[ale] somewhat OT - are Android Smartwatch Bluetooth notifiers safe?

[Neal Rhodes]

http://www.gearbest.com/cell-phones/pp_174048.html?wid=21 is a link to
the watch I bought.  It is $10.99 with free shipping to the US.  ( I had
some bonus points left from buying a SJCAM.  That's why it was just $3
for me. 

This is just a curiosity for me.    My understanding is that for $3/mo I
can have some very limited amount of voice phone time from TMobile.
Like for the dozens of times I'm out somewhere and my normal android
phone is dead again.   If I never run their software to send emails from
android phone to the watch it's still ok. 

Without knowing how old your son is, be aware that there are similar
phone/watches more oriented to children: they include GPS location, and
a panic button to dial a set number and ....   I've not researched them;
I just ran across some on Amazon. 

On Wed, 2017-03-08 at 07:53 -0500, Chuck Payne wrote:
> A $3 watch, do you have a link, I love to get one for my son. He keeps
> trying to take my Samsung S and S3 that I have paired with my Note 4.
> One thing about those smart watches I don't like is, that you have to
> pay $5 buck a month for data plan. Yes, they do have a telephone
> number. Yes, I can make calls like Dick Tracy on it. Honestly the
> pairing and wireless are enough. I can use Wifi, and my Note will
> connect to the watch remote if I am not close enough for BT. 
> 
> I love my watches, I am on T-Mobile as well, been with them since they
> were VoiceStream. I have my S, before iWatch came out it nice to be
> able to sit in meetings and see alerts with out my phone making a lot
> of noise. 
> 
> 
> 
> What I would be worried about, and this is just me, if there any
> malware spying on you, you did say you got the watch from China. 
> 
> 
> On Tue, Mar 7, 2017 at 5:59 PM, DJ-Pfulio <DJPfulio at jdpfu.com> wrote:
> 
>         On 03/07/2017 05:25 PM, Joey Kelly wrote:
>         > <snip>
>         >>  Just for fun, I ordered an
>         >> $8 SIM card to hook up with the $3/mo Tmobile service.
>         >
>         > Huh? What do they provide for three measly dollars?
>         >
>         
>         Access to their network on a PAYG plan.
>         
>         30 minutes and 10 texts allowed, I think. Never use them.
>         Zero data,
>         but you can add a 7-day 1G data plan for non-roaming locations
>         for $10.
>         "Roaming" has burned me a few times - OBX and Alaska are
>         "roaming" and
>         not covered in the $10 data add-on, for example. They wouldn't
>         refund my
>         money - I'd used 50 bytes to verify the data was enabled in
>         Portland on
>         the way.
>         
>         I have wifi almost everywhere. Can't see a need to have data
>         plan most
>         of the time. Plenty of off-line apps, plus ads don't get in
>         the way or
>         suck data.
>         
>         Sorta shocked about the SIM cost. I've always gotten one free
>         or for $1.
>         
>         BTW, I've been on the t-mbl PAYG plan since 2007. It used to
>         be better.
>         No monthly costs, pay just for minutes used. Bought $10/yr for
>         about 8
>         yrs, that was it, before they changed it to $2.95/month in
>         late 2015.
>         $48/yr is pretty reasonable for an emergency cell phone, IMHO.
>         My
>         prepaid account expires yearly, so just put $50/yr on it.  I
>         figure most
>         people are paying $50+/month, so adding the $10/wk for data
>         during
>         travel is a bargain!
>         
>         But it is t-mobile and sometimes the coverage does suck
>         completely.
>         OTOH, in those places pretty much every cell networks suck
>         including
>         verizon and AT&T.
>         
>         _______________________________________________
>         Ale mailing list
>         Ale at ale.org
>         http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
>         See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
>         http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
>         
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> 
> Terror PUP a.k.a
> Chuck "PUP" Payne
> -----------------------------------------
> Discover it! Enjoy it! Share it! openSUSE Linux.
> -----------------------------------------
> openSUSE -- Terrorpup
> openSUSE Ambassador/openSUSE Member
> skype,twiiter,identica,friendfeed -- terrorpup
> freenode(irc) --terrorpup/lupinstein
> Register Linux Userid: 155363
>  
> Have you tried SUSE Studio? Need to create a Live CD,  an app you want
> to package and distribute , or create your own linux distro. Give SUSE
> Studio a try.
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Ale mailing list
> Ale at ale.org
> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.ale.org/pipermail/ale/attachments/20170308/c54a5e9b/attachment.html>