The Flag's a Plus

This is my standard advice for buying smartphones: Buy an iPhone if you can. If you really want an Android device, buy a Pixel. Try to avoid carrier phones. I recommend this because: Architecture matters. Apple devices are very locked down. Antivirus is unnecessary on iPhones. Patch speed matters. You don't want to be stuck waiting for your vendor or cell phone carrier. Apple makes everything, so their process is fast. With Pixel, Google makes the patches, and pushes them to phones quickly. I recently bought a new cell phone. What did I get? A Sony Experia Compact. Even I didn't follow my own recommendations. Why? Because even though I'm concerned about security, it's not my only concern. My priorities worked out like this: Must work with European cell phone frequencies. I actually own a Google Nexus phone, and I love it. Unfortunately, it's a US model, and I was finding myself with no coverage in areas where everyone around me was fine. Must be available ...

One of the things that you quickly learn when traveling in other countries is that it helps to adopt a stereotypical accent. When you say, " Schönen Tag," (Good day) you should try to say it in a stereotypical German accent. It sounds really weird to the locals if you don't. Same thing with " Bonjour" in French or " Ciao" in Italian. Just run with the stereotypes. If you're not mumbling the ends of the words, you're not speaking French properly. If you're not moving your hands, you're not speaking Italian properly. In Zürich, a lot of people speak English. In fact, I suspect that for most people, their preferred language order is Swiss German, English, then Hochdeutsch (High German -- what they speak in Germany). But, they all learn English from other Swiss people, so they speak English with a pronounced accent. I've picked up that accent. A lot. I don't do it when I'm speaking with other native English speakers or with ...

There's a concept called "Threat Modeling" that's used a lot in Information Technology (IT), but it's a useful thought exercise for day to day life, particularly when you think about computer security. Here's the simple version: try to think about all of the different people who might try to come after you online. Think about how they might attack most effectively. Then, worry about those things. Stop worrying (or worry a lot less) about attacks that won't happen to you. Why do this? Because your time and energy is limited, and a lot of the security advice that you'll see is targeted at people with a completely different threat model. A journalist has to talk to a lot of people, and makes a lot of enemies, but has to keep their sources safe. A soldier is a target because of who he is, but doesn't need to talk to strangers online. And so on. You don't have those problems, so products that are targeted at journalists or soldiers or freedom fi...