upvote

points

by gf00015 hours ago |
comments
upvoteby strcat5 hours ago|
next
[-]
GrapheneOS provides major privacy enhancements including Contact Scopes, Storage Scopes, Sensors toggle, per-connection Wi-Fi privacy via per-connection DHCP state + MAC randomization and far more. It's a privacy project and privacy depends on security so it heavily focuses on protecting against exploitation of privacy and security vulnerabilities too. Privacy and security are not separate things from each other but rather closely tied together and our work is on both for the sake of improving privacy. Our only reason to work on security features is protecting privacy.
reply
upvoteby realusername15 hours ago|
prev|
[-]
I disagree, privacy is an essential part of security, if there's no privacy, then there's no security.

That's also why I don't keep anything important on my phone as I don't trust what's going on there despite having all the secure features that you would want.

reply
upvoteby scheeseman48614 hours ago|
parent|
[-]
Other way around, actually. It's possible to make concessions to privacy, like providing crash reports, or running applications in sandboxes which limits what they can harvest, while keeping the platform secure.

Any privacy you have on a system is reliant on no one tampering with that system and on software behaving itself. Without security, you can't trust the system to implement any privacy.

reply
upvoteby realusername14 hours ago|
parent|
[-]
I also disagree with that, I trust my Linux distribution to behave well much more than I trust any Android platform and it doesn't even have much app sandboxing at all.

You can't fix a lack of trust like you have in Android with technical solutions. The flaw in Android is fundamentally a social problem.

reply
upvoteby strcat5 hours ago|
parent|
next
[-]
There's a massive open source app ecosystem for Android which is far larger than the subset available in F-Droid. Open source does not imply private or trustworthy. Completely trusting applications with access to all your data with no insight in to what they're accessing or sending to services means you wouldn't know if your privacy is being violating anyway.
reply
upvoteby drnick14 hours ago|
parent|
[-]
The (desktop) Linux security model is different. You trust the distro maintainers in the same way you trust the GOS devs, and instead of "app sandboxing" you use user accounts, containers or VMs to protect personal information. The Android security model makes sense in the context of laypeople using mostly commercial malware on the stock OS however.
reply
upvoteby scheeseman48614 hours ago|
parent|
prev|
[-]
That reads more as sports team flag wavey thoughts and feelings trust than anything actually backed by objective data.
reply
upvoteby realusername14 hours ago|
parent|
[-]
That's the difference between trusted computing (Linux distribution) and untrusted computing (Android).

If you want something backed by objective data, my phone has an advertising ID built in the OS and my laptop doesn't. My phone had 100s of privacy scandals and my laptop doesn't have one.

I do applaud GrapheneOS don't get me wrong but I have a feeling that they are fighting a losing battle.

reply
upvoteby strcat5 hours ago|
parent|
next
[-]
There's a huge open source app ecosystem available for Android. The distinction you're trying to draw is inaccurate. Open source apps also very open do privacy invasive things. On Android, people can see that many open source privacy even including Signal include dark patterns such as repeatedly asking for access to contacts when it works without it. On a desktop OS, the apps and services will simply have access to nearly everything by default so you aren't aware of it happening for the most part.

GrapheneOS provides far better privacy and security than a desktop OS. There's no such thing as an advertising ID built into GrapheneOS so it's a strange thing to bring up. There are plenty of privacy invasive things built into desktop operating systems and applications, including open source ones. They nearly entirely lack the ability to protect against apps and services being privacy invasive in the first place. They also have far weaker protection against exploitation.

reply
upvoteby Aachen7 hours ago|
parent|
prev|
[-]
What advertising ID is built into the OS?
reply
upvoteby realusername5 hours ago|
parent|
[-]
See https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ... for Android and https://developer.apple.com/documentation/adsupport/asidenti... for iOS
reply
upvoteby Aachen33 minutes ago|
parent|
[-]
You're linking to Google Play's documentation, not Android code itself that GrapheneOS etc. are built upon

You can find hardware identifiers exposed by Linux distributions more than by Android itself. That Google adds a nice sauce on top... yeah that's a sorry state of affairs, but an optional layer if you don't use the stock OS if it ships with Google Play

edit: but I appreciate looking it up nonetheless! I wasn't completely sure that I hadn't missed that Android (AOSP) includes this now as well

reply