1970-01-01 2 days ago

The risk profile of paper seems to be equal to the risk profile of on-device-only? How do they differ?

Something you have v. something you have

4
beAbU 2 days ago

The argument is that normies can't differentiate between apps that are really safe (i.e. on-device processing + data) versus apps that merely say they are safe, nor do they have the tools/knowledge to verify these claims.

It's safer then to recommend to stay away from apps entirely, and rather use paper, for as long as you have that piece of paper, your data is private and safe.

ubermonkey 4 hours ago

Exactly.

dfxm12 2 days ago

You can give file access to other apps on your phone, no? Apps can be sold to a new owner with different views on what to do with this data. Data on a device vs data on an Internet connected device vs paper have obvious differences.

everforward 2 days ago

The practicality of dragnetting it. Google and Apple could decide or be forced to start syncing that previously only-local data. There is no central entity to mass-collect paper without sending out an army of people to raid homes.

XorNot 2 days ago

Paper is easier to destroy quickly, and to also plausibly lose or deny having.

This is actually one of the biggest problems I've found with Yubikeys: they're both too fragile yet also hard to reliably, deliberately destroy quickly.

1970-01-01 2 days ago

I really don't agree. If I take a photo on my phone, it can be deleted in less than a millisecond. Shredding a paper calendar takes at least 30 seconds. I don't see denial of ownership as a legitimate strategy to data confidentiality.

1718627440 2 days ago

It can be marked as deleted in the file table. Destroying a paper can be done on the toilet or simply eaten.

dijksterhuis 2 days ago

nitpick: data is at least partially recoverable for both of these examples for a period of time as well. so they are kind of soft deletes.

but yeah, probably much faster to full delete than most cloudy services with backups. along with some other anti-recovery benefits (the bodily fluids kind).

1970-01-01 1 day ago

iPhone and Android now use file encryption for every file. Impossible to recover a file as both file and key are deleted.

dijksterhuis 2 days ago

if you have an iphone [0], im not exactly sure how you’re able to truly delete a photo in a millisecond as you have to go through

* a pop up dialog confirming you want to delete the photo with the below message

> This photo will be deleted from iCloud Photo on all your devices. it will be in Recently Deleted for 30 days.

* deleting the photo a second time from recently deleted folder, with a second confirmation dialog

> this will delete the selected photo from icloud and all connected devices

bonus round: any device which has previously downloaded the photo, but is not connected to icloud services at the time of deletion, requires you to physically go to that device and connect it to icloud / manually delete the photo all over again.

versus, take cigarette lighter out of pocket, start burning paper, wait.

[0]: statistically probably quite likely given HN demographics and iphone market share

alistairSH 2 days ago

Assuming the ToS for your photo app didn't change at some point and do something different with the data.