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.

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

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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
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If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
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Do you think using GrapheneOS is useless if you plan on installing proprietary apps anyway? (midwest.social)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

30 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.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

You can restrict the permissions of apps quite well and as another user said they are somewhat sandboxed. As long as you dont install anything with root access (like play services) it shouldnt matter too much. Imo its still very much worth to have the control you get through a degoogled OS even if you might not have Snowden level opsec.

If my physical safety was in danger i would think about it more tho. But at that point you would want to remove almost everything from your phones hardware.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

No app on GOS has root access. Not even Play services, the whole point of the sandboxing. You remain in control over the app's permissions, as you mentioned.

[...] and as another user said they are ~~somewhat~~ sandboxed.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

You can install stuff during imaging with root access afaik but yeah would be hard to do accidentally.