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GrapheneOS recommended for domestic abuse victims

privacypros.com.au

121–130 of 228 posts

Re: GrapheneOS recommended for domestic abuse victims

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remote attestation is not just insane, it's the technology that will end free computing as we know it today. What good is free software if using it marks our devices as untrusted and gets us banned from every service out there? Gets us ostracized from digital society? Because we "tampered" with the device? We should be able to run whatever software we want and they should be none the wiser. Instead, we are part of th…

It can be used for security and used privately [1] but I entirely agree with you, Google's use of it is anti-competitive and terrible. [1] attestation.app

Yeah same as TPM and Secureboot. They can improve your own personal security (and thereby privacy) drastically, but it has to be controlled by the user.

Re: GrapheneOS recommended for domestic abuse victims

#122

[flagged]

> God, I hate techno-solutionism. I don't hate it nearly as much as this weird genre of accelerationism where any attempt to improve one's immediate circumstances is just a distraction from the real work that needs to be done.

And where the acceleration comes in in such description?

Improving one's immediate circumstances in such context is talking to someone and asking for help, not spending days installing latest set of tools endorsed by privacy advocates and bricking one's phone due to accident while flashing privacy-friendly ROM.

Re: GrapheneOS recommended for domestic abuse victims

#123
post #79
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And why not? Law enforcement does not represent supreme justice and good. There are higher moral principles out there. Respect for law enforcement in the absence of justice is a disaster for society. All it does is give cover for bad actors.

There's plenty of high moral principles, but "let's build technology that explicitly protects criminals - especially child and women traffickers - against investigation" ain't one of them for majority of people living in democracies.

Your assumption that "criminals" are doing something morally wrong is fundamentally flawed. Civil rights activists were criminals, as were suffragettes, and the people who protected Jews in Nazi Germany, and gay or trans people just existing in countries where that isn't allowed. All criminals. Law enforcement isn't even always carrying out the law, as we've seen with ICE arresting, assaulting, searching, deporting people on no other basis than their skin color.

Democracy dies when people can't protest. When they are under constant surveillance, afraid of being singled out by the government intelligence gathering mechanisms. Unable to speak out about injustice, organise and engage in healthy counter culture.

Look at Russia, look at China. Don't imagine that giving your own government and law enforcement the same tools of surveillance and oppression will have a different outcome.

Re: GrapheneOS recommended for domestic abuse victims

#124

On this subject since it's an Australian seller and marketed as "DV safe". Australia has a national test of it's phone alert system in 10 days at 27/07/26, 2PM AEST. (People in North America would know it as Cell Alerts/Presidential Alerts etc.) There have been warnings that hidden phones will almost certainly sound, and their recommendation is to ether power off the phone or put it into airplane mode at least an hou…

You should be able to disable these alerts via the Wireless Emergency Alerts.

You cannot on many phones, and often phones will even lie when it says all categories are disabled, as some jurisdictions have laws against turning off some of the highest alert categories.

Re: GrapheneOS recommended for domestic abuse victims

#125
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The article mentions that an abuser could put spyware on your phone? Is that a realistic scenario? Yes, stalkerware is an entire genre of software and it is designed for exactly this purpose. How “stalkerware” apps are letting abusive partners spy on their victims https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/07/10/134249/stalkerwa... The Abuser in Your Pocket: How Stalkerware Threatens Women’s Privacy https://safeescape.o…

Happy GrapheneOS user here as well, but... I am having a hard time believing your first link, which says: > In Anna’s case, stalkerware was disguised as a picture message, sent to her by the man she was dating (let’s call him David), just a few weeks after they met. She was then under constant surveillance for about two years That sounds like an NSO-level attack, right? I doubt abusers routinely pull that out?! I tot…

> That sounds like an NSO-level attack, right?

Not really, these are available to any script kiddy as long as unpatched phones and software exists. It takes some initial effort to find them out, but that is it.

And I remember similar attacks floating around few years ago even outside domestic violence situation.

Re: GrapheneOS recommended for domestic abuse victims

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> God, I hate techno-solutionism. I don't hate it nearly as much as this weird genre of accelerationism where any attempt to improve one's immediate circumstances is just a distraction from the real work that needs to be done.

And where the acceleration comes in in such description? Improving one's immediate circumstances in such context is talking to someone and asking for help, not spending days installing latest set of tools endorsed by privacy advocates and bricking one's phone due to accident while flashing privacy-friendly ROM.

There's no risk of bricking a device by using the official GrapheneOS web installer and it takes 10 minutes. Devices can also be purchased with GrapheneOS installed.

Aside from that, GrapheneOS isn't read-only memory firmware and that incorrect term should be avoided since it propagates misconceptions.

Re: GrapheneOS recommended for domestic abuse victims

#127

It's absolutely insane that phones have online accounts deeply integrated into the OS. You need to give Apple your phone number to download any apps on iOS. For example: Say anyone that downloaded IceBlock commited crime, Apple could give the govt everyone who downloaded its phone number, the govt could get the realtime location of everyone based on their phone number from the carrier. And that's not even mentioning…

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Re: GrapheneOS recommended for domestic abuse victims

#128
This is just dumb. I'm sorry, it's dumb.

Why?

Here we're discussing a domestic abuse situation, where people are forcing victims to hand over their phone, and have apps installed to keep track of them. Against their will.

And the solution is to... what? Mysteriously have control of your own phone, and install an OS which prevents this? Seriously? I can just imagine it, when the unfamiliar OS is discovered, or the app not working. This is a domestic abuse situation, it's not about hidden sneakiness.

It's about in-your-face control. It's about forced compliance, or else. It's about the abuser becoming exceptionally upset about their tracking not working, or about a new, mysterious OS.

Installing GrapheneOS would not be tolerated. It would be an act which comes with reprisals. I can just imagine the reaction when the abuser can't get the phone to do as they wish, for the person to disclose what the OS is, or just to hand over their unlocked phone, and discover it's GrapheneOS, and Google it and see what it's for.

It's actually horrible advice to advocate the someone in this situation installs GrapheneOS. How could it possibly help?

GrapheneOS is great to protect from secret, unknown spying. Not some domestic abuse situation where spying isn't via secretness.

Re: GrapheneOS recommended for domestic abuse victims

#130
post #3

This is a website made by people who sell phones that are 100% tracker-free, and that run on GrpheneOS. I wouldn’t recommend domestic violence victims to install graphene os on their phone by themselves

It's generally better for people to install GrapheneOS themselves since it's very easy and saves a lot of money. It takes 10 minutes to install GrapheneOS with the web installer. It also avoids needing to trust a company to do it, although it's possible to verify an install done by someone else is genuine with the verified boot key fingerprint and/or Auditor. An existing install by someone else should be factory reset it to avoid any sketchy configuration.

Getting a new phone is very useful to someone that's a victim of a controlling partner but it doesn't particularly need to be a GrapheneOS device. GrapheneOS has features useful for this including Auditor and standard Android profiles but we're not specifically recommending it for this ourselves. People who are victims of this probably just need a new phone of any kind and to prioritize other things.

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