Always use ad blockers!
There is spyware that doesn’t even require you to click on it:
Android 12 or later:
- unlock the bootloader and flash a custom ROM like LineageOS or GrapheneOS. If there is none, root it and rip out Play Services and dependents by force (careful about boot loops with Play Sore itself).
- install a trusted app store (F-Droid/classic) and install Firefox or a fork and there uBlock Origin. Or at least a browser like Cromite or Vanadium.
Install replacements for missing dependents like phone caller (fossify to the rescue).
I hear the argument that we are not worth the effort of being hacked but nobody should be living knowing that they are vulnerable to being hacked. While full security may be an illusion, especially with AI around, we ought to still be attempting to have the most secure devices possible. I’ve seen a lot about these zero day ads but little about how to fight against them. Throwing away ur mobile is not the solution in todays complex world, but rethinking its usage certainly is … i.e. spending hours each day on social networks i guess is no good idea as it increases your attack surface? What else ca we do about this?
99% of ads we see are malware payload and the few are legitimate business. Always has been
Of course turning off personalised ads is good for privacy, but this post seems to imply it could help protect against this spyware as well. That’s not true, is it? To me those things sound totally unrelated.
“Personalized” means “allow ad network to run scripts on your device without notifying you further.”
It’s related.
Umm no? Personalised means the ads you get served have been chosen for the interests tied to your advertising id. Turning it off just means you get generic ads not targeted to you.
This is a nation state level actor using a public ad network.
If your one of the targets of this, none of those measures will help. At best, the adblock will work for the publically known ad networks, but they’ll get you with an ad served from a fresh domain. And if they are using zero-click exploits, they likely have a persistence mechanism as well, and even if they don’t, they will probably exfil all your data as soon as they can anyway.
The good news is that most people aren’t actually useful targets to nation state actors, so all of us are likely safe. We aren’t worth risking a zero-click zero day on (or the persistence exploit). Journalists/politicians/military personnel though should be a lot more concerned, but they already have solutions like airgapped networks and other opsec tools.
It is still worth mentioning. And some VPN services are Israeli and other companies sucking up information.
Yup, its all good advice in general, but we should avoid needlessly panicing about things that won’t realistically be used against us.
I’m much more concerned about shoddy vpns and ad tech tracking.
panicing about things that won’t realistically be used against us.
That we know of…
A zero click zero day is worth 10s to 100s of millions of dollars. They guard these very carefully, to avoid burning them, like what happened here.
You aren’t that important to anyone.
Don’t be so sure. You don’t know me Cameron lol.
to add, running their compromised hardware and software won’t do you any favors and changing a simple setting won’t disable their backdoors or fundamentally fix the nightmare we are in.
running stuff graphene and ditching google software is only the beginning of it.
Of course there are more advanced scenarios but the information is still worth telling. If anything, you might just get less ads.
i never felt a difference. the way they promise it, it’s supposed to track you less and it does show less “relevant” ads, but i bet they keep collecting the data anyway.
they’ve been shown not to care about user settings in court before.
It is a catch 22 situation, if you block ads (which is a no-brainer), you can’t see the ads repeatedly selling the same item you just bought.
Im personally happy if they simply cannot monetise tracking me. They can track all they want, but if I never see any ads, it’s m much harder for them to manipulate me.
monetization is the least of our problems with rising fascism though.
i think the stuff being reported on here is really still the first steps.
Even under fascism it doesnt make sense to risk zero days on non-high value targets. The fascist way to do that is to simply enforce all devices to have a public and obvious backdoor. Anyone without the backdoor is a criminal.
Zero days are for being sneaky, and are very expensive. Under fascism you don’t need to be sneaky, and you need cheap.
my point is zero days ain’t needed already if you run the stock oem rom.
