The only recommendation I can provide is a Google Pixel device with GrapheneOS. Graphene is only designed to work on Pixels because they are (allegedly) the most secure mobile phone hardware-wise. Once you flash Graphene, it’s up to you to install any apps beyond the basic browser (Vanadium), gallery, camera, caller, SMS, PDF viewer, contacts, file manager, and security/system apps. No Google involved without your permission, though you will have to install Google services, available via a Graphene mirror and sandboxed for privacy, IF you want to install an eSIM after flashing Graphene. If you’re interested in further information, please let me know. I use it, love it, and am happy to provide any information you may need to decide if it’s a good fit for you or not.
What is the root scene on Graphene? I know the dev is pretty against it but I like having root access after being used to it. Is it possible to easily root it without any integrity issues later on?
Rooting defeats androids security model and allows for further exploitation. Graphene most likely does support it because any AOSP OS that is geared towards security isn’t going to leave a big hole in their security allowing malware or bad actors to modify system files (or install a rootkit).
Desktop linux isn’t the same as Android, which is why I said the “Android security model”. Android is a mobile operating system and must protect against the fact that it will be in unknown environments all the time. It must protect against physical attacks, software attacks, and partially sandbox apps. Root breaks app sandboxing and allows for modifying system files and reading internal app storage. The system image is immutable and modifications/settings are made on top.
Linux desktop isn’t more secure out of the box. The general user account shouldnt be a sudoer. Immutable OSes are more secure and help pervent rootkits and other attacks. PCs are most often stationary and stored in a private location. Laptops are weak against attacks because you can boot to a different OS from usb without passworded BIOS. Desktop OSes are the geared for the same kinds of protections.
There is good reason why Android is far more secure than Linux mobile.
You can root on GrapheneOS. You do it exactly the same way you’d do it for the stock Google ROM:
Have an unlocked bootloader. Yes, this means that it “”“defeats the purpose of GrapheneOS”“”, if the purpose of GrapheneOS isn’t for you to avoid Google’s privacy nightmare. I use GrapheneOS for privacy moreso than security, and not being able to block ads properly is irritating.
Install the Magisk app.
Extract the boot.img from the GrapheneOS image and patch within Magisk.
Flash the patched boot image in the bootloader.
The main annoyance with this is that you’ll have to do that dance every month when a security patch gets released, but for me, it’s better than vomiting from exposure to ads on mobile.
What is the patching process when running with Majisk, without OTA? It looked like quite a PITA to me, but I'm using Graphene for the same reason you are.
It looks like the verified boot security feature of Graphene effectively prevents rooting the OS. I understand wanting root access, it does provide some nice features, but I don’t have any need for it. I don’t have any bloatware embedded to remove, and I don’t need to mod any system apps, so I haven’t looked into it much. I know the dev says it isn’t planned because it massively increases attack surface, which I personally agree with, but it would be nice to have the option via a separate version of the OS or something. If you need root access, I would suggest looking into LineageOS. It’s similar in privacy to Graphene and last I knew could be rooted. Graphene is very focused on security as well as privacy, and for me is a best of both worlds, but if you want to modify the system for various power-user type features, it might not be for you.
No, it doesn’t. I use 95% FOSS software, so anything that might have ads just gets denied network permission entirely. As for AppOps, I just looked it up, and that would be something I’d like to see developed as a feature of Graphene. It seems like a genuinely useful, and at the very least privacy-protecting, app. I don’t use copy/paste via keyboard, and despite it not having network permissions, I’d still deny it clipboard access simply because it doesn’t need it.
For security reasons GrapheneOS doesn’t allow the modification of system files. You can achieve the same thing with DNS though. Either self-host a Pi-Hole or AdGuard Home, or use something like NextDNS.
Not OP but interested in both privacy and high-tech features. My current (stock) pixel 4a device has a worse camera than many other phones, but the software compensates a lot, netting better picture quality overall very often. I’m wondering how much of that is lost when using graphene instead of stock android, do you know?
Similarly with the latest gen pixels having AI features built in, I’m assuming much of that is software that’s not as easily installed somewhere else…
It’s been a couple years since I tried the graphene camera, but (at the time) it’s essentially trash in comparison to the Google camera. I just use the gCam without internet permissions and call it a day.
But I’m not hardcore tin-foil ‘the NSA will use your office mirrors reflection to precisely heat up a 2mm space on the side of your phone that somehow enables Bluetooth and with that the G + glowy bois will exfiltrate your data at 10Kb/s’. I want additional security hardening and some privacy additions, but I also use the play services and store, like a typical user. Yada yada threat model yada yada - I just want my phone to simply function at the end of the day. Middle of the road, if you will, between stock os users and the guy that’s now boarding up all his windows because of the 2mm Bluetooth mystery vulnerability.
Unknown about the claimed AI features - my 8 pro is in transit. But I can check in a few days, if interested.
I’m not sure what the GrapheneOS stock camera app does under the hood, but if it’s not enough for you, you have the option of installing Google’s Pixel Camera app from the Play/Aurora store if you want to compare. I don’t imagine it would require Google Play Services to run on devices older than 8 since they don’t have the AI integration, but I could be wrong. You can easily deny the app network permissions to ensure that the app isn’t sending your photos to Google. As far as the AI features go on newer devices, I could see those requiring Google Services installed to work, but again, they’re available through a Graphene mirror, run sandboxed for privacy, and can be denied network permissions. I’m satisfied with how my pictures turn out (7 Pro), but I may try Pixel Camera out just to see what the difference is.
If you can remove the app from the TV, that may work. It’s probably polling for updates or trying to cache a picture or something for the login screen.
Just like every other app on your TV, Netflix probably has a running service that is collecting all of your viewing habits and piping it to Nexflix whether or not you have an account. (Smart TVs come with extensive terms and conditions that you probably agreed to.)
Smart TVs are cheaper these days mostly because the hardware costs are subsidized by having pre-installed apps like Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, etc. And yeah, they all want your data and they all want to participate in the advertising racket.
True. Would really help to get any form of storage medium of that into a real OS. But its probably built in, so removing might not work. This is the case for windows even
Notepad is heavily used as an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) by a lot of people. It’s not exactly a good development environment but it is nonetheless. I would actually argue Notepad is used primarily by programmers, and that casual Windows Notepad users are in the extreme minority. The whole reason it’s so heavily used is because unlike WordPad or Word, it doesn’t include formatting data, which can fuck up computer code.
Notepad++ for example is literally built to be more like an actual IDE and supports color-schemes and indentations for numerous computer programming languages.
Microsoft isn’t entirely stupid (just mostly), and in knowing this, they’re pushing to put their programming Copilot where they think it needs to be: Inside IDEs, which to them includes Notepad.
Notepad++ may very well be widely used as an IDE. Notepad isn’t. Other than the name they have nothing do do with each other. It’s just a plain text editor with absolutely no features. Maybe some people use it to write code but unless you can’t use anything else, even a web browser, why would you.
Notepad is used by anyone who wants to see what is actually in a text file.
It’s used a lot for stuff where data is transferred in a text format. Comma separated files etc. are still widely used for transferring data flawlessly without having to convert types or mapping a document standard or whatever method that could potentially fuck up or just take more time. It’s simple and it works.
F.i if you open a file in excel or word, change one character and then save, you can bet that the entire file is fucked up afterwards, because those programs don’t show the data directly. The moment you open it, it might very well be fucked up just from that. If you transfer a file by some kind of JSON format, which is all the rage currently you’ll have to map it from both ends, and it also begs the question: Why are we doing running all this code just to transfer one byte?
The beauty of text files is that it’s (almost) raw data. (Only “almost” because there are still different localization standards that can fuck up even a text file.)
Notepad covers that. Of course we could use other apps for viewing data, but most of the time, it actually is text and not hexidemal codes or whatever you can save in bytes.
Programming wise, the only thing I use notepad for is making DOS batch files. Again, because it’s raw text and should be created and read as such. No parsing, no compiling. Just text. I’ll also use it for storing data for programs, because it’s easy and raw.
For actual programs, it’d be better to get Notepad++ or MS visual studio code, which at least will highlight commands and collapse functions etc. And still, these also aren’t actually IDEs, because they don’t compile the code (unless you get those add-ins).
We could also use those for text files as well, but it’s overkill. I don’t really want to open an app to view data. Notepad is small and quick and not bloated with features, which is ideal for whenever I only want to see what’s in the file.
The original MS Paint was similar for pictures. They fucked that up real good. Its been…14 years and I haven’t really gotten over how bad it is. It used to be pixel perfect and logical, but now you can’t even save a file with transparency, but hey here’s s brush with stroke width and blur that’ll make sure you can’t edit a single pixel. Way to go Microsoft.
If they do the same to Notepad, I’ll have to resign my job, because it’s not going to work like that.
The only relevant thing I saw related to the topic was “while people are subscribed, their information will not be used for ads”. It does not say that information will stop being collected. Just that it will not be used for ads.
So by all interpretations, there is in fact no suggestion that they will stop tracking paid users.
Safe to say that even if they did claim that they would stop, they probably wouldn’t. They’re like crackheads for peoples personal info. So fucking creepy
Meta has this dangerous mentality that they are above the law anyway, so whatever they say, until a government powerful enough to really make them pay steps up and shows them that they are in fact not above the law, they'll just fucking do whatever they fucking want.
Well when the governments around the world give them that power when they want them to push their agenda’s all the time, can’t really blame them for acting like the de-facto government they’ve become, thanks to actual govt’s. Govt’s always operate above their own laws, that’s nothing new.
I think that, at least for users out of the EU, the only alternative will be to change to the i2p network or to use more extensions and scripts than bookmarks in the browser to avoid this surveillance crap of these data hogs “to make America great again” I only hope that in the future the EU becomes a little more alert in offering enough software and services to be on level eyes of those in the USA. There are very good products in the EU, but most of them little known and marginal, the few that have made a name for themselves are KDE, Proton, Tuta and Vivaldi, little else…
I was into i2p once. Poorly its like nearly not developed it seemy, there still is no install-and-run Browser like Torbrowser. And the lack of exit nodes makes it really impractical
Well, it’s still poorly used, but this can change in the future with logical improvements. Decentralized products are always poor if there are only few which use it, above with shabby servers. But a decentralized network is at the end the only way to escape the control of these surveillance companies. Tor in the Onion network isn’t really free of this and controled with backdoors by the NSA and others (the Onion was developed by US Defense and Secrete services), entering only with TOR, without also using VPN with several server redirects (startet before starting TOR, to get the tunnel beginning from the VPN server and not from the one of your ISP. Because of this a VPN extension in the browser isn’t a so good idea, only can start after the browser connect to your ISP server), expose you. very fast, not only by the gov services, also by the fauna maligna there. The TOR browser isn’ specially secure, it is only a browser capable to access the TOR network. In the normal open network isn’t more private as FF or any other browser, only slower and less compatible with the current web standarts, it is for what it is.
Yes VPN browser extensins are BS just as Proxies just within the browser I would say. All that nice stuff Firefox offers should just be done on the OS level with systemd resolved.
But the Tor network is not controlled by the NSA. The NSA is in ways also just a security agency. Tor is open source. Its very likely that the NSA, China, Russia etc. run their own servers though.
They are also in the Onion, more nowadays because of Terrorism and the current wars, its anyway a web which you must take with a grain of salt, not only because of its fauna.
Well considering if you actively avoid meta products for ethical reasons they still make a ghost profile of you made from photos people upload with you in it and contact lists of people who have you in their phone and allow meta full access to their shit for some reason, “just in case” you ever join Facebook. Fairly sure it’s then used to build a profile of you and your internet use to serve you ads and sell your tracking data. Fuck the modern day internet is just fucking rotten at the core. I’m not sure I answered your question but I think it gives you the gist
I mean it makes sense for error reporting. Lots of apps automatically report errors so that they can be detected easily, which would require internet access.
i mean google would have it anyway; and the app developer would be collecting the logs any way so the cost would be there already. this would just make it so they wouldn’t need to request full network access; just enough to get the logs.
If you’re using Plex for porn and also adding friends on it, what were you thinking in the first place? Like, it was so obvious something like this was going to happen, and that’s besides the already existant risk of accidentally sharing the wrong library with your friend.
It’s a cool feature, it obviously would have been better if it filtered by age rating or adult film by default to begin with but I really see this as an overreaction.
Not a single friend or family member gives two shits about privacy. When I tell them about what companies know about them and what they do with that information, it’s kind of like a vegan telling a meat eater where their meat comes from. Like “wow that sounds bad but I’m not willing to make any changes”. The only difference is that instead of animals being a product, this time they are the product.
The effective way to combat this is to pull their information from data brokers and tell them everything you know. Then they feel violated, as they should.
They’ll blame you and never put two and two together though.
I can’t imagine that any app that currently exists gives a shit about exploiting your data. Lemmy is too young for that to really be a problem.
The real problem is that nothing on lemmy is private because of it’s federated design. There have been some discussions the last few weeks talking about this, but just about every interaction you do is broadcasted out to every instance, and its social media so of course anyone can see what you post. Things like viewed posts and saved content should stay on your instances server, but assume every other action is public.
direct messages arent really private on any platform but on the fediverse they especially arent
not only can your admin read your messages if they really want to (like non federated sites) but also you have to consider the other instances admins too
i think thats why lemmy has a profile field for a matrix username by default because thats at least a more private way to do dms
Agreed. Although The Fediverse also can’t easily be searched via your standard search engines, so finding that public information is harder than on other social media apps (for now…).
This isn’t to say there isn’t a privacy concern using any Fediverse Social media platform. It’s just that there are some inherent design implementations that make it hard for the average person to invade the privacy of a user of the platform.
This is, of course, afaik. Please let me know if I’m mistaken.
Search currently kinda sucks actually inside the fediverse. I tried to find one of those posts before making the comment but gave up because it was worthless.
I’d imagine it’s only a matter of time until someone makes something better, and 3rd parties start mining it. Or we’ll get that nefarious third party with a server just ingesting all our data to sell off.
pretty much spot on, search is still pretty bad on fedi (on the twittery side and the reddity side)
although it is still not hard to invade someones privacy the old fashioned way by, for instance, making alt accounts to evade blocks but thats nothing unique thats all platforms
Yes, please. I’m still using MessagEase. I want to like thumbkey, but it’s missing a few features that are already implemented in MessagEase. Long pressing for numerals is another feature I miss.
Hey, thumb-key is really cool! I’ve been using it for a bit and it has solved my issue of constantly fat-fingering wrong letters into what I’m trying to type on other keyboards. I just want to say thanks for developing it and keep up the good work!
I’m really curious about the amount of money exchanged. It must have been an enormous amount in order to do a “I’d even sell my mom for that” and don’t feel dirty
There were multiple reports about sleazy companies reaching out to developers of popular apps and Chrome addons and offering them money for their accounts. The money is really good but there’s still a lot of devs that can say ‘no’. They will just use to track some people, it’s not a completely new business that will grow and earn them money like Instagram or something.
the developer, and this isnt exaggeration, does not understand gpl v3. he literally got confused when people told him he had no right to sell contributed code. you can see for yourself in the github discussions
I’m pretty sure what he sold was not the code but access to this play store account so that the new owner can push updated version to his current users.
You perfectly can sell GPL code. And you can double-license yourself (provided that you are the copyright holder) as GPL and a privative license. A lot of companies do that, legally and correctly.
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