A question as old as time, I know.

I’m getting away from Google and I’ve done the easy stuff: CoMaps, Proton mail (I know, not the best move), aveslibre, etc. I currently don’t have the time (or the knowledge base) to learn how to self host, but hopefully that will replace Drive and such in the future.

But I digress. I’m looking at a new OS for my phone. I’m currently in a contract with a phone that is incompatible with alternative OSs. Graphene needs a Pixel. Used, they’re $150-400. /e/OS will run on a Motorola or whatever and those are like $80.

There’s also the option of going full Fairphone with /e/os and I like that idea in the future.

The internet people tell me that Graphene is the best due to ease of installation, privacy, and security.

I don’t need a lot of security. I just want Google to stop suckling all that sweet, sweet data from my teat.

What are your thoughts?

  • skarn@discuss.tchncs.de
    1·
    14 hours ago

    First a technical thing which is not obvious to me.

    I understand that the general, non-proprietary Android system service would uses a privacy preserving service like BeaconDB. From what I understand, Google offers an alternative, proprietary, location API in its Play Services. Is that one also prevented from giving your location to Google of you’re using Sandboxed Google Play?

    It’s an honest question. I assumed that the provider option I had in MicroG was exactly for that purpose, but I could be wrong.

    Next, a small rant.

    Bloody hell, I really do appreciate your politeness, but how is it that every damn article about privacy starts with threat modeling, but every discussion about privacy ends with “yeah but if your threat model does not require QubesOS you’re doing it wrong”?

    (I use Arch BTW)