I’ve been hearing about the Librem 5 phone for the last 3ish years, but not much about what it offers. Over the last year I’ve been hearing various stores come out of the woodwork about the Librem 5 and the nightmare it has been for people either trying to get one, and a few times stores like in the video of trying to get refunded.
This isn’t the only time I’ve seen privacy and security phone snake oil being marketed online. I recall hearing about the “Freedom Phone” when it was first announced and laughed until my sides started to hurt from how obvious that it was a scam. When it later came out that it was just a rebranded Chinese phone using a modified LineageOS ROM and that its “uncensorable app store” was a reskin of Aurora, well more laughing came from me. It was clear that the marketing was all a lie and the product was cobbled together in what I assume was less than a week.
Incidents like this show that grifters and scammers have taken notice that more people are interested in privacy and security and are starting to shift to selling these kind of products. We do have places where people can point out these scams, but I’m worried that the information debunking them might not be largely available or spread out online. HackerNews is decently large but isn’t widespread outside of tech focused communities.