Mobile work phones running in the cloud: safe & instantly available smartphones for your team. Complete with a phone number, accessible from your browser.
I find the pricing a bit steep, but the concept in and of itself is pretty cool: it’s an Android VM in the cloud running /e/OS. I’m not entirely sure what I’d use it for, but something about it I find intriguing.
That’s about privacy. Android offers over hundreds of data points to keep a unique fingerprint of your device.
Install this app (zero permissions required) and get floored.
I talked about that as early as in 2015 but apparently no one cares.
That’s why such a service could help immensely. Install whatever you want without the risk of some companies following on you for as long as you own your Android phone.
Google can easily solve this problem by offering an Android VM with your Android ROM but they are not interested.
“Complete with a phone number, accessible from your browser.”
Am I missing here something?
They don’t even offer an additional App, so how will calls reach me, if I don’t have the page open all the time?
I’m running Android in a virtual machine (KVM/QEMU) with WhatsApp and an autoresponder, notifying old WhatsApp contacts that I’ve moved to other messengers when they try to reach me. It also runs an app for home automation that was not available otherwise. If you don’t run/own a (home)server, than some hosted Android could make sense for some scenarios.
evert,
Do you have a guide on this? I’ve tried several android emulators to run android apps on PC but the functionally was incomplete and quality lacking. Some where even blocked by the google app store.
Yes, all too often IOT vendors/banks/authenticators/etc think it’s fine just to support ios/android and desktop users have been getting shafted.
I used a normal/default QEMU/KVM setup with Android-x86
The host is running Oracle Linux 8
Maybe I changed a few VM settings, not sure though…
https://www.android-x86.org/
It only runs WhatsApp, WhatsAuto, MacroDroid, and one homeautomation app (klikaanklikuit)
YMMV
Also note that no (e)SIM is used so it lacks that kind of connectivity/features.
evert,
I was trying to use ARM emulators before but maybe I’ll give this setup with android-x86 under kvm a shot. As long as applications don’t target the native environment, I guess it should work just as well.
I’m not sure yet if the applications I had in mind care about having a sim. Bluetooth and camera would be a bonus, but I don’t know if KVM emulates these kinds of interfaces.
You can add some webcams to the host and share the USB port with the VM guest. I had to use that to get WhatsApp working in a browser on my PC. Bluetooth might work with an USB dongle, maybe. It’s still limited to the host with the USB port; I didn’t try sharing that USB port over the network (although the Linux kernel seems to support that)
https://www.linux-kvm.org/page/USB_Host_Device_Assigned_to_Guest
evert,
Thanks for the pointers!
I once needed VERY LONG usb extensions to put a beefy server in one room and having peripherals in different rooms. I discovered even using active powered extenders the USB protocol has timing constraints that will start causing loss of USB packets when it gets too long.
My thought was to try and solve this using an SBC running linux and using the kernel’s USB over network feature. However 5 or so years ago this was extremely finicky and I ended abandoning the plan to put the server in a remote room.
I’d much prefer they be expensive, and ideally locked out of International calls. Pretty sure the U.S. could do something about the fact Americans no longer pick up their phones because only scammers call them, but the telecoms make a ton of money from Indian scam call centers buying phone minutes.
dark2,
Yes, these spam calls have gotten so bad for me and I am at my wit’s end over it. All of the spam blocking technology is based on caller id, which is notoriously unreliable. What’s so frustrating is that the identifying information has always existed in the ANI metadata that carriers use for billing purposes, but normal consumers don’t have access to it for spam blocking or tracking spammers. Unlike caller id, ANI is robust because companies have a huge incentive to make sure they can bill parties for calls.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number_identification
A few years ago I was hoping that the stir/shaken protocols might finally help us to discriminate between spam and legit calls. But I still find the majority of numbers including my own show up as unverified while some spam calls show up as verified….so I can’t block unverified numbers without blocking legitimate callers.
It’s driving me nuts. I haven’t gotten around to it but I wanted to try an automated screening service so I could stop being bothered by illegal spam calls while still receiving legitimate calls. I don’t want to put legitimate callers through hoops, but something has to be done.
Doesn`t integrated anti-spam work? I`m from Europe and Android integrated spam filter work very nice. Funny, that Apple doesn`t have this integrated and my iOS-powered friends have to block spam manually.
You have to have a recent phone, and turn it on… even then alot gets by it.
Marshal Jim Raynor,
The call blockers work by analyzing caller ID and blocking numbers that are used to place unsolicited calls. This works assuming that caller ID information is accurate.
These blockers will work well for companies that comply with the law and don’t use fake caller ID information. But the thing is that companies that comply with the law were already taken care of by the federal do not call registry. So using a call blocker for their calls is kind of redundant. The bigger problem is call spammers who simply don’t comply with the law and the odds of foreign ones in particular being caught and prosecuted is slim.
I get three kinds of spam calls:
1) political and/or non profits, these are except from the do not call registry, a call blocker should help block their numbers.
2) scams and identity theft. In my experience the vast majority of these are foreign and they don’t care about complying with the law and generally use fake caller id.
3) companies that outsource lead generation. These often manage to escape the jurisdiction of the FTC in part because they’re not originating calls themselves. Rather it’s a network of 3rd parties using humans or automation to spam us with cold calls. After a short interaction of yes/no questions, they get forwarded to the company ultimately paying for leads. These are often recognizable by a “bleep” sound as forwarded calls get added to a virtual phone conference. The caller ID is usually fake to get around call blockers.
If you are a business with an 800 number, then the ANI metadata does not get scrubbed. You can identify callers even without caller ID in much the same way 911 can. But regular phone subscribers don’t get this data and therefor can’t use it to block calls. This is why call blocking isn’t as effective as we’d like. I am curious whether other countries have managed to curb spam calls better than we have, can anyone speak to this?