What do you think someone could possibly do with knowing a phone model given they wouldn’t be the only person with one
this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2025
0 points (50.0% liked)
Privacy
39584 readers
245 users here now
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
i'm guessing that it may "help" if a person is already being targeted and now the phone model also is known
🤷
Privacy isn't necessarily about risk for everyone. For some it's more about their individual right to privacy, and to uphold that right they need to be aware of ways in which it may be breached. So this is probably not practical information for most people (I certainly don't care) but it's useful to share nonetheless.
It's bad op-sec and general privacy. What if you don't want anybody knowing you use a old burner phone? Some people even hide there timezone even though millions of people have the same one, RFP hides your timezone aswell. People don't share there birthday even though they aren't the only person with it even without the year. It's about connecting the dots with multiple pieces of information, and this is one of them.
Thanks for explaining! Honestly just never thought about it, I don't tend to share screenshots/pictures to the public so never crossed my mind.
How specific is your threat model that information about which phone you use can be used to track you? And if it is, why are you sharing screenshots in the first place
Why can't you share screenshots? It's just general bad op-sec, obviously your phone model alone can't be used against you, but it can be used to connect the dots with other information. People send screenshots all the time, and you can still share a screenshot of something while having privacy.
Some people share screenshots without knowing they are also giving other data included, like there phone model or something close to it. Even if metadata is stripped
I am not sure what advantage does anyone get by knowing which iPhone you use.
If you are into that could be interesting to learn about metadata, e.g EXIF data, and how anything can be used for fingerprinting. What's interesting IMHO is to pragmatically know how valuable a specific piece of data or metadata is useful for fingerprinting, namely how identifying it truly is. For example knowing if a file comes from Android or iOS is too generic to be useful whereas timestamp with geolocation data segments the potential space a lot more.
A good example to "play" with could be https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/ which does highlight the idea of "bits of identifying information" namely :
"A “bit” is a basic unit of information for computers. The bit represents a logical state with one of two possible values, often represented as "1" or "0", for example. In your results from Cover Your Tracks, some metrics may be listed as “1” or “0”, or “true” or “false”, indicating whether a setting is enabled or disabled. While each individual metric’s details may seem like a small amount of information, when combined with your browser’s other metrics, they can uniquely identify your browser. Your results are measured in “bits of identifying information,” which is a combined summary of all these metrics."
Point being, not all behaviors, conscious or not, explicit or not, lead to the same amount of bits. Some are VERY valuable, others are basically pointless. Knowing the difference means not spending a lot of energy fighting without making a difference.
Thank you
schizoposting 👍