131–140 of 240 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I recently spent twenty minutes sitting outside of an MLB stadium because MLB decided they needed the same level of play protection as a foreign banking app and it refused to work on my friend's LineageOS phone. We only got in by installing the app on my Sony and him signing into his account. They charge a fee now to get paper tickets from the box office.
... and you continue to let them abuse you.
Hmm, this thread and the reports of shady practices make me wonder if this will affect the partnership with GrapheneOS[1]. It seems that such things shouldn't really happen on a device where security is a top priority, whether intentional or not. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47214645
Why does it matter? The GrapheneOS team will make the OS images. So as long as the phone is unlockable, has up-to-date firmware bundles, etc. who cares?
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Why does it matter? The GrapheneOS team will make the OS images. So as long as the phone is unlockable, has up-to-date firmware bundles, etc. who cares?
GrapheneOS may be de-googled but it is not de-blobbed, they rely on the vendor to maintain certain drivers etc. Hopefully the driver maintenance team is very separate from the bloatware installation team, but someone could reasonably worry that they're tarred with the same brush.
(Of course, there is more, like camera firmware, etc. but they are typically provided through the hardware providers.)
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The paranoia is completely warranted, but there is a solution. Just root your Android phone and put a custom ROM like LineageOS etc If you want a stretch goal try and de-Google yourself, I have tried but failed twice now.
Easier said than done in the US. Even of the phones that allow for rooting (which is few and far between these days) you're at the complete mercy of the carrier for whether or not that ability is actually available to you. Even if the gracious lords may allow it, you have to engage in a long and drawn out Byzantine rite just for the privilege. Currently sitting on a Pixel 10 that will not let me have root. Give me a…
Stop buying phones from Verizon?
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The paranoia is completely warranted, but there is a solution. Just root your Android phone and put a custom ROM like LineageOS etc If you want a stretch goal try and de-Google yourself, I have tried but failed twice now.
My biggest obstacle to de-Googling is the GBoard keyboard of all things. There's really no good open source alternative that even comes close.
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How do you imagine that protects you? If anything I'm inclined to trust the LineageOS supply chain more than the OEM on account of being a smaller target, having less bloat, and being 100% open from start to finish. For a particularly sensitive context I'd want to build the ROM myself on an appropriately secured machine running one of the major distros.
Financial apps like banking ones sometimes refuse to work on rooted phones and you have to follow if you want to run them. I just have no time and knowledge to build ROM myself. 100% open projects also suffer supply chain attacks.
I'd suggest not using apps that fail to respect your autonomy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The paranoia is completely warranted, but there is a solution. Just root your Android phone and put a custom ROM like LineageOS etc If you want a stretch goal try and de-Google yourself, I have tried but failed twice now.
My biggest obstacle to de-Googling is the GBoard keyboard of all things. There's really no good open source alternative that even comes close.
[1]: https://keyboard.futo.org/
[2]: I never investigated this, so I always assumed that GBoard predicted what key I wanted to press when close to two letters. With FOSS keyboards, with a physically identical layout, I tended to make way more mistakes.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But they haven't yet, and if you refuse to give Google money directly there's always the secondhand market.
You'd still be walking around as a free advertiser for their stuff, simply by owning Google-branded hardware. And of course the hypocrisy of having a Google phone to avoid Google spying is palpable.