This is great news. People & small companies are entering a market focused on privacy. Graphene OS is also a great project, I hope more people will follow.
AMA: Gaël Duval, founder of the de-Googled Android OS /e/
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Re: AMA: Gaël Duval, founder of the de-Googled Android OS /e/
#22When compared to GrapheneOS, Duval claims: "If you want something with hardened security, use Graphene, if you want something that help you keep your data safe from Google, use /e/. It depends on your needs." GrapheneOS is already de-Googled, so, it's the better option?
is it de-googled? there is nothing about it in the features list, and the FAQ mentions the option of switching between using gooogle and graphene servers for things like the connectivity check, suggesting that people want to keep using google in order to "blend in".
it is neither clear that these switches cover ALL ways that android has to send data to google, nor that there is any desire to remove all of them.
the old FAQ apparently had this text (found that in a forum discussion):
GrapheneOS leaves these set to the standard four URLs to blend into the crowd of billions of other Android devices with and without Google Mobile Services performing the same empty GET requests. For privacy reasons, it isn't desirable to stand out from the crowd and changing these URLs or even disabling the feature will likely reduce your privacy by giving your device a more unique fingerprint. GrapheneOS aims to appear like any other common mobile device on the network.
that text has been replaced with:
You can change the connectivity check URLs via the Settings Network & internet Advanced Internet connectivity check setting. At the moment, it can be toggled between the GrapheneOS server and the standard Google servers used by billions of other Android devices. This can be used to blend in with other Android devices, both with and without Play services. Changing this to the Standard (Google) mode will use the same URLs used by AOSP and the stock OS along with the vast majority of other devices
there is more here: https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/general-about-grapheneos....
a forum member claims that:
Connections of android location services to get GPS constellations were shown before to send sim card imsi and connected cellular tower id to provider (qualcom/google)
Graphene still allows those connections
Android services make other weird connections. Example: AOSP dialler app is querying phone numbers against online database leaking all contacts to google. How was this taken care of in graphene? Are all AOSP services/apps security-verified to not leak any data?
this suggests that while graphene developers do consider concerns about sending data to google, their goals are orthogonal to those of /e/OS, as Duval claims.
Re: AMA: Gaël Duval, founder of the de-Googled Android OS /e/
#23When compared to GrapheneOS, Duval claims: "If you want something with hardened security, use Graphene, if you want something that help you keep your data safe from Google, use /e/. It depends on your needs." GrapheneOS is already de-Googled, so, it's the better option?
is it de-googled? there is nothing about it in the features list, and the FAQ mentions the option of switching between using gooogle and graphene servers for things like the connectivity check, suggesting that people want to keep using google in order to "blend in". it is neither clear that these switches cover ALL ways that android has to send data to google, nor that there is any desire to remove all of them. the o…
while grapheneOS goals look laudable, i'd like to get a better understanding on how blending in and leaking my contacts to google helps me protect my privacy.
Re: AMA: Gaël Duval, founder of the de-Googled Android OS /e/
#24Some time ago I had to decide about which ROM to put on an old phone of mine, I went with llLineageOS. Thus blog post was spooky: https://infosec-handbook.eu/blog/e-foundation-first-look/ I also tried VanadiumOS but it wasn't for me
while that was a fair assessment (maybe not the ntp pool), it was followed up on at that time - https://gitlab.e.foundation/e/backlog/-/issues?scope=all&utf...
Re: AMA: Gaël Duval, founder of the de-Googled Android OS /e/
#25/e/ is easily, EASILY the worst name for a product I have ever seen. I don't know how to pronounce it, I can't Google it, I can't make a guess what it's domain might be. Just awful in every possible way.
Also it might cause confusion with https://www.enlightenment.org/
Or elementeryOS which is commonly referred to as eOS
Re: AMA: Gaël Duval, founder of the de-Googled Android OS /e/
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's only until it becomes ubiquitous: C programming language.
You had to put "C programming language" because C is an insufficient identifier, despite its ubiquity.
Go is another one that seemed like a bad choice--at least "e" isn't an English word.