Maybe Divest/Lineage could be an option instead. Although you have to choose a device wisely (and even among supported ones, some have trouble unlocking the bootloader), there is a chance you’d find a suitable cheaper one.

Personally no regrets spending $300 on a Pixel 7a but still painful to hand over this much.

The scam ones are those that are treated as stocks rather than digital cash.

To be fair, I wouldn’t trust stock Firefox indeed, as it also has bad defaults and has demonstrated disrespect to users’ consent (like turning on the ad tracking option without even informing anyone). I would rather opt for a hardening user.js or a fork with them pre-applied, like Librewolf.

I encountered this in a computer club (I mean the place where you play per hour to play computer games on a good PC if you lack a suitable one at home). The accounts there were using phone numbers as usernames, and apparently if one is used, it would have to be verified. However, after refusing I was just given one-time accounts every time (with a random string of digits as the username), I just couldn’t save unspent time for another visit so had to pay precisely. Funnily enough, the host herself the first time mentioned one-time phone number rental services for this reason)

I don’t get it either. I would rather use 8-800-555-35-35 because of the catchy meme ad.

That is one hell of a donation, because no way unlimited data costs $50 a month :/

Excuse me, what kind of overpricing this is? ~$50 a month is insane for phone service, what kind of perks do they add on top to justify THAT? Cheaper to just buy a truckload of anon simcards and change them like gloves.

Yes, absolutely. Having to use a dongle for my earbuds sucks :( SD is something I don’t really notice tho because 128 gigs is pretty much bottomless for a phone.

And from what I’ve seen, Pixels are probably the friendliest to other custom OSes as well.

I don’t feel anything abut nudity being posted somewhere and people enjoying it… I just don’t want to see it myself because it’s disgusting for me)

Prosody is very easy to set up. Snikket is just Prosody with things added on.

Now if only you could hide the pornographic stuff to not accidentally see disgusting nudity.

But the JS is served to the browser each time the page loads, you can’t be sure it stays the same between loads. Sure, this is the same problem as malicious updates, but still exaggerated - the opportunity to slip in altered code is “every time you open the page” rather than “every update”. Plus much more convenient to do targeting.

I would rather not use KYC even for low-sensitivity transactions. Because I am afraid of such sensitive info leaking. Sure, I do KYC for things like phone service already - but would avoid it at any cost where it can be done.

You would at least be able to examine the link first.

The problem I have with Signal is that it itself pushes people onto the “shitty operating systems”. It does not allow registering from desktop, at least officially. There are workarounds, but they’re cumbersome (especially for a non-technical person, whom Signal is supposed to appeal to), and the official client outright tells you go to use a phone first. And even then, apparently the desktop client is not even full-featured, and not the priority.

I know there are degoogled OSes (running Graphene myself), but you’d need to get lucky or choose a phone with this in mind, while a random given laptop is likely to be able to run Linux.

My 7a being $300 was already very expensive for me. None of those prices are acceptable for a phone of all things.

I think you should not feel like an idiot in this case. Just keep in mind that EVERYONE can fall for a scam, even the experts. The people who think they wouldn’t are themselves likely victims.

App-based would be bad, as bank apps are notoriously unfriendly to people who don’t own Google/Apple smartphones. Rather, a TOTP or Yubikey.

That’s why here, giving a student a laptop without supervision is unthinkable… Good if the school has computers at all anyway.