[Discuss] how much can i use a smartphone as a computer?

[effigies at riseup.net (Chris Markiewicz)]

On 09/09/2015 03:38 PM, Kent Borg wrote:
>
> P.S. I don't use my Android devices for banking or brokerage accounts.
> These enormous, new OSs are too big a target, too scary. I'll stick with
> my Linux notebook for that; I run far less "interesting" software there.
> Also I don't use any password managers on my daily phone or tablet for
> the same reason that I don't trust them, rather I have a very cheap
> little brand-x Chinese Android phone dedicated to being a password safe,
> with nearly no software is installed on it, and I never let it connect
> to the internet nor to any cell systems--I don't need to trust it that
> much if I keep it incommunicado. (More likely I will use my Linux
> notebook to look up passwords. Good passphrases are hard to enter on a
> little touch screen.)

Regarding passwords: I maintain a device-specific password database for
things I need on each Android device, and keep separate, device-specific
accounts when there isn't a compelling reason to use the same account
across devices. This is mostly to limit the damage if my phone is stolen
*and* the password manager (I use KeePass variants) is somehow broken into.

Malware apps aren't very high on my list of threats, and I firewall the
password app itself. I suppose something could traverse the filesystem,
look for password databases and exfiltrate them, but the number of
cycles they'd have to burn to crack more than a few databases puts this
in the realm of targeted attacks.

Chris