this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2023
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Privacy
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Whichever system you can navigate through easily and freely, none of which is a smartphone. Smartphones are only temporary vessels on-the-go for calling, texting and photos/videos. Keep your computing as much as possible to a real, dedicated computer or laptop. Any mainstream Android phone in the past 3-4 years, if you do not root or unlock it, has been "secure" at this point, as long as you are not installing calculator apps that need your credit card info and camera access, and as far as your adversary is not the TSA airport agent with Israeli Cellebrite kit or you are not a state actor target for malware like Pegasus.
Funnily enough, Pixels have been horrifically insecure for a while now, besides their garbage QC issues. Google took months to fix these security issues for 6A, 7 series that were more easy to exploit than the security issues any other Android maker has had for the past few years.
https://bugs.xdavidhu.me/google/2022/11/10/accidental-70k-google-pixel-lock-screen-bypass/
https://twitter.com/ItsSimonTime/status/1636857478263750656
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Google-Pixel-6a-reviewers-claim-to-encounter-a-potentially-serious-device-security-issue.637266.0.html
Any decent Android phone post Android 9 version, provided you:
is a secure phone to use. There is full disk encryption for years now, and iPhones are cheaper and easier to exploit than Androids since 5-6 years.
I have had a non-root smartphone guide for years now (https://lemmy.ml/post/128667), letting anyone have a private and secure Android device without any Safetynet tampering or bootloader unlocking complexity, which also allows to use Android Auto, bank apps and any of those Safetynet apps comfortably. This, to the best of my knowledge, is the Pareto frontier of usability, privacy and security on smartphones, provided you have an actual computer as well.
Someone made an Android app that allowed me to solve the issue of physical phone theft as well, effectively disallowing anyone (unless million dollar Cellebrite-like kits can exploit the stolen locked phone) to extract data out of your phone, in case someone took your phone on the street and ran away. This requires locked bootloader, which is the default state of any Android phone you purchase commercially, unless later unlocked or rooted.
That is the most elaborate way of dancing around a simple answer I have ever seen, I am impressed.
That is the ELI5 version, which is how I talk to people about technical matters. If you were to quote this 20 years later, it would require no further context and citation, and would still be a relevant comment. A lot of my comments are guest-blogging style mini posts. Generally one should have no further questions about picking a private and "secure" Android device for years after reading this.
See, I genuinely appreciate the thought behind that. It's just that the way you word things sounds like an uncomfortable mix between aggressive, a dash of condescending, and getting worked up about others not accepting „the one truth“, so to speak.
Again, I appreciate trying to raise awareness.
But firstly, roll back and try other ways of doing it, and secondly, you can't force decisions on others.
You have to because you are XY political affiliation
No, just stop saying stuff like that. Seriously, it doesn't do you or your cause any favours.
There are certain "security zealots" in FOSS community that shill Big Tech, dump on FOSS projects and promote typical IT dudebro asshole behaviours. I am documenting it since 5 years, so I am coming from a far different place, having seen it all. Being in their chatrooms, engaging with racists, IRL Nazis and absolute clowns has allowed me to see pretty much every trick they can pull.
The reason I called out the political affiliation is because as a leftist, cherrypicking and supporting/opposing issues is incorrect. IT dudebro behaviour is what GrapheneOS community staunchly supports and normalises, and is the root of many problems in tech sector.
Micay using the "autism" placard to dodge accountability is disgusting, and it hurts all autist and neurodivergent people. Micay is the embodiment of most of the worst kind of behaviours, and rewarding him by using his AOSP fork is one of the worst things you could do.
Didn't Micay announce in May that he was going to step down as lead developer and head of the foundation?
Still though, him being a massive dick doesn't mean Graphene is a bad system all of a sudden. As I said before, it's a case of personal principles vs practical use, and people will decide whatever they'll decide.
People are complex, and this kind of decision-making simply isn't as black and white as you'd like it to be. (And don't get me wrong here, there certainly are many situations where it should be)
Anyway, I guess you'll be happy to hear that sustainability and repairability in form of a Fairphone is ultimately more important to me than being able to use Graphene.
That's likely the route I'll be going whenever DivestOS doesn't support my device anymore.
Its easy to see why "stepping down" means nothing, when you see that GrapheneOS is a one man army show, his GitHub says the same, and GrapheneOS commits tell the same story since April 2023 (when he told how there was a CP/gore spammer in his offtopic Matrix chat and he claimed to be swatted, no evidence or in local Canadian news in 5 months). Check his GitHub repo member list (flat hierarchy makes no sense), correlate with Matrix chatroom and Discourse admins/mods lists.
His whole game is playing with optics in the FOSS community, portraying his hobbyist stuff as professional even when his behaviour screams the opposite, and using labels like "lead dev", as if many people make commits to GrapheneOS. Optics is the key word, which also plays into marketing fluff about features, mostly which are rebrandings like what OEMs do with tacky skins.
While things in life are not black and white, they are certainly not 45% and 55% gray either, but more like 20% gray and 80% gray. (I am a Pareto's principle shill.) Most (not many) situations in life are just that, distinctly clear with no fog clouds. Nuance changing a situation's dynamics is the exception, not the norm.
Fairphone is one of the top recommendations in my guide, and they now have 8-10 years of security updates as well (7y with FP3+ iirc).
All this is not to appease or stroke my ego (I have refused donations for my guides), but to refuse rewarding this IT brodude bullshit behaviour, and to put an end to it in the IT and FOSS/anonymous communities. The privacy community has been filled with illogical, conspiratorial nutjobs and assholes and I have been one to help clean it up myself for about 4 years now. I still fondly remember how r/privacy mod censored my r/privatelife subreddit with 26 members, and swore to clean this mess. Simply put, I am a meta-contrarian voice of reason that has and will go against anyone to say what needs to be told.