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[–] 9 points 3 months ago (5 children)

Maybe somebody's asked this already but how come, in this day and age, there isn't a way to snapshot your entire phone into some sort of encrypted blob for storage in a location of your choice? You could wipe your phone and setup a throwaway profile with some basic apps before traveling, and then restore the snapshot once safely through customs.

Border issues aside, it would be very handy to be able to snapshot a phone like that anyway...

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  • [–] 12 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    What you're talking about is basically an encrypted backup. Seedvault does exactly that, it's included in many custom ROMs, including GrapheneOS.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 months ago

    Seedvault doesn't backup apps whose developer chooses not to let you back them up. It doesn't backup the encrypted keystore or the tee. It misses a lot, because Android fundamentally puts developers above users.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (1 child)

    There isn't such a feature on android because they can't scan your stuff for advertising if it is an encrypted blob. Apple let's you do this with an iphone, iirc.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago

    Samsung has encrypted profiles, apps have no problem advertising to you from knox.

    To do a complete phone backup like that all you need is Android root access. Root access on Android is, in fact, a little iffy. Any app given root access can basically read anything on the phone anywhere, keylog, remote execute, yada yada. The security landscape on android is a lot more flat than ios.

    Some ISP Vendors do have apps that let you sync android phones and back them up, it's just not common and they go through a LOT less work to make sure your restores will work later.

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