Privacy

32096 readers

712 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
Don't promote proprietary software
Try to keep things on topic
If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
Be nice :)

Related communities

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

Do you think using GrapheneOS is useless if you plan on installing proprietary apps anyway? (midwest.social)

submitted 4 months ago by clark@midwest.social to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

34 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Curious what people think.

Do you think using the GrapheneOS operative system is useless if the user plans to/needs to install Play Store apps anyway?

I think I'm not alone in feeling this way, but sometimes I feel a sense of imposter syndrome because I'm not perfectly private and am dependent on some Play Store apps. This has caused me to question if the transition to GOS is meaningful at all.

Feel free to share your opinion. Cheers! ...posted from my GrapheneOS Pixel.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Facebones@reddthat.com 7 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Been on Graphene for a bit less than a year, its been great. You're correct about google apps being regular apps with no special perms, but also there are sandboxed user profiles so if you're particularly concerned you can keep all your dependent apps over there with double sand boxed google 😛

Ive only had one or two issues with app compatibility but they have a setting to apply a less secure ruleset thats worked for me both times.

[–] Bluefruit@lemmy.world 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Thats pretty cool! My only gripe is I dont really wanna buy a pixel phone and I think there are unofficial roms for other android devices but idk if its worth the hassle.

[–] Facebones@reddthat.com 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Unfortunately your options are limited these days on devices with unlockable bootloaders, and iirc pixel is the only one you can lock again which is why graphene only supports them. My 8 Pro is solid, and if you're worried about supporting Google, hardware sales are a drop in their bucket - they only sell phones to get you locked into their ecosystem.

To be clear, I'm not knocking other Roms. I just don't have any experience with them. I know Lineage is pretty popular right now as well.

[–] Bluefruit@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Yea you're not wrong. Kinda fed up with most smartphone manufacturers these days. Its all so restrictive. And to your point that Google is one of the only manufacturers that allows the bootloader to be relocked, thats for now. No telling what will happen in the future which is another part of my issue.

At one point i was considering making a small pc out of a raspberry pi or something to replace my phone just cause i dont like the way phone manufacturing in general is going lol.

Kinda silly but i still think about it.