brito on Nostr: First I'd say is to avoid Tor like the plague, besides being created by the feds, ...

First I'd say is to avoid Tor like the plague, besides being created by the feds, these "free" Tor servers are paid by the US gov by the tens of millions USD every year. You are basically putting yourself inside their tunnels, zero privacy there.

btw: Both that sus android distro that only runs on google hardware and the sus "signal" recommend Tor. They later tried denying after being criticized but the internet has long memory.

You can't really expect privacy when using hardware, software and networks from two large governments (US + China) that are crutially dependent on personal information to know what is happening.

Fully agree with you on a simple router, but if you are trying to be private on gov level then I'll need to reming that as long as the phone has a GSM chipset then it can use the GSM network and send data that way when it desires. Just for your info, even before Wi-Fi they were having plenty of phone with normal phones: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A5/1

So out of the box the Android itself could be "phoning home" without your knowledge. When you are an interesting person, it would be easy to exfiltrate as many gigabytes as needed through the GSM rather than your usual internet connections.

You probably don't have the equipment, but there is a simple test you can make. Start by putting your Android phone in flight mode. This only trick only works on a phone you have used for some time and has all your stuff inside.

Get a HackRF connected by USB to a laptop. Put the HackRF together with your android inside a cheap faraday bag from the chinese and setup the hackrf to monitor the spectrum of waves around 850Mhz to 1900 Mhz (set specific intervals otherwise the time to transverse all frequencies is too big), a list is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSM_frequency_bands

This can be done with a cheap SDR dongle too. Let it be there for a few days, every now and then shake the bag without moving it. In case the GSM radios are still being used even in flight mode then you sure are an interesting person to meet. Have fun 👍