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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: August 15th, 2023

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  • Armand1@lemmy.worldtoPrivacy@lemmy.mlThe founder of /e/os is anti-security
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    8 hours ago

    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.








  • Whoever promised that?

    Updated the description to clarify.

    The economic incentive from Signals point of view is that it allows them to steal users. Its a lot easier to switch if you don’t have to drag 100% of people you know off a platform to remove their app.

    Look up adversarial interoperability if you’re interested. It’s how Facebook got big in the first place.

    As for Meta, the only thing they would gain is less scrutiny from regulators as Gatekeepers.






  • Made the jump last week.

    The only thing I miss is Android Pay, but it’s not a big deal. Cards are fine, you’ll just need to remember your wallet.

    I did find I had a problem with my work 2FA app, but that’s their problem to solve, not mine. Maybe they’ll give me a 2FA USB key.

    A few pieces of advice:

    • Don’t forget to back up any apps with local data that support it. You won’t get your app data back from the play store. Many FOSS apps have built-in backup optioms to files etc.
    • Back up your phone logs and SMS if that’s valuable to you, and ideally make sure the backup works on another device.
    • Install GCam to keep the same level of camera quality and features as the original app provides. I recommend BigKaKa’s versions for good compatibility with Pixels, though they can get a little cluttered.
    • Do install both the Play Store and Play Services if you want to use any Google app like YouTube or Maps (even some non-Google ones will need it). Then use a more private app store like Aurora and remove all permissions from the Play Store to strike a good middle-ground.
    • The Fossify apps are great alternatives to the imo not very good stock apps preinstalled on LineageOS.









  • I’ve gone through the list a bit and out of the most popular ones that spied on you, most were adblocks, coupon finders or AI Chatbots.

    Some notable extensions:

    • Stylish. A theming extension, I used to use this back in the day!
    • Smarty. Some sort of coupon code thing like Honey
    • Video Ad Blocker Plus for YouTube™
    • Video Downloader PLUS
    • Karma - Another coupon thing
    • Audio editor online Audacity. Some sort of web-based Audacity clone?
    • GIMP online - Same sort of thing as above with GIMP
    • Ground News Bias Checker - To be fair it probably makes sense this one sends the URL you are visiting, as it’s purpose is to look up the bias of the publication you are looking at.

    Worth a read regardless.