you think you've seen a scam before but
wait until you see this one
so just last week a 22 year old bitcoin
millionaire called eric finman
announced to the world the freedom phone
a fully private smartphone
completely free of censorship and
snooping by the big tech companies like
facebook and twitter
and at the same time one that is
supposedly comparable to the best
smartphones on the market
this thing flew it almost immediately
hit the trending page
and in terms of likes shares
conversation people were passionately
excited about it
including some pretty well-known
influencers who've basically been
telling people to drop what they're
doing
and to buy this right now so i did quite
literally and paid 500 for a freedom
phone
and thanks to dashlane for sponsoring
this video
so this has got to be some next level
smartphone right
after all the last freedom phone we saw
was oh
right yeah anyways just to give you a
bit of context
eric's reason for creating this phone
was apparently inspired by the jan's
sixth riots
in the us you might remember it donald
trump lost the election and so a lot of
his supporters
stormed the capital building in
washington dc to try and overturn that
result
now what made this whole thing even more
controversial was that a lot of this
writing had been coordinated
on a free speech app called parlor and
so after all this happened
google and apple removed this app from
their stores to discourage more people
from joining in
this was the pivot point eric's whole
message is that this was an unacceptable
form of censorship and that
people should be able to say the things
they want to say and use the apps they
want to use
so he's created a phone that allows him
to do that
okay i mean i can also see the other
side of that coin but yeah
just putting the political premise aside
freedom itself
is a fairly easy philosophy to get
behind so let's see what we're working
with here
if you were an uninitiated consumer who
didn't really know much about phones but
saw the inspirational twitter video and
decided you want to buy
are you actually getting more freedom
well
sort of maybe the entire pitch here
rests on this supposed new operating
system that he's built
aptly named freedom os it's basically
android but with a lot of the snooping
apps like google chrome taken out and
replaced
with non-snooping alternatives like
duckduckgo bit misleading that he's
pitching it like it's some revolutionary
software he's built from scratch but
we'll let that slide then just to give
the guy a little bit of credit
he's not wrong in that there are certain
apps that google has
censored that this phone's app store
called patreon
patriarch will allow you to download and
the kind of finishing message that he's
leaving people with
is that freedom phone does everything
your current phone does except sensor
and spy on you
this is where things start to go wrong i
mean just to begin with
we can't verify that statement because
we've got no idea what it does
there's not a single spec on the website
you don't know what processor you're
getting what cameras what battery
and instead under each feature category
it's just a buy it now button
like even if this is made for people who
may not care about the specs for 500
they should at least be able to know
what they're paying for all we have is
this little quote that says
best phone in the world but who said
that
is this guy quoting himself also isn't
it just a little ironic given the whole
anti-big text stance
that this product was announced via a
tweet and then the buy page actively
encourages you to sign up to
and share using these big tech platforms
but okay just putting all that aside for
a second the concept of freedom os
is fine it's just from everything we can
see so far
it looks almost identical to an already
existing free piece of software
called lineage os that would be a best
case scenario
see this finman guys had a pretty
interesting story he basically made a
deal with his parents that
if he could turn one thousand dollars
into one million dollars via investments
they would let him skip college and he
did
he put all of that thousand he had into
bitcoin back when bitcoin was worth
nothing
and when that blew up his thousand
ballooned into well over two million
that's all well and good congratulations
to him but the point is
it doesn't in any way qualify him to be
responsible for all of your data
he might be a little more reputable than
one or two ceos i know
but seriously if this guy actually has
built his own operating system like he's
claiming
then that is a whole other security risk
in of itself let alone the fact that
can you really rely on eric finman to
provide you with the regular security
updates your phone needs to protect
itself
and if you're not getting those updates
then having a completely unfiltered app
store where nothing is censored
even if it's malware could create more
problems than it solves
this is probably the reason for articles
like this this
bit harsh but the point stands that
nothing this guy has done so far in his
career
demonstrates that he is in any way an
authority on security
let alone the fact that who knows what
kind of support you're gonna get here
there's no contact number for the
company and the only email address
doesn't answer or at least has left me
on red for three days straight
besides this whole idea of giving people
the option to use apps that have been
banned
it's not a selling point if i wanted to
download parlor on my android phone
even though i can't find it on the
google play store all i'd need to do
is to rock up to the parlor website and
just get it from there
for free then even this patreon app
store itself
we can see from these celebrity
endorsement videos what the interface
looks like
and that's enough to all but confirm
that all this store is
is a re-badged version of an already
existing free app
and if you are enjoying this video then
a sub to the channel would be
invaluable didn't see that one coming
did you
oh yeah and let's talk about the
celebrity endorsement videos actually
because as soon as this phone was
announced we saw a whole load of
high-profile people
drop videos that basically said this is
the best thing since sliced bread
we had candice owens who's an american
author who said
freedom phone literally i'm holding a
phone that is not controlled apple
google i think this is like the most
amazing thing ever
yes candice so am i
you need to get this phone i don't know
candice
need is a pretty strong word i need food
i need water
i probably don't need an unknown inspect
500
not drip or phone and clearly neither do
you
this girl spent a good minute talking
about how easy it is to switch her sim
over and how it's the first thing she
did from her iphone
and yet her tweets after this video are
still coming from an iphone
oh yeah and how could i forget you can
get 10 off
um by using just my first name candace
if you use the code candace if you if
you use the code candace at checkout
there are plenty more of these
endorsement videos but probably the
funniest one is from a girl called anna
kate
it's literally 30 minutes of pure gold i
kind of wish i could show you the whole
thing but
i'll settle for highlights for starters
she has no idea what
it is it's it's an android i don't
think it's an android is it an android
i'm not really sure
well set there is no face recognition
which i love
what's next it doesn't make calls which
i love
face recognition is a useful feature if
you don't like it
you can always turn it off so i like
that it
very much reminds me of an apple phone
it's an android oh yeah and don't forget
if you want to get it use code kate
you'll get 10
offs it doesn't take long to figure out
why these people are involved
turns out the freedom phone company has
set up an affiliate scheme that pays
promoters
50 per sale which means that let's say i
made a video telling you to drop what
you're doing right now
and buy it and let's say 20 000 of you
actually went through and placed an
order
that would be one million dollars
but this is the worst bit so far all
we've gathered is that
all the phone's main selling points
aren't really selling points
but this is where it goes from bad
product to scan
see this is an america first phone right
this thing's entire angle is that
your data is yours get away from spyware
etc even the logo is based on
a us flag except it's actually built by
a small phone company
in china the one country that donald
trump who's
almost like the supposed inspiration for
this phone accused of
spying the guy even went as far as to
completely ban
chinese huawei for this exact reason
finland's justification was that
well it's impossible to build a phone
top to bottom in the us right now
citing the fact that motorola struggled
with this exact same thing
hey maybe that would be an issue if you
know you
actually built this phone yourself but
it gets worse
in an interview with daily beast he let
loose that the company he was working
with
was in fact umidigi known for their
shockingly low cost
and absolutely not their reputation for
security
oh and would you look at that umidigi
already has a phone that looks exactly
like yours
the a9 pro the notch is the same the
buttons are the same the camera layout
exactly the same these are not two
different phones so
what you actually mean when you say you
worked with umidigi is that you went
onto alibaba
and you ordered a thousand phones for a
hundred dollars each
i mean by this logic tim cook and i are
best friends
because i've been ordering his iphones
for the last five years just to give you
some perspective here
while a company like samsung might make
twenty percent profit per phone
xiaomi might make ten percent or maybe
even five percent
this guy is out here trying to make a
500 markup
by only adding features that you can
already get for free
the finman has tried to justify this 500
price tag by saying
the phone features customized hardware
and improved memory
but we know what that really means he's
gone on to the store clicked this button
and then clicked this button but what
makes it even funnier
is the fact that the umidigi a9 pro is
not even one of the company's current
models it's a phone from 2020
and the chipset inside of it the
mediatek helio p60
has been known to be vulnerable to
authentication bypass attacks
this isn't the product of someone who
actually cares about privacy it's a
product of someone who's trying to take
advantage of people who aren't as tech
savvy
and who just don't realize that a the
hardware inside is incredibly cheap
and b that they can get all of these
apps that are on here
for free anyways it's tricking people
into thinking they're buying a
us-centric device
when actually they might as well have
just imported a phone from china
and used all the extra money to feed
their family for a month
on the subject of dodgy online
happenings this is dashlane
an app whose entire goal is to make the
internet easier
so you've probably been told at some
point that the internet is a dangerous
place
that you're constantly at risk of being
hacked and that you should make each of
your account passwords not just
different
but also complex enough that they end up
looking like this
but who's going to remember them that's
what dashlane's for
you can either use your fingerprint or
your face id and dashlane will then be
able to instantly autofill all your
details
onto any site and compared to using
something like google chrome's default
autofill software
one it's faster because it works no
matter which device you're using i could
be autofilling on google chrome on my
mac
but then pick up my iphone open safari
and still have the same details ready to
go
and two it's safer because instead of
just remembering a password that you
typed in dashlane can auto generate the
best passwords for you
so you can have every single one of your
accounts completely locked down
but at the same time the only thing
you'll ever need to access them is you
if that sounds helpful then you can
actually try dashlane for free on your
first device by just going to
dashlane.com
boss then if you go through that link
and then decide that you want to upgrade
for premium
you can get that for 50 off using the
code boss
to see the biggest nightmare tech fails
click here or
to see what i want apple to change on
the next iphone
click here my name is aaron this is mrs
boss
and i'll catch you in the next one