Privacy

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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.

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if you use GrapheneOS on a pixel device, is it something you'd recommend for a privacy worried user? How seamless is running it after install? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 2 days ago by merompetehla@lemmy.ml to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

17 comments fedilink hide all child comments

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/34022186

I own 2 bloated proprietary devices and don't use them for anything important, like banking or dealing with authorities. I also don't trust the manufactures not selling my data.

Id like to have a working device with no bloatware and completely degoogled. Ironically I'd have to buy something made by google to run GrapheneOS on it. Intended use would be to use as a camera, to run CoMaps on it, pkpass files with foss-wallet, reading epubs, making phone calls and running one aurora app.

I don't need the device to play games, watch movies, show off or to play loud music, but I'd like a jack port for my headphones (I assume google headphones would cease to work if I degoogle the device, nor would I want to spend more than necessary enriching that data grabber even more.

Is there a pixel device with a jack port?

Are batteries inside pixel devices glued to the frame or can they be easy to change?

My main OS is debian. How easy is to transfer data from GrapheneOS to debian and the other way round?

Overall if you run GrapheneOS on a pixel, how many years running it and what do you think about it?

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[–] Dr_Vindaloo@lemmy.ml 24 points 2 days ago

I've been using GrapheneOS for at least 5 years now (still remember the days when their sandboxed Play Store would need a force stop after every app install 💀) and I'm a much heavier user than you (social media, YouTube/podcasts, etc.). At this point I would not use anything else.

You won't have issues with app compatibility except for certain banking apps and Google Pay, if you choose to install the sandboxed Google Services. If not, you'll have issues with some apps not sending you push notifications (for example, Discord and Proton Mail) and other apps not working entirely (like Snapchat). Still, the last time I tried going fully de-Googled I remember most apps still working well enough even without Google services. From your post it sounds like you could easily live without it.

Sadly the newer phones have no headphone jack, and you definitely should not go for older ones that don't recieve security updates. And the Pixels have never had removable batteries (you can check out iFixit for more info on repairability). Any Bluetooth headphones will work. They do have a 3.5mm jack to USB-C adapter but I it never worked for me.

Data transfer between Linux and Android has always been dead simple regardless of the OSes involved. Just plug the phone in and tap a couple of things, the phone's filesystem will show up on the PC like any USB drive.