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Before go into smartphone selection and hardening discussion, you should be told the best practice principles of your device for SMS communication.
You must remember that the device (no matter phone or computer) you used to connect the SMS server, should not be used for your daily life. i.e. You must isolate your daily life (which point to your true identity) from your SMS related activities. So, you should better have at least two devices, one for your daily usage, another is strictly for SMS communication or other secret tasks.
Now, you should determine how to select a secure smartphone. Below is a guideline about it:
| 1. | Don't use those smartphone brands from dictatorial nations, such as China or Russia. They are long suspected to put surveillance spyware on their manufactured smartphones to monitor users stealthily and steal data from users. Please consult this list for details. |
| 2. | Select those smartphones preloaded with most updated operating system, and their manufacturer also provide regular security patch, such as Google Pixel. |
After you get your smartphone, you need to harden it as following:
| 1. | Fully encrypt your phone, and give a long password for it (8 or more characters). Please see this article for details. |
| 2. | Don't use biometric methods to unlock your smartphone, such as fingerprint or facial recognition. Always use long pin number, password or complicated pattern. The reason is obvious, your phone can't be unlocked without your cooperation. |
| 3. | Install at least one antivirus application. However, always avoid those antivirus applications from dictatorial nations, such as China or Russia. They may be embedded with spyware. In additional, you should bear in mind that your phone is not 100% bullet proof even you have antivirus utility installed, you still have chance to get malware infection or spyware infiltration. |
| 4. | Apply security patch to your smartphone regularly and ASAP. If major upgrade of operating system of your secret phone has been rolled out, upgrade your phone at once. |
| 5. |
State supported hackers have many hacking methods to against you, some even out of your imaginations like Sci-Fi stories. So, just install those applications you
really need and no extra application(s) on your secret phone. More installed applications means more chance to get vulnerabilities which could be used by hackers. Beware the built-in 'Messages' application of your phone to receive SMS messages (SMS in here means Short Message Service, not Secret Messaging System), it is the most favour way hackers used to infiltrate into your phone. You should turn off all automatic previews options of SMS messages, and disable MMS auto-download. If you get a suspicious SMS message, don't open it, delete it at once. Remember, your phone service provider is also the helper of government agents. Therefore, you should also take great care for those SMS messages sent by your phone service provider, especially those SMS messages contain hyperlink or MMS messages. If it is possible, only accept SMS from the contact list of your secret phone. |
| 6. | At last, your usage behavior is still the most important factor for the safety of your smartphone. Don't use your secret phone to surf risky sites or install any application from unknown source. Simply to say, your secret phone is for SMS communication only. And you should clean up your secret phone regularly, i.e. delete download files you no longer needed, purge temporary system files, and also force purge everything of all your web browsers manually. |
Basically, smartphone selection and hardening guidelines could also be applied to tablets and computers.
In addition, MS Windows, macOS, and Chrome OS collect too much data from user, which could expose user's true identity easily. The common anonymous operating systems for desktop or laptop computers are Linux and BSD Unix (FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD and Dragonfly BSD). You may consult this article and this article for more details. And I recommend the platform and web browser combination for SMS communication as follows:
For Android smartphone or tablet, use DuckDuckGo web browser over VPN.
For iPhone or iPad, use DuckDuckGo web browser over VPN, or Onion web browser via the Tor network.
On desktop or laptop computer, run Linux or BSD Unix, and use Brave web browser over VPN and/or Tor network.
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