I’m excited about the internet again, but this time in limiting its invasive aspects instead of adding new.
As I mentioned in my last post, I dug out my old Motorola RAZR phone and considered using it to stop the information collected about me. Unfortunately, it looks like it is charging but won’t turn on. This is probably due to a dead battery which they don’t make anymore. Being determined I did a search and found a discontinued battery that is available at a shop in San Francisco. So I could get it working again but that brings up a second problem: how to I connect it to my service provider T-Mobile? I learned that T-Mobile now has a great new service called DIGITS which is an app that can be installed to ring multiple devices from the same number. However, you have to be able to install the app and my RAZR certainly won’t be able to do that. Furthermore, I still need some modern functionality (2-step verification and such) so I wouldn’t be able to do away with my S6 Galaxy completely.
The last major hurdle is it looks like my old RAZR doesn’t even have a SIM card so that wouldn’t work either!
I did find a solution and that is there is a rumor that Motorola will bring the RAZR back in 2018, although completely updated with modern features!
I’m very excited about this and will be one of the first to buy if it does come out and the price isn’t that of current Samsung / iPhone models. The only trade off is it runs on Android and so I would have to manually configure it to limit the amount of data Google collects instead of not worrying about it at all with my old RAZR. With this updated system though, I would be able to install DIGITS and thus keep my current cell phone as a backup if needed.
In regards to internet privacy I downloaded Firefox which seems to be the best mainstream browser option for keeping things private. In addition I also installed the extensions uBlock Origin, NoScript, Privacy Badger and HTTPS Everywhere. In addition I’ve also got the search function set to DuckDuckGo. The only annoyance is NoScript blocks everything and many pages won’t load unless I give certain features permission in NoScript. I’m willing to do that because the internet is a nasty, prying, invasive place these days.
Now if those Motorola RAZR 2018 rumors are true, I’ll be a happy camper.
