Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

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Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
Don't promote proprietary software
Try to keep things on topic
If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
Be nice :)

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Switched to GrapheneOS today (grapheneos.org)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

102 comments fedilink hide all child comments

After using LineageOS for long time, I have finally moved to GrapheneOS. I use a lot of banking and financial apps which I never felt comfortable using on LineageOS due to lack of proper sandboxing, unlocked bootloader etc.

GrapheneOS works flawlessly just like Android. You don't even notice there's hardening underneath. Also it protects from Google's evil location tracking using WiFi/Bluetooth or even when the Location is turned off. I don't understand how people in general are comfortable with Google tracking all the time. You can use Google Play and Play Services in a sandbox that works just like regular installation, but without deep tracking.

If you haven't tried GrapheneOS, try it. You won't go back to regular Android.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, it's kind of wild and ironic that one of the most private OSes requires a Google phone.

[–] refalo 16 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Not only that but it relies on the Pixel's black box "Titan" security chip, that google pinky-promised to open source but never did...

[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 months ago (2 children)

The Titan security chip is not a black box. The Titan M1 gas been scrutinazed by blackhat: https://dl.acm.org/doi/fullHtml/10.1145/3503921.3503922

Just because something is not open source does not mean you can't verify it (no, i'm not shilling closed slurce; no i don't think closed > open; no i don't think closed source is more secure)

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

'Just reverse engineer it bro'

[–] refalo -1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

That work was not available when GrapheneOS was developed, and is not necessarily applicable to devices released after those findings... I still consider it a black box.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 4 months ago

That work was not available when GrapheneOS was developed

What do you mean ? This has nothing to do with GrapheneOS in the first place (which by the way has been created in 2014. The article i linked refers to 2021).

I still consider it a black box.

Reverse engineering is a thing. It always has been. If every piece of closed source was a blackbox how can you explain exploitation ? How can bad actors exploit Windows, MacOS, CPU firmware and so on ? Your argument here is not practical. Also, why should Google put a backdoor inside a chip ? They already get every information they what directly from the people agreeing to use their software. So, why bother ? Moreover, every phone on the market has closed source firmware.