I recommend sticking to GOS. If you’d like to use something else, I’d recommend DivestOS. CalyxOS, LineageOS, /e/OS and iodéOS are all significant downgrades in usability, privacy and security and therefore not worth using on a Pixel.
Only if the website is part of the product. Like if to use the product I have to login on the website or am forced to regularly use it or whatever. Then if it is advertised as 100% open source I’d probably be like ‘is it though?’.
you’ll definitely be loosing security, which can turn into loosing privacy if you get affected by malware.
you’ll also be loosing privacy if installing proprietary apps, since GrapheneOS has features like storage scopes and a better permission system that help minimizing privacy issues.
I think that locking your bootloader in a Pixel is possible regardless of the ROM you install.
Anyway, I think that there’s no real benefit of installing any other custom ROM in a Pixel other than GrapheneOS. You’ll be just loosing out in security and potentially privacy for no real reason.
It’s pretty common for companies like that to advertise that their app is 100% open source, but then stop short of guaranteeing anything beyond that. In PIA’s case, I would point out that their infrastructure (the servers that they use to route your traffic) are closed, so they could be doing literally anything in there. Their desktop client being open source doesn’t actually do much to guarantee your privacy.
Thanks for the insight! Yeah aware that Mullvad is pretty much the closest to “state-of-the-art” as it gets, compared to the rest of these services in the market.
Right, you can’t be 100% sure, but there are measures that they can take to make you trust them a bit more. For example, I believe Mullvad runs systems in RAM and keeps no records of who uses what. You don’t even have to give them your email address; they don’t want it. And they submit to regular audits (provided you trust the auditors).
Also, if the client matters, then don’t use their client. Use the OpenVPN client instead.
Those IPs eventually end up on block lists as users do dumb things with them. You could definitely benefit from auto cycling through them but it’s still going to be luck of the draw, ultimately. Normally you’ll get a different IP each time you connect, even to the same location/server so if your VPN client has a CLI component, even a basic one, you could write a simple script to tell it to ‘disconnect’ and then ‘connect’ periodically, for instance.
Depending on which VPN client you’re using on the router, that would be the simplest approach to explore imo.
ETA you could also explore getting a residential IP from your VPN provider if they offer that. It’s a little more expensive but they don’t end up on block lists as much. Less hassle.
Thank you. I’ll explore the CLI option. My VPN provider does not offer residential IPs but I hear Proton will be offering dedicated IPs soon and will probably use that in addition to.
No worries. I do know that Windscribe has both CLI as well at custom configs that you can plug into router clients (i.e. wireguard, openvpn, etc), and they also offer residential IPs.
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