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Thanks for posting this. I spent some time looking at how "de-Googled" GrapheneOS is. If you define "de-Googled" as meaning the phone makes no connections to
by ThenAsNow 6y ago
Thanks for posting this. I spent some time looking at how "de-Googled" GrapheneOS is. If you define "de-Googled" as meaning the phone makes no connections to Google servers that you do not explicitly acknowledge/permit, then GrapheneOS is still far from "de-Googled". Just to give one example, SUPL. There are also plenty of unGoogled-Chromium patches GrapheneOS doesn't apply. I'm not saying GrapheneOS isn't way better than the Android that ships on phones, but it's misleading to pretend they care about de-Googling as a first tier priority.
GrapheneOS does do some privacy oriented work, but it's far more focused on hardening.
I look forward to examining /e/ and CalyxOS since their focus is more heavily on privacy. For my use cases, I'm less worried about hardening than privacy.
Also, it's a lot of work to keep Android both up-to-date and de-Googled. I started patching GrapheneOS and realized I did not have the bandwidth to maintain the patchset. And still had no good answer for SUPL. Hopefully CalyxOS and /e/ have maintainers with the bandwidth.
- jmnicolas 6y agoYou don't have to use Vanadium on GrapheneOS, I use Bromite (mostly for the ad blocking) and there's also an ungoogled chromium available in FDroid.
- Throwaway1771 6y agoAnd normal Chromium, which gets faster patches, and can be configured not to send telemetry etc. Do it carefully, though.
- csagan5 6y ago/e/ uses all of Bromite's patches as well; I asked them to mention this in the About section, since it is basically a rebranded Bromite that they are shipping.
- Throwaway1771 6y agoYou cannot have strong privacy confidence without strong security confidence.