Note: The contest has ended, thanks to everyone who donated! With the holiday season upon us donations to charities are peaking, with nearly 1/3 of all donations occurring in the month of December. Here at Private Phone Shop, we would like to encourage others to donate to some tech/privacy related organizations. Many of them depend purely on outside funding for support. If you are using their services for free, why not chip in a few bucks to help pay the bills? Here is what we are doing: for every dollar donated to one of the organizations listed below, you will…

Early next year, all of the major networks (AT&T, T-mobile, and Verizon) are going to shut down their 2G and 3G networks and move to VoLTE. But what exactly does that mean, and how will it affect you? Mobile phone networks have gone through several generations. 1G (first generation) was analog, and used by the very first cell phones. That network shut down decades ago. 2G and 3G provided a transition to digital signals, and increased speeds for data transfer. 2G could move data at 0.1 Mbps, while 3G was around 3 Mbps. 4G (also known as LTE) began rolling…

When it comes to your data, the phrases privacy, security, and anonymity are thrown around a lot. But what does each one mean, and how do they relate to mobile phones? Privacy is about choosing what information you send out into the world. There are some things that most of us like to keep private, such as your bank account balance, browser history, and medical records. Security is preventing others from gaining unwanted access to your information. This would be like someone hacking into your bank account, or someone stealing your credit card number. Anonymity is revealing whose information is…

The video below shows LineageOS running on a Pixel 4. You can see the interface is no different than any other Android phone. Of course you are free to customize it, with different wallpaper, a different launcher, icon themes, or whatever you like. Apps are easily installed from either the F-droid store or Aurora. Note that Aurora is a mirror of the google play store, and we wouldn't necessary recommend any of the apps on their main page due to privacy concerns. But you can find many other great apps such as Brave, MeWe, Protonmail, etc. We also include a…

When it comes to choosing an operating system for your new phone, what is the best choice? You may have heard of the choices above, but what are the main differences between them? LineageOS has been around longer than just about any other custom Android OS. Originally known as CyanogenMod, Lineage is meant to work on a wide range of phones. It has an easy to use interface, and has broad support by developers. The main flaw with Lineage is the phone's bootloader must remain unlocked. That means if a skilled hacker gained physical access to your phone, they could…

A while back we were reading an article relating to tech privacy. At the bottom, someone left this comment: I always get a kick out of all the "good advice" offered as a way around the Snoop Sisters' machinations."Use alternative search engines" is one of my favorites - as if Big Tech has not already figured out around that teenie weenie digital barrier.And that is the bottom line to all this obsessive spying: it's digital stupid. There is no digital nut the tech billionaires cannot crack.So while using your snoop-proof paths around the spies, just go ahead and "cc" Google…

Betteridge's Law of Headlines strikes again! It's frequently stated that certain phones have "better" cameras that others. In particular, the Pixel line of phones is well known for producing amazing images. The truth is that the physical camera on your phone doesn't make much of a difference. Most all modern phones have cameras that are "good enough," with several dozen megapixels, multiple lenses, and high sensitivity. Instead, much of what we think of as image quality comes from the processing that is done after the image is taken. Basic camera apps do very little processing, while the camera app that…