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I would like to pretend you can somehow prevent random people from tapping your smartphone hardware entirely, but lets leave that aside for a moment. So you buy a new phone and you don't want some fat ass dude to use it to remotely do whatever comes into his god forsaken sick mind. My first guess is to download an official ROM and reinstall to erase all possible software backdoors, that are not vendor-specific. Is this correct? And how to do it in a correct way?

Why do you think a new phone would have a ROM on it other than the same official ROM you mention downloading and installing?

>>24797 Lets say I don't trust the shop. BTW I just checked and finding official installation images for non-Chinese phones is kind of not straightforward so I guess I'll have to swallow my schizo paranoia and use the blasted blackbox

>>24798 if it's a new phone then it should come in a sealed package of some sort... i don't think anyone but the original vendor would be able to do something to it. if you're that paranoid then buy it from the original website i guess? you also have to ask yourself if a random vendor is both able to do this stuff and willing to risk his reputation... many people still buy used tech in general because things are overpriced. so you have to put some trust in the system anyways if you are not rich and have to compromise, sometimes it's luck. ymmv BTW you could try to build your own image of lineage on the phone (or even the stock android, though some things may not work) if you really want to flash a custom ROM and you don't find the original.

If you're really paranoid, don't buy any tech from any website. Reason? LE/IC are known to intercept packages, alter the contents, and send it on its way. Go to a random brick-and-mortar store and get a random item off the shelf. Exception: Best Buy. They modify tech gear at will.

>>24798 > [F]inding official installation images for non-Chinese phones is kind of not straightforward so I guess I'll have to swallow my schizo paranoia and use the blasted blackbox See below for building and/or using LineageOS instead. >>24884 > [Y]ou could try to build your own image of lineage on the phone (or even the stock android, though some things may not work) if you really want to flash a custom ROM and you don't find the original. In case you (>>24798) wish to go down this route, check the wiki for your device: https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/ If your device is unsupported, try reading this guide and seeing if you can find everything you need: https://medium.com/@daltonfury42/building-lineageos-for-your-device-a7d26ab50549 From there, create a virtual machine with ~200GiB of space and as much memory as you can spare. Follow this guide for building for your device: https://xdaforums.com/t/guide-how-to-building-lineageos-for-an-unsupported-device.4419263/ And that should be it! The steps may be different if you wish to include MicroG support, or make custom tweaks. Alternatively, DivestOS has quite a few devices supported, and tries to offer additional security features on top of LineageOS: https://divestos.org/pages/devices

>>24796 Buy the phone localy if you dont want tailored access ANT Catalog you chud.