Anyone ever used an old Android phone as a desk top PC ? ?

BADGER.BRAD

BADGER.BRAD

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Just wondered if anyone had done this after stumbling across it online! !

Thanks all
 
some phones have a desktop mode as some samsung tablets do. i have a tablet which i tried but its pretty dire.
I ended up with an old surface pro for 200 quid much better
 
Thanks Paul, I am using an old battered laptop with a seperate old Monitor key board and mouse ( screen bleed and Memory card reader is broke) So At some point it is going to give up and thought the phone thing might be an option. That said I'm not Keen on Android as I'm a bit of a privacy freak so I'm proberbly best sticking to a Linux PC.
 
BADGER.BRAD said:
Thanks Paul, I am using an old battered laptop with a seperate old Monitor key board and mouse ( screen bleed and Memory card reader is broke) So At some point it is going to give up and thought the phone thing might be an option. That said I'm not Keen on Android as I'm a bit of a privacy freak so I'm proberbly best sticking to a Linux PC.
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What privacy concerns do you believe exist by using Android?
 
Raincloud said:
What privacy concerns do you believe exist by using Android?
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Google !

This all started many years ago when I brought my wife a Amazon Kindle. As I had never used Amazon before I had to sign up for an account and give them my payment details for any Ebooks she would buy, as soon as I had put in the bank details it started to recommend books for me based on my many interests at the time. As I had never had any Amazon stuff before I realized that based on my bank details and email address they had come up with many details about my life. From then on I thought all this data protection crap was a complete farce other wise they would not have been able to find this information about me. I now make a real effort to hide my identity to private businesses. When online I use the minimum of a one hop VPN , Anti fingerprinting, no Java script, and disappearing Cookies. Imagine you found that Adsa was intercepting your mail before it was posted through your letter box in order to learn as much as they could about you for thier own purpose, I'm sure most people would not find this acceptable, but after all it's only what the big tech companies are doing !
 
BADGER.BRAD said:
Google !

This all started many years ago when I brought my wife an Amazon Kindle. As I had never used Amazon before I had to sign up for an account and give them my payment details for any Ebooks she would buy, as soon as I had put in the bank details it started to recommend books for me based on my many interests at the time. As I had never had any Amazon stuff before I realized that based on my bank details and email address they had come up with many details about my life. From then on I thought all this data protection crap was a complete farce other wise they would not have been able to find this information about me. I now make a real effort to hide my identity to private businesses. When online I use the minimum of a one hop VPN , Anti fingerprinting, no Java script, and disappearing Cookies. Imagine you found that Adsa was intercepting your mail before it was posted through your letter box in order to learn as much as they could about you for thier own purpose, I'm sure most people would not find this acceptable, but after all it's only what the big tech companies are doing !
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Seems a bit unlikely they were using your bank details. How would that work?

You don’t say if the recommendations were relevant to your inferests. I presume they were? Usually their recommendations are based, often innaccurately on your Amazon searches & purchases.
 
Bank details? I've had an Amazon account for 24 years and have never provided bank details, and even if you have those will not used in marketing. I'd like to know how you even think they could be, unless you spew out bank details to every site you buy stuff from and give them all a direct debit mandate to take money when they want (which given how security conscious you state you are, I can't believe you've done even once)

One thing they might use is google and facebook data, the information those sites collect when you visit other sites that draw in images from them while logged in to your accounts (e.g. "share this" buttons). That gets used to build an advertising profile, which is why (for example) I get adverts for holidays when I'm on facebook after I've been looking at a holiday company website, or get adverts for stuff I've just bought. Yes you can prevent this with private browsing, VPNs etc (glad you trust a VPN where you don't control the endpoint, I certainly wouldn't), but to prevent targeted advertising I regard commercial VPNs as too great a privacy risk.
 
i used to be a privacy freak but not anymore, so companies now now about my love of headphones and digital DACS and all that stuff.
in fact recently i have fully embraced google with all the password storage options, synching email and browser faves over devices bloody love how simple it becomes when you just opt in.
 
sphexx said:
You don’t say if the recommendations were relevant to your inferests.
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Yes they all related to interests I have or at least had at the time and as stated I had never used Amazon prior to this.
onomatopoeia said:
One thing they might use is google and facebook
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I've never used Facebook ( not my thing) but did used to use the Google search engine, since ditching it I have never had any targeted ads. I do know a few people who do use Facebook but with false accounts as they like it's features but do not want anyone to be able to search for them.
 
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onomatopoeia said:
glad you trust a VPN where you don't control the endpoint
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I do quite often control the end point ( depends what Browser I'm using) and move it around fairly often, some times its because a site will not let me enter with that IP address and sometimes just to move it as a way of shifting my traffic else where as a single VPN end point has the possibility of being monitored.
 
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