News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on France legalizes remote camera and microphone activation in smartphones. Parent comment

Re:France legalizes remote camera and microphone activation ... by wkat4242 on Thursday June 08, 2023 @09:33AM (#36241617)
The camera I don't worry about so much. A 1 cent piece of duct tape is enough to deal with that. As I've done on laptops for years until manufacturers started listening and making sliders.

A microphone is much, much harder to block. It will hear through tape just fine. For a normal user who just wants privacy and doesn't want to pry open an expensive waterproof phone, what recourse do I have?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:France legalizes remote camera and microphone activation ... by yomlica8 on Thursday June 08, 2023 @02:49PM (#36246730)
There are those cheapo dummy plugs that present as a microphone when inserted into the 3.5mm slot, which mutes the main mic. Of course, this strikes me as a software behavior that could be overridden.

Other than that I think the pinephone and librem5 are the only phones I'm aware of that actually have hardware microphone switches.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:France legalizes remote camera and microphone activation ... by wkat4242 on Thursday June 08, 2023 @06:33PM (#36250165)
It is software behaviour in 95% of cases yes. At least on Android. iOS I don't know.

The Librem is ancient hardware for a top tier price and has a 20 week delivery time. The pinephone... Well yeah it's usable though the switches are under the back panel and can't be moved by hand, you need a pen, tweezer or toothpick or something as far as I've heard.

[ Parent | on HN ]