Question for #privacy folks. So I have been on a journey learning about privacy this year. But is there a secure smartphone OS or are they all basically bad for privacy? They seem like the biggest vulnerability to give data to big companies. I have cleared up a lot of habits, I use Signal with close friends, protonmail for email, VPNs whenever possible, Boxcryptor for files. But phones: what should I know? #digitalsecurity #privacy #encryption #phones #smartphones #eff #privacyrights
@ben_dw security != privacy. I'd argue that there are exceptional security solutions for mobile devices (iOS and GrapheneOS primarily). Privacy is trickier, because it depends on who you want privacy from.
GrapheneOS as @moz mentioned is great by default because it doesn't come with Google Apps (and in fact you can't install them in a secure manner AFAIK), so if you're careful there's no worries about your data being shared with big corporations oike Google and Facebook.
@ben_dw in the long-term the Graphene devs do plan to develop their own app store, out of security concerns with alternatives like F-Droid, but that isn't a thing yet and won't be for a while.
@jonah that makes sense! Thank you!
@ben_dw there's no real good way to install an app store on Graphene. You can install APKs manually of course, or you could install F-Droid to handle all that (I'm not sure what apps they have available) but it wouldn't be able to auto-update apps. Google Play is annoyingly convenient :p