At the moment I am thinking about getting a new phone in the foreseeable future. I was long time using android, but switched to iOS 5 years ago because of the longer update period. Now also some android devices offer a longer update support of about 5 years. Now I am thinking about switching back to android.
But i am wondering: is there any big difference from a privacy perspective between iOS and android? I know you can go for custom roms on android that are focused on privacy which i also used in the past, but i am not planning on doing this in the future. So it would come down to stock android vs stock iOS. Any advice there or is all lost anyway?
There’s only one phone that runs GrapheneOS so that’s the one I get. If you’re looking at stock phones, apple is the best for privacy and security, but if you really care about those two things you’re probably not just looking at them stock
I second graphene, I grabbed a pixel 6 about a year ago. Flashed graphene after first boot, and have never looked back! Fast, private, light, bleeding edge security updates, storage scopes, etc etc.
Sounds nice. Had any problems with banking apps and authenticatiors? If I remember correctly they sometimes made problems with custom ROMs (at least 5-8 years ago when I last used them 😅)
Feels kind of ironic that you need to get a pixel phone, made by google, to get rid of google.
Just for FDroid and the open source programs alone I would stick with android. Watching YouTube without ads, my own browser with an adblocker…
Stock Android versus stock iOS, stock iOS is more hardened, more secure. But it’s a more restrictive walled garden. So it depends what your criteria of privacy is. If you have an iCloud account, and you enable end to end encryption, and you trust Apple then it’s better than stock Android.
Watching YouTube without ads, my own browser with an adblocker…
Both are well possible on an iPhone.
Do tell…
My understanding is iOS requires all browsers to use web kit.
And there is no open source repository on iOS, so how are you watching YouTube without ads?
Safari on iOS supports extensions out of the box. You can just install adguard or something else and won‘t have any ads.
There are also third party browsers, which yes, use WebKit, but also can block ads.
Android is primarily sponsored and advertised by Google, which is basically the world’s largest advertising company that also happens to have an IT department.
iOS is exclusively sponsored and advertised by Apple, which is basically a large IT company that makes most of its money with rather expensive hardware.
One of those is a wiser choice if you care about your privacy.
So hoping apple is not selling my data, because they make enough money with their hardware sales?
This is at least a big difference in the business models of the two companies. Thanks for the input!
What I struggle a little to understand: How does the add business of google affect my privacy? Is not google also collecting the data for internal use only? If they would sell the data, everybody could also target adds like they do. As I understand it they sell add placement and allow the buyer to target a specific group of people, but without selling the data they used to create the profiles. Or am I mixing something up?
So hoping apple is not selling my data, because they make enough money with their hardware sales?
More or less, yes. Because they don’t need the money.
How does the add business of google affect my privacy?
Google’s whole business model is selling your private data. Or which product did you buy from them?