- cross-posted to:
- privacy@programming.dev
- cross-posted to:
- privacy@programming.dev
Read the whole thread
However, we don’t have a “hardened security” approach, we aren’t developing a phone for pedo(censored) so they can evade justice.
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Pedophiles use their work emails and gmail. Making a secure phone OS won’t make a difference.
some people in this thread still dont get it, so:
you cant expect privacy while also having poor security practices. ideally you’d have both and most of these privacy projects are not much more than just a lineage fork with a dns blocker
apparently in duval’s mind, you can always trust even a fascist government to never try to exploit your phone and to give you privacy. or something idk
Well, that’ll be another 100€ December donation to GrapheneOS.
I can see how one can interpret it like that, but it’s not how I read what he said. I think the point he’s trying to make is that hardened security protects the user from attacks, yes, but their focus is to provide services that can be trusted not to attack the user. He said: “really hardened security stuff that could clearly be useful for executives, in the secret service, or whatever. That’s not our goal”
I mean, I use GrapheneOS on my phone, but do I personally need all the hardened security? Not really. It’s nice theoretically, but mainly I’m just happy the OS itself isn’t spying on me. I’m personally not very worried about an evil maid attack or state level spying.
Sadly FUD as ANYTHING that is NOT increasing profit for surveillance capitalism, i.e Google, Meta, etc is a win for privacy!
Of course /e/OS could be better, GrapheneOS could also be better (including on security) but the big picture is that still ANY of those solutions is making surveillance capitalism, the loss of privacy for profit and power, less efficient. That’s good for all of us who, being on Lemmy or other federated instance, believe we do benefit from having more privacy, or at least not trading it away.
TL;DR: be inclusive, bring others up, don’t be exclusive aiming for perfection none of us can attain.
Just because something does something good doesn’t mean it’s immune to criticism.
Someone on Reddit made an interesting comment relevant to this discussion:
So you don’t have to give Reddit clicks:
Dutch hardware, French open-source OS, no Google services.
Apologies for repeating this in pretty much every topic on Fairphone and /e/OS, but there is a lot of misinformation about this. The Fairphone hardware and software is developed by a Chinese company called T2Mobile (this is no secret, it is in Fairphone’s documentation).
Switching to /e/OS does not really change that, because they use the same kernel trees, binary firmware blobs, and device trees maintained by the same Chinese company. So you replaced opaque blobs coming from a South Korean company to those from a Chinese company and Qualcomm (pick your poison I guess).
Besides that /e/OS does not really decouple you from Google. It starts talking to Google pretty much the moment you first set up the device [1]. The device will download proprietary Google SafetyNet blobs that run as part of the privileged microG. /e/OS also contacts Google for assisted GPS, eSIM provisioning, WideVine provisioning, etc. Then if you install certain Google Apps, /e/OS gives them elevated privileges, breaking the regular sandbox model. For instance, if you install Android Auto because you want to use it in your car, some of the dependencies (e.g. Google Maps) have privileged access [2]. It does not stop at Google, e.g. for speech-to-text, Murena does not have any scrupules uploading your voice to OpenAI (and hide it somewhere in the terms that no-one reads) [4].
Besides that, both Fairphone and /e/OS have a history of abysmal security. E.g., both used to sign system images with Android testing keys (which meant that malware could hide in your system image without you noticing). Fairphone is absolutely terrible at maintaining kernel trees - e.g. Fairphone 4 is still using a Linux version that has not been updated since 2020, Fairphone 6 is still on firmware blobs from June 2025 despite Qualcomm pushing out monthly fixes for vulnerabilities since then. The Fairphone 6 is also shipping a Linux kernel that hasn’t been updated since September 2024.
Both the Fairphone stock OS and /e/OS are way behind on Android security updates. The Android Security Bulletins are only backports of security issues marked high or critical. On those they are typically 1-2 months behind and the ASB vulnerabilities are already known for 3 months by vendors due to Google’s new security embargo system. That means that Fairphone’s stock OS and /e/OS are usually 4-5 months behind on patching high/critical vulnerabilities. It is even worse for other vulnerabilities, which are commonly used as part of exploit chains. /e/OS and the stock OS are still on Android 15. Since they do not roll out other security updates than ASBs, it means that they are now 1.5 years behind in non-high/critical security updates (since Android 15 was released in September 2024).
And then we haven’t even talked about shady things like the /e/OS App Lounge getting F-Droid packages [3] through a MITM server (cleanapk) for at least 6 years now that often serves outdated package versions. To make it more fun, they do not want to reveal who is actually maintaining this service.
Similarly, hardware security is not great. In contrast to your old S24, the Fairphone 6 does not have separate secure enclave. They only use TrustZone, which basically uses the same CPU/RAM for the TEE (the OS gets isolated by secrets running it in a VM-like environment). TrustZone is vulnerable to side-channel attacks and PINs are easily brute-forced (so, on Fairphone you probably want to use a long passphrase).
Some people will say: who cares, I’m not the target of a state level actor. Remember that in the days of Cellebrite, etc. device security is important to anyone who ever goes to a demonstration or crosses international borders.
I understand that everyone is looking for European alternatives, please think twice if you want to replace them by Chinese blobs, very outdated software, and a security disaster.
[2] https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm
[3] https://forum.f-droid.org/t/e-foundation-using-f-droid-with-middle-man-website/7162
I’m running e/OS in my old Poco F3 right now.
I switched from LineageOS because I though, e/OS would be easier to ungoogle.
In the end, it just defaults to way more compromises than I would have made on LineageOS.
Over all, it’s actually just LineageOS with MicroG preinstalled, a really bad launcher, an ugly 2015-ish iPhone icon theme, and a few mediocre apps preinstalled, that use these ‘Murena’ services that claim to be an alternative to Google services, but they are neither more secure/foss nor reliable.
Their appstore is rather Bad. Yes, it essentially combines something like APKMirror and F-Droid in one app, but it requests a Google account to access PlayStore Apps.
Imho, LineageOS with MicroG, no GApps, F-Droid and APKMirror and a few foss apps is the better solution.
I have my sync services selfhosted through a NAS and simply use WebDAV (backups), CardDAV and CalDAV. This was harder to set up in e/OS than in basic LineageOS, because e/OS is trying to push their own Murena services for that. And if I didn’t have all of these selfhosted, I’d rather use Proton services instead of Murena.
Over all, really sketchy. It’s like a custom Rom that claims privacy but actually just wants you to möge to their own service.
This was pretty much my impression of /e/ as well. Used it only briefly. It ran poorly, had a bunch of crap I didn’t want. Bad launcher. Things didn’t work properly.
Overall impression I got was that the people who make /e/ do not know what they are doing.
While the GrapheneOS dev comes across as sus and toxic to me, part of me would like to give it a try. But between Pixel phones still having black screen of death problems, and newer ones lacking a headphone jack - I found a Moto G100 plus LineageOS with MicroG is a great option.
I only run open software on it, and keep everything proprietary on my old un-degooglable phone that only gets turned on when necessary.
Take this with a grain of salt: GrapheneOS is always stirring shit with other players in the privacy space and they try to paint them in the worst light possible.
It’s a video of him speaking in his own words, not much salt needed.
Lmao e/OS CEO says a thing, someone inevitably in the comments, “How could GrapheneOS do this!”
GrapheneOS devs just spitting truth and people get butt hurt about it.
The full translation of the clip of Gaël Duval provided by GrapheneOS:
There’s the attack surface, on that front we’re not security specialists here, so I couldn’t answer you precisely, but from the discussions I’ve had, it seems that everything we do reduces attack surface.
However, we don’t have a “hardened security” approach, we aren’t developing a phone for pedo(censored) so they can evade justice. So there aren’t difficult things to check if the memory is corrupted, really hardened security stuff that could clearly be useful for executives, in the secret service, or whatever.
That’s not our goal, our goal is to start from an observation: today our personal data is constantly being plundered and that wouldn’t be legal in real life with the mail or the telephone, we want to change that. So we are making you a product that changes that by default for anyone.
As a french speaker, I can attest that the translation is fairly accurate.
While I don’t agree with the characterisation Gaël Duval makes here, I believe the statement from GrapheneOS here:
Duval and his organizations have consistently taken a stance against protecting users from exploits. In this video, he once again claims protecting against exploits is for only useful pedophiles and spies.
Is a bit disingenuous. It sounds like they do make some efforts to secure their device, but it’s not their main focus. Theirs is to improve privacy first and foremost.
I would take anything GrapheneOS devs says with a grain of salt, as we all know that they have quite an adversarial relationship with… well… everyone. But especially other OS makers.
It sounds like they do make some efforts to secure their device, but it’s not their main focus. Theirs is to improve privacy first and foremost.
I don’t have any issue with that: different OSes have different priorities and that’s okay. However, I feel like he’s basically saying that users of hardened secure devices are pedos, and I have a very big issue with that. I don’t know if maybe in French it doesn’t sound that way, but they English translation does for me.
That’s how it sounds. So, I’m a pedophile because I run GrapheneOS on my phone? I guess I better tell my wife, and my kids.
… and my kids
“Hey Kiddos! So I have some good news and some bad news…”
You did not need to censor anything this is not Reddit
First of all, I didn’t censor it, that’s a quote from the Bluesky post.
But also, why is everybody so offended by censored words here? I don’t get it.
But also, why is everybody so offended by censored words here?
I think because it’s a sign how social media corps have trained us to avoid certain words or even create new ones (for example “unalive” instead of “kill”).
The term is algospeak, where you change your wording due to online censoring. I fucking hate that corporations have managed to literally change the way we speak.
But it’s also great that humans evolve language to keep ahead of algorithms and corporate bullshit.
It shows that people internalize censorship and start doing it unprompted.
But also, why is everybody so offended by censored words here? I don’t get it.
The biggest reason seems to be that it will evade filters, which people set up very intentionally and specifically to keep these Fedi-spaces a safe place for them mentally.
So, for example, someone comes here to get away from the ‘real world’ and news and whatnot, may have a filter that blocks anything with the word “Trump”, or one I actually see censored a lot more often, “Israel”
Then someone makes a post about “Isr*el is so bad” and it sails right through their filters.
Ah fair enough
Anyone telling you the list isn’t graphene -> ios -> good custom android -> aosp-> google stock -> samsung stock is lying to you.
How is iOS - a proprietary OS owned by a big tech company - second in your list?
It has some of the best exploit protection next to Graphene if you enable lockdown mode.
Which flavor of Google surveillance would you consider a more private and secure phone platform than iOS?
It can be made very good from a security and privacy perspective.
If you know you know I guess.
I thought Samsung stock was better because of Knox et all
better but than the rest of the unmentioned dogshit
“anyone who wants privacy from their government is a pedophile” is a hell of a stance…
“Why did you lock your doors, what did you steal?”
Honestly by now it’s becoming reasonable to assume “projection” as a baseline, to then change based on evidence, when someone has a take like this guy’s.
I don’t mean the political tactic, just the garden-variety kind of projection. “Probably ~everyone thinks the way I do, and boy, we better not give everyone the tools to act on that…”
Deeply wrong about how most folks think, because of how they themselves do, and believing they’re therefore helping. Likewise a self-admission, because they don’t realize they’re admitting anything.
Maybe not the case with this guy, I’m not gonna dive in.
But I do sincerely believe that’s a somewhat charitable take toward anyone making a claim like this today. Charitable in the sense of acknowledging a misunderstanding and desire to help.
The less charitable one being - just obviously complicit. Fuck this noise.
the privatized western govts & their tech boys literally are the infrastructure of the global pedos it’s asinine & dangerous to tell people to ignore that!
The stereotype of pedophiles in cop shows is that they use desktop computers anyway, not phones. Don’t know how true to reality that is though.
I think it’s fair they support way more phones than GrapheneOS, even if the security is way worse. But it’s a whole other thing to call people who want secure phones pedophiles.
I am skeptical how worthwile it is to use /e/os over OEM Android at this point
Well, you get a superiour privacy and security by just debloating a device via ADB.
You keep access to non-verified apps no matter what Google wants since it uses microG.
It’s openness vs security.
Agree with your outlook, but I think it’s not too farfetched to give the benefit of the doubt to the speaker here and establish that pedophiles were used as an example (of people whose survival depends on their data not being breached), rather than a direct comparison. And he goes on to name being an executive to the secret services as another example (again, of people to whom hardened security of data is an imperative), but we’re not saying he thinks secure phones are just for people in secret services, are we?
He’s just saying, albeit rather clumsily, that their goal is simply not that level of hardened security, but rather privacy from data miners.
I think both approaches are too extreme. Supporting every device leads to poor security, poor stability, and therefore a poor user experience, but only supporting just Google devices (while there is a good reason for that) is a step too far for most people.
If I were in the position of e/os I’d just support probably three manufacturers. Going through the major ones that I know of: Motorola and Google are obvious picks. Next would need to be something cheap and popular. Samsung is way out of the question. Xiaomi and Vivo I’ve never seen their phones mentioned outside of China (which is a country that generally doesn’t have the same privacy considerations as people in the west do). That leaves Oneplus and Tecno Mobile for the third model.
CalyxOS (when it existed) supported Fairphone, Motorola (some) and Pixel.
Please provide the video with the question included. This looks cut to fit the anti murena narrative that GrapheneOS has been screaming about for years. It’s the same tactic Republicans use against others: cutting only a bit that sounds bad when taken out of context.
We’ve known that /e/os is anti security/privacy look at all their attacks on grapheneos
I’ve not seen this though GrapheneOS has repeatedly belittled /e/os. As others in this thread have noted the propensity to repeatedly attack other projects is the biggest failing of GOS. As a user it does little more than leave me funding PostmarketOS while biding time for a proper linux solution.
GrapheneOS only points out (very bluntly tbf) the fact that /e/os and other “privacy” focused os don’t keep up with critical security patches and actually makes users less private and secure due to this. I think saying that GrapheneOS belittled /e/os is a little much considering the amount of missinformation/attacks that people from /e/os and Murena have been doing accross social media. I mean you see it here calling “hardened security approach” is for pedos/criminals very extreme language which does genuine harm to projects like GrapheneOS. Their Unified Attestation project is just a way for them (/e/os, murena etc) to control which apps can run on which device when GrapheneOS supports hardware attestation which would allow (afaik) apps to verify on the hardware level to ensure the security of apps. Read this thread on their mastodon, they routinely have to defend themselves on social media from a mountain of misinformation and disinformation you should read some of the other posts on their mastodon.
Considering I’ve had my own posts deleted during the last round of admin meltdowns here on the fediverse I have seen all I need to of GOS’s leadership antics, thank you very much.
which instances did that?
grapheneos@lemmy.ml
https://a.lemmy.world/lemmy.world/comment/21010858
I spoke out about the persecution complex of the management and got shut down, like-minded sentiment be damned I guess. We can see the sycophancy here also, Stallman save us from such small minds…
the mod’s reasoning is sus at best and makes this community feel like it’s captured by reactionaries.
