[Google Pixel 6] erktheerk:
Welcome. I'm probably a terrible example but oh well. I had time to kill and been stuck on this topic myself since the early 90s.

If you're serious about privacy to the point that you are worried about other devices as you mentioned, I highly suggest (seriously, not trying to be a ****) you take some online courses on the fundamentals of telecommunications, and do some "light" reading on topics likeLinux Kernel, enterprise networking, Signals Intelligence, and Section 215 metadata collection. thats a decent starting point to the state of things. Though it's just a shinny coin on a string to distract while the real work continues. It must always continue. It will never stop.

I'm sorry to tell you.

It's too late. In any practical sense short of finding somewhere to go love in a cave until you starve or die from a infection a 99¢ tube of cream could have prevented.

You can have a privacy focused phone. It can keep certain things safe. Stop some people from doing things. Delay an outcome. You're gonna need to learn about installing an OS though. It gets pretty complex rather quickly.

Nothing is safe. Every lock can be picked or bypassed. There is no such thing as a door only you can use. The last place anything is truly a secret is in your head. When you are the only person in the entire world with the right permissions.

There was a window when we could have made meaningful and lasting choices in how protocols, standards, regulations, and laws were adopted. Back when it was all just a few hundred trunk lines, IXPs and NOC with good intentions, and tragically short sight. Lots of people screaming at the top of their lungs about the potential outcomes. Tinfoil hats were worn. Turns out we were right.

When you wrap your brain around what the "internet" really is...it's similar to getting a small sliver of understanding; grasping ever so lightly; the brain breaking inconceivable scale of the infinite universe and how infinitesimally small we are. The remnants of a dead stars clumped together pondering its own own existence. Connecting wires together and making things beyond our capabilities. The amount of data being exchanged right now ain't ****. It's bonkers, but it won't be next year, or next or the next.

The rate at which machine learning and the race to general AI is going, watch for the casualties along the way. one example is encryption as we know it. Gone. It'll be rendered trivial by 2040 MAYBE. Honestly that's a really high estimate. Likely before.

Post quantum encryption is just about as experimentally verifiable as string theory. Won't be long though before we get a chance to see if itll hold up. The Xbox is older than the time we have left. The Patriot Act as well.

Practice basic OPsec. Best Practices. Trust few, tell fewer. Read. Read some more. Then read the book. Every question you could ever think of likely has a 12 year old thread at a slackexchange site and no shortage of users ready to remind you how tired they are of duplicates. The community at grapheneOS is similar. On that though. Best to just go to the source. He tries to explain things without just speaking in jargon. Daniel Micay himself on the matter of android security.

https://www.reddit.com/r/GrapheneOS/comments/bddq5u

and

https://www.reddit.com/r/GrapheneOS/comments/du23la

There is no shortage of people currently who disagree with him even though they have little to no grasp on the complexity of what it is he actually intended. Ran into one of them myself, on this site, just the other day. Sure, It's hardneded, but what that means from user to user is drastically different.

It's more than some. It'll fit some use cases. But it's just a speck in a cloud. If you attract the attention of a human being with skills and motivation...good luck my dude. Godspeed.

The real thought experiment and one of my favorites to fall asleep to on nights I actually sleep is "what are they going to do with all the encrypted data they hoovered up and have been storing for the last 30-40 years? Once AI turns the encryption algorithms that humanity runs on into a half finished cheap dollar store sudoku." How long does any one reckon that'll be the case before us plebs hear about it. We got a good track record, as a collective species in doing the right thing, right? No way they will actually use what is functionally a rewind button on...well everything. Nah, it'll be fine.

Oh look, Lapsus$ group woke up, posted a new dump... Wonder how much Globant spend on securing their stuff. Probably more than me.

--just a jaded old man