On Sun, May 24, 2015 at 12:51:39PM +0530, Jay Patel wrote: > Blackberry for security? or something else.
BlackBerry has notably fewer exploits than other platforms, especially Android-anything. I haven't bought a new one recently but the older ones were actually good phones as in they don't drop calls and the people you are talking to can hear you and vice versa. They work where other phones have no coverage. They put good radios in them. The platform has been a good platform. It has a lot of nice features and a lot of security features. It has user-selectable cipher choices and a secure messenger. It has a built in VPN and there is at least one good SSH client available for it. BB is certainly not secure in the sense anybody believes BlackBerry hasn't been coopted by the NBA like any other major carrier. You are posting from gmail so presumably that doesn't bother you. As far as the handset goes it offers good encryption options for your phone RAM and is contents selectable including the micro SD card. You can set it to wipe on excess password tries (you decide how many that is) and with the management software for BB Enterprise you can wipe or provision phones remotely. You can easily set it up so if your phone is lost or stolen it will be wiped and worthless. Every BB has a unique PIN and unless you release yours the stolen phone will never get onto the BB network again. The email is the best reason to get a BB. It's a true push-email, no polling. There is another security hole though since you have to give your passwords to the BB software at your carrier to access your email accounts. When somebody emails you you get notified right away. I don't know if they fixed it but the notification only used to be for 10 minutes or something like that. An app for 5 bucks fixes that and you'll never miss an email or phone call again. It's just superb for business and makes you look good when you get back to people promptly and don't bobble emails like some teenage kid with an iPhone. Oh sorry man, I never knew you emailed me. There was a 3M limit for file attachments. That is a pain in the ass if you need to read big manuals etc. but honestly the phone is not a tablet and reading doc on it gets old fast. The physical keyboards are great and you can compose emails almost normally. The browsers suck. There are some third party browsers but they're still not good compared to what else is available for other platforms. The multimedia stuff also is very basic. They are not gamer's phones. All in all the BB is a good platform with a lot of nice features, is designed with some understanding of security issues and priority given to that. I like the sane design and lack of Tokyo-by-night features just to say they have something. It's basic non-glamorous stuff that just works. If you want a reasonbly secure phone that is really a good phone and a superb tiny mobile email platform with very few exploits then BB is a top choice. As soon as you want to do web stuff, watch movies, or play games it goes way down the list. /jl -- ASCII ribbon campaign ( ) Powered by Lemote Fuloong against HTML e-mail X Loongson MIPS and OpenBSD and proprietary / \ http://www.mutt.org attachments / \ Code Blue or Go Home! Encrypted email preferred PGP Key 2048R/DA65BC04
