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Degoogled since 2018
hardcore mode, google domains blocked by DNS
YouTube scrap data
GrapheneOS with used Pixel
“degoogle” - uses Google phone
It's a funny irony but a Pixel with GrapheneOS is the gold standard for mobile device security. Buy it secondhand and cut out their profit.
Sure, sure. As long as you can trust Google's custom silicon and custom security processor. I sure as fuck don't, regardless of what Graphene OS claims. They are going to need to go to much greater lengths to assure me of that, and I can pretty much guarantee the Graphene devs won't be able to do that.
You can literally monitor the outbound DNS on a pixel with graphene and no apps and you'll see zero DNS requests to any Google servers. Quit spredding FUD
What's the alternative?
For me Linux has been working pretty well
Linux on a mobile phone? Which device? Which Distribution? What works 'pretty well? What doesn't work all that well?
There are linux phones. I have mixed to negative things from the perspective of people that actually have to have a phone that will just work. Alarms are fucking terrible from what I have heard.
On a phone ?
Honestly? In 2025? In the real world? Apple is the only alternative. And it really actually hurts my soul to type this reply out. I hate Apple. I think they are clowns. I hate closed platforms, and I think Mac's are trash because of it. I have used every single version of Android. All of them, even pre-stable. The only alternative to Google is 2025, in regards to a mobile OS that works with my services and devices that I already own is iOS. The only way to get that is to buy a phone from Apple. And 'normies' care VERY MUCH about being able to use their already purchased shit. I wish Europe or Asia would actually try to compete against US big tech. It's a very strange marketplace, nearly the entire planet trusts US companies with basically their entire infrastructure. The only major players in computing are US based companies, aside from MAYBE Canonical/Ubuntu. In the mobile market, I don't see a way out of the duopoly at the current moment. If my phone died today I would replace it with an iPhone. And I wouldn't be happy about it.
Apple is the only alternative.
Nah. Fuck Apple! I know it may be too much but they're dead to me after I bought AN OFFICIAL REFURBISHED Apple device for my dad (old had problems) and received it with a motherboard problem (?), it couldn't read the sim for more than 1 hour straight. Contacted support multiple times and "Try this useless troubleshooting steps you already tried countless times" or "The sim is ruined so it doesn't touch the sim pins correctly (or some bs like that) " or "It's your carrier" or "From our remote tests, the phone works perfectly" or other Apple shit I forgot. After my last call I said "You either take my phone and check it or refund me", they took it to check if was the phone, got it back ~2 days later FUCKING WORKING as it should. I guess was really the sim, not the phone 🤔🤔
The worst part is: They didn't even care to give me something in return for the trouble! No, not money but they could've extended my warranty for a month or 2 as an apology but "Nah, we can't. Fuck you now"
I'm reading this as Apple fixed your refurbished phone like you asked them to. I do not see how you should be entitled to extra warranty because of this, or any other compensation. I can assure you that Google would also not extend your warranty for an issue of this nature. My friend is dealing with pixel warranty support as we speak and it sure as hell doesn't sound any better. I totally understand 'writing off' a company after you feel personally wronged by them, but I wasn't including warranty issues on refurbished phones in my requirements for my next mobile device. You asked what the alternative is and realistically that's the only one for 99.99% of the population.
We get it. You want to buy an iPhone. Remember that Tim Apple also bends the knee and also donated a million to Trump's inauguration while attending. I'm sure Apple maps will update their map too, it just takes Apple an extra year to catch up.
They did after 2 weeks of back and forth with them "this is a you issue not ours" while it's the other way around
Nah. If it's a choice between GrapheneOS on a pixel or an iPhone I'd take my chances with the pixel.
It would be pretty easy to detect if there was unexpected traffic with any google services.
You do you but IMO Graphene is your best chance in 2025.
Nah. If it's a choice between GrapheneOS on a pixel or an iPhone I'd take my chances with the pixel.
Why? Not trying to be a dick about it, I just want to hear your justification. Thanks.
Because I'm not concerned that the google hardware constitutes a security risk.
It's trivial to monitor packets a device is sending over the network, the Graphene team would absolutely be on top of this.
Not the OP but I find it really curious you trust Apple's custom silicon over Google's in such a way that you seem rather confident with your locked down, Apple-controlled OS... unless you root it but then GL getting security updates, which kinda defeats the whole point.
There are a lot of risk vectors and frankly if we're getting to the immutable silicon level the exploits are probably going to be filed under direct targeting level privacy concerns. GrapheneOS is really mature and has security experts so good at their jobs they occasionally apply security patches before Google, with all its funding, does.
Apple and Google were both caught providing push notification data (e.g. the service underpinning most of the notifications appearing on your device) to the authorities. Not to mention Apple argued in a court case that it's "unreasonable" for an Apple user to presume their activities are private from Apple. I believe that particular court case was about them constructing ad profiles on their users.
It's genuinely absurd to me that you just vaguely threw out some kind of blanket concern with Google's underlying hardware. I'd really love to hear if that's based on anything material. From information I know is real and privacy concerns that have been explicitly justified, GrapheneOS is the best choice on the market atm.
My choice is to just not have a smartphone. Something like an old Nokia is what I use, CatB40 specifically but the company licensed to make those no longer exists. I hope Cat find someone else and they still make a line of dumb phones not just smartphones but I don't really expect it any time soon.
If mine dies probably just get a regular dumbphone for like £10. Can't collect much data if all it's capable of doing is calls and SMS which I rarely even use.
That's super cool for you. If I didn't work in IT I might try to achieve something similar. But honestly suggesting that the average person on the street go back in time almost 20 years in regards to their mobile device is just going to get you laughed out of the room. Do you use mobile banking? Do you carry a camera around with you at all times? Do you listen to music? For me music is a big one, I'm not listening to any god damned radio commercials and I don't have CD player in my car anymore. How would you entertain yourself on a long car ride alone in this scenario? Do you have any IoT or smart home devices? How do you interact with them? I know a few people that are a bit older than me that don't 'get' smartphones but then use a tablet on the couch pretty often. My uncle doesn't have a smartphone, and is kinda smug about it, but also doesn't really leave the house without his android tablet. I guess if you don't actually want to do any computing on the go a dumb phone is fine for short texts and phone calls, but finding one that works with 5G is another challenge these days.
Dumb phones can play music just fine, mine has a 64GB SD card in it, not sure about 5G as it's still fairly new but can easily get one that use 4G.
For everything else I never used a phone for that anyway. Online banking on PC, IoT can get the fuck off my network and it does have some kind of camera on it but why would I really need one
Apple phones make a simmilar enough number of calls to google that I would say that youre probably better off with a pixel running graphene.
Leaked Cellbrite docs indicated they couldn't get in. I'd consider that pretty reasonable assurance. If you're implying that Google has a backdoor... I think the argument against large/unstable conspiracies would apply.
This is so much horseshit I can't even begin to unpack it. You really think those docs aren't edited? They are 100% verified truth? That is a hunch at best. And so is my claim, it's a 'vibe'. I have zero proof of my claims, but I wouldn't do anything I consider 'secure' on any Android device.
There is no fucking way in hell I would consider any Android device a secure device, in any way shape or form. It is, at best, a controlled device that most users do not have control over.
And claiming that anyone that doesn't buy into the cellblite 'leaks' is a conspiracy theorist is also horseshit. (Or any leaks for that matter)
100% These people think they are sticking it to Google by buying a pixel and installing a custom ROM. Instead they just inflated Google's user count.
This will be a problem until a non-google open OS is adopted for mobile phones. Right now that list is incredibly short and nothing competes in the flagship department. I don't see it changing anytime soon because gen x and millenials may be the last generations that have a signifigant portion of itself that has a grasp of how computers work beyond "tap app icon, app does things".
Thing I took for granted like how a file system works is lost on my kids (late Z early alpha). Explaining what a file extension is like teaching a new language. I used to think "training wheels" for learning computering via tablets and phones and touch screens were a good thing but there is nothing that compels people today to shed themselves of them. It feels very reminiscent of my childhood and teaching my boomer dad how to right click. I think computer literacy needs to be required education, but I'm afraid that the definition for computer literacy might be meaningless nowadays if it doesn't go beyond open app store, install app, run app.
US public education computer literacy is dead, and it's not going to get better for at least 5+ years, best case scenario. Even if the person that is elected after Trump is a Democrat, it will take years to rebuild to where we were before big tech started bribing school IT departments. You think Apple/Google/Microsoft give a flying fuck about computer literacy being taught in schools? Because that's who currently decide the computer literacy program that the public school will provide. Whichever vendor they decide to go with. At this point I'm not convinced that Google is a better choice than the others, but it's also akin to choosing the least shitty sandwich at a shit-sandwich buffet.
In hindsight, this has been a downward trend since the proliferation of smart phones circa 2012. Google (android) isn't the best choice, but it is much better being open source over other ecosystems namely Apple. There is also an issue I strongly suspect that wireless carriers wouldn't allow open hardware/software on their networks because they have baked in restrictions in the major OSes on how you can access the network like tethering. I don't expect that to change for the better either because even when net neutrality was a thing wireless was exempt from the rules. Kinda reminds me how back in the day ISPs had to be forced to offer naked DSL (internet from the phone company without requiring phone service). This all has deep issues that won't be resolved anytime soon if ever. I'm putting my money on Linux becoming an actual threat to Microsoft and Apple in the desktop, laptop, handheld space and then that spreading into the mobile and tablet space. Depending on how Apple and Google antitrust situations are handled, we could start to see a shift by the end of the decade at best. This is why the tech sector will cozy up and do the bidding of whoever is in power. They won't run the risk of drawing the ire of the government to break up their monopolies so long as the party in power believes tech companies are in their party's pocket. This shift happened when Biden's election was inevitable toward Democrat favored polices and it's happening now for Republican favord polices since the last Biden Trump debate made a Trump victory inevitable.
My points are the tech sector is blatantly doing whatever it can to keep its power and change won't happen quickly if it happens at all.
This trend started waaaay before 2012. When I graduated highschool the only computer class that was offered was a basic MS Office and advanced MS office. The people making these type of decisions for public schools are rarely tech literate themselves, they physically cannot make an informed choice. This will not be resolved until big tech is dissolved, or strong regulations are pushed by the voting population. If anyone wants their children to be tech literate I recommend getting your kids in front of a keyboard and mouse instead of a touchscreen as early as you would allow them to use a tablet. The tablet will be easier for both of you, and that's exactly what they want.
GrapheneOS is not a custom ROM and I bought my phone second-hand, so I didn't give my money directly to Google
Preferred search engine?
I've been using startpage floor about a year now, has worked great.
Isn't that just Google with an extra MITM for everything? Sure it protects your privacy a little bit but the same bad actors are still getting their ad revenue from your searches, correct? Or do I just not understand how start page works?
Self hosted Searxng for me