(And yes, I know end to end encryption can help, but usability is the issue for users here - end users aren't good at remembering long high entropy passphrases, or keeping bits of paper with recovery keys safe without being lost)
That means most cloud or other "hosted" systems (which smart devices and phones have become near inexorably tied to, for the average user) offer users no expectation of privacy.
To regain this, you'd have to avoid backups to the cloud, or using any hosted service... Not easy for most users when it comes to email, or even storage. That seems to be the first logical step.
(And yes, I know end to end encryption can help, but usability is the issue for users here - end users aren't good at remembering long high entropy passphrases, or keeping bits of paper with recovery keys safe without being lost)