Do we need both a smartphone tag and a phone tag, and also a mobile tag and a cellular tag?
2 Answers
I'd suggest we need both as all phones are not necessarily smartphones. In fact all the disaster folks I work with use non-smartphones (such as the Nokia 6210i) specifically as they do not require the same sort of infrastructure as smartphones, so will still work in major disasters. Also, their battery life is weeks rather than days.
The security implications for each are different as well. A smartphone typically has a full tcp/ip stack, and a fully functional OS. 'Dumb' phones are very limited in functionality, so can be much more secure, and are certainly not susceptible to the same kind of attacks.
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2It would be interesting to here your thoughts on the other tags as well.– AndersDec 21, 2016 at 16:39
I think there is a clear difference between phone on one hand and smartphone and mobile on the other hand.
The phone tag is about the traditional telephone network. It is for issues with dumb phones or the aspects of your smart phone that makes it just that - a phone.
On the other hand, the smartphone and mobile tags are about the aspects of your phone that makes them tiny mobile computers. The distinction between the two seems to be that mobile includes tablets while smartphone doesn't. There is no specific tag for tablets. In my opinion these two tags could be merged.
I don't see the point with a cellular tag on top of the others. Since it has only three questions I think we could just kill it.
And all of these needs better usage guidance. This is how I would organize it:
mobile-devices (merge of mobile and smartphone):
Use for security issues specific to mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets.
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Use for security aspects of phone networks, phone calls, SMS, etc. For issues with smartphones, use mobile-devices.
Improvements and other suggestions are welcome.
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The best use case for a cellular IMO would be for threats that target cellular networks and are not directly related to mobile devices. Two of the questions currently tagged cellular would fall into this category. One that is about sniffing/monitoring cellular network bandwidths, and another about denying access to cellular networks. Overall I think your answer is spot on.– ErikDec 20, 2016 at 21:23
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3@Erik Good point. Would
cellular-network
be a better name in that case?– TsundokuDec 21, 2016 at 13:29 -
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1@Anders I think copper wire phone networks are very different than cellular networks which are different than WiFi networks. If the threat is to the network or concerns a property of the network then it would need a device agnostic tag.– ErikDec 21, 2016 at 18:28