edit: thank you all for your replies! They are all very helpful. I am reading through them and will ask follow-up questions if needed.

I made a post some days ago asking about LineageOS, but my curiosity towards Google Pixels and GrapheneOS has been growing. As somebody who has always used regular Samsungs and iPhones, I hope somebody can clear up some questions I have regarding this OS.

I plan that my next phone is to be either a Motorola (LineageOS/SailfishOS?) or a Pixel (GrapheneOS). My first question about GrapheneOS, or really any non-standard OS, is this:

• how does having an account on the device work? For example, Samsungs require a Samsung account and iPhones require an iCloud account. How does it work on non-standard OSes?

My second question touches on built-in apps that you often get with every phone:

• does GrapheneOS have its own Notes/Drive/Photos/Messages app? If not, how does one go about obtaining these? Related question:
• how do I sync my notes/photos/files/etc to the “cloud” of GrapheneOS?

My third question regards the app store of GrapheneOS. I have heard that the sandboxed Play Store is better than FDroid, for instance; what are your thoughts? Do I go for Aurora Store instead? Is there any major difference at all? Is it possible to use multiple app stores?

• note that I likely won’t be solely relying on FDroid since I need some non-FOSS apps (FB Messenger for contacting family for example).

I know that in the privacy community, it’s very common to fix up a cloud of your own (i.e. NextCloud). I have no experience doing this, but is it something I must do when I install atypical OSes? Then comes the question about pricing, how private and secure it really is, which one to choose… and so on.

I understand many of these questions will sound stupid to those who are experienced, but I have not been part of this community very long. Feel free to link any educational videos or articles that answer my questions. I hope to learn more about this subject and one day installing a more secure system on my phone. Cheers!

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/13810367

Now that Apple has been forced to allow alternative App Stores, are there already similar stores like F-Droid emerging for iOS?

I'm thinking of getting a second phone to ease off iOS. It has been good for productivity stuff but the closed off nature of the device keeps disrupting my plans. Everything is either expensive or ad ridden. (Except floccus, floccus is awesome)

So far I have read about graphene OS and am quite interested. I really despise google though. Any chance to use another device and put some linux flavor on it? I was playing with the idea of a pinephone but it seems to be nowhere near daily drivable, fairphone is starting at 580 €, volla phone (german) 450 €...

Some people said xiaomi should be rootable. But the amount of different phones is huge. The price range is awesome though. I was thinking sub 300 €/$ would be awesome so tinkering doesnt hurt me financially.

Disclaimer: I dont want to go full hermit mode with no sim and a faraday bag. I respect the opinion but thats not what I'm trying to do. I want to write some small apps for my phone and use it as a computer if needed. Calling, matrix and browser should work flawlessly.

Any ideas or suggestions? :)

Meta has already announced interopability opportunity since March 6. Has anything been made after that? All I know is that Signal apparently won't operate with them.

Not sure which news website I should be using for the link, sorry! I'm happy to change it if anyone has a better one.

Google agreed to destroy or de-identify billions of records of web browsing data collected when users were in its private browsing “Incognito mode,” according to a proposed class action settlement filed Monday.

The proposal is valued at $5 billion, according to Monday’s court filing, calculated by determining the value of data Google has stored and would be forced to destroy and the data it would be prevented from collecting. Google would need to address data collected in private browsing mode in December 2023 and earlier. Any data that is not outright deleted must be de-identified.

I don't think people on this sub use it, but it's great news for us. The worse it gets the likelier people move on.

I'm concerned about the privacy implications of DNA testing services like 23andMe or AncestryDNA. What are the potential risks of sharing our genetic data with those companies, and are there any privacy-focused alternatives available?

I am trying to re-adjust how much effort I want to put into privacy concerns. Too much stuff I'm using isn't working properly or using a lot of my mental resources that I need elsewhere.

For (a bad) example: I recently performed a half-switch from my self-hosted Nextcloud instance to ProtonDrive, in the hope that it would spare me the stress to maintain my private Nextcloud. Unfortunately, it doesn't, as basic functionality like cross-device-sync is not possible (there isn't even a client app for Linux, as of yet).

This brings me to the question: have you found any services/apps/stuff that significantly eases your life while still being privacy friendly? I know, this is a broad question, but I think this is for the best as this thread then maybe even has use for other users.

Edit: got told by the kind folks in the community that this is expected and the sentence "can access position while in background" actually just means: will ask you for the permission to access the position from the background but only does so, if you allow it" - that's what I figured, but now im sure. Thanks for the clarification everyone!

Hey guys n gurls,

I recently learned about exodus, and installed it to check my apps. While exodus shows some apps (like bike computer for reference) are allowed to track my position (quite logically).

The strange thing: in system settings it says seeing position is not allowed.

Does this mean that the app wants those permissions but I don't granted them? Or are my system settings bricked? Is this because of lineage? Is this expected?

Would greatly appreciate someone who understands this a little bit more to explain :)

P.S: Is (the tracker part of) exodus even useful when i already use neo store which shows known tracker? Is this maybe even the same database?

I believe that the only two privacy extensions you really need to meet 90% of your privacy goals are uBlock origin + NoScript

uBlock origin is effective because it stops the injection of ads which might contain and inject code. NoScript forces you to look at which scripts you really need for the website to function. Say you visit a trusted site, like your lemmy instance, then you can enable running of javascript by default the next time you visit the site. You'll be surprised how functional some sites are even without javascript. I did not like the idea of browsers having Javascript: it's remote code execution and if there's anything malicious in there and your browser is not patched against it you're fucked. This way yeah it'll be annoying when you first visit a site but it remembers your settings for the next time you visit.

When I was configuring my searxng I noticed a search engine that piqued my interest. Link: yep.com

From their about page:

Here's how it works.

We offer an unbiased, private search experience that rewards and compensates the makers behind the content. To do this, we use a 90/10 revenue share business model where we pay 90% of advertising revenue directly to these makers.

Simply put, when you use Yep, you’re directly putting money in the pockets of your favorite content creators.

Say I purchase a laptop from Amazon/Walmart/any big box store. I assume they note down the unique identifier for the device and link it to the purchase, which has my credit card information.

How would Ebay do this? I'm curious about the extent of information that the marketplace giants have of consumers purchasing electronics from them. Cheap Chinese gizmos might not have unique identifiers but a Dell Laptop certainly has a few.

I'm sure some here can imagine the technical reason for the question. Have a good day ahead!

For the last month I've been working on a modern, material you interface for Invidious.

Github (Leave a star if you want)

Hosted instance

Features

• Sponsorblock built-in.
• Return YouTube dislikes built-in.
• Video progress tracking & resuming.
• No ads.
• No tracking.
• Light/Dark themes.
• Custom colour themes.
• Integrates with Invidious subscriptions, watch history & more.
• Live stream support.
• Dash support.
• Chapters.
• Audio only mode.
• Playlists.
• PWA support.

Cloud storage has become ubiquitous in modern society. The most widely-used example, I think, is the one that comes prebundled with our p...

By clicking on a chat link inside Telegram app it redirects me to my default browser (everything fine here). The thing is when the browser opens it logins to my telegram account automatically, why is this happening?

I have TFA and it doesn't ask me for that, there are no devices connected but when opening the browser it logins automatically, even in incognito with no cookies. Does someone know what is happening?

Hi there, So just watched latest video of Jim Browning and in the video he had a sponsor I had not heard about before, Guard.io. So I went to check it out, and it seems like a fairly decent service (by that I mean, a service I would put on family members devices) for helping against possible phishing attempt and general safeguarding online activity etc.. I currently have installed Ublock Origin in their browsers and pointed their DNS to base.dns.mullvad.net, but that's about it.

So:

• Anyone had any experience with this service?
• What's the general consensus around this service?
• Is it necessary, compared to the measures I mentioned above?
• Are there any other general measure I could implement on their devices? (they are on both apple and Android ecosystems)

Thanks for any suggestions 🌻

What's everyone's opinion on a VPN provider? I've used Nord for a long time, but my subscription is up next month and I'm exploring my options. I use a vpn 24/7 on my laptop and most of the time on my phone as does much of the family.

Requirements:

1. Support for family plan/multiple devices
2. Apple Ecosystem - macOS/iOS clients (Linux nice to have)
3. Fast enough to always be running on the device
4. Easy to switch between servers and countries
5. Not on a lot of deny lists

I did a couple searches here and was surprised I didn’t come across this question before. I hope it’s not asked too often!

E: Currently leaning towards Proton

Hello! I am currently attempting to install LineageOS on my OnePlus 9 to start degoogling it.

The installation guide specified that I specifically need to be on Android 13 to install it, however I am currently running OxygenOS 14 with Android 14. Previous versions have had Open Beta threads for new OxygenOS versions which provided local rollback packages but I can't seem to find this for 14 to 13 for the life of me.

Has anyone else had this issue? How did you solve it? Any help is appreciated!

I'm considering implementing SELinux in my Debian setup, but I've read that it was initially developed by the NSA.

Can anyone shed any light on this? Has SELinux been audited? When and by whom? Does the NSA still have anything to do with SELinux, or is this a "US Navy creating Tor" sort of scenario?

At this point, I'm not even going to bother trying to go on there anymore.

TL;DR there was a backdoor found in the XZ program. All major distros have been updated but it is recommended that you do a fresh install on systems that are exposed to the internet and that had the bad version of the program. Only upstream distros were affected.