"I have refused to carry any sort of cellular phone" -rms

[Anonymous201 (Anonymous)]

And even when sandboxed, google knows a TON.

This is wrong, I deleted it.

@Anonymous201

GrapheneOS is as close as we can get, which is why it’s recommended, and it CAN be used in a way that leaks nothing to Google, but I doubt many of us here have successfully used it in that way. I have tried my best and it’s very very hard. My favorite tools (Proton and Signal) even require Google Play Services to run, and must be downloaded from the Play Store (or Aurora, which for me is an unnecessary extra step).

The part about needing the Play Store/ Aurora is wrong (thank God!) But the first bit is kinda right still. As you said:

@Lukas

Signal and Proton Mail come with Google’s proprietary libraries for FCM notifications. Signal also uses Google Maps as a location provider.

and from your poll 50% of people are using Google Play Store, and 25% Aurora. So about half of Graphene users are giving Google some data, which is what I’d like to avoid as much as possible.

@Lukas

I will not reply to any FSF stuff, their focus is software freedom, not privacy and security. It would be unfair, in my opinion.

Totally fine, (and btw I’m not advocating for firefox or anything like that @pinkandwhite ) I’m not trying to say they are right, I am trying to find a solution that solves my Privacy question and my Freedom question at the same time.

@Lukas

Do you know how and why they will be isolated? If they will be at all.

Sorry I didn’t answer this one. From just using them the separate profiles will only keep one copy of an app per phone (the “Google” user can be given permission to install apps and overwrite the “Non-Google” user, and CAN run in the background (I turn this off so the profile should be off when I am not using it) and it CAN be given access to calls and texts… but doesn’t have to be. It seems like separate profiles are a tiny step above putting everything on one profile, the main benefit being I can ‘turn off’ the google profile when I am not using it (meaning Sandboxed Google Play is still installed but not running), but when it’s on it seems to have almost the same access as it would if it were all installed on one profile… maybe that’s your point. I have also seen odd stuff like if I had a VPN on my nongoogle profile, the VPN settings would affect Android auto on my Google profile (because the main profile was running in the background, I guess). I’d be happy to be enlightened if you’d like.

@Lukas

One last thing, you ignored a lot of things in my previous posts, which also included some of my questions to you.

If you want to close this thread with some takeaways feel free to discuss for me the takeaways are as follows:

1. You Don’t NEED Google Play Services on Graphene* You can run GrapheneOS reasonably with Obtainium only and get Signal, Proton and other privacyguides stuff running well without installing Google Play Services
2. Privacyguides forum users are split ~50/50 on whether to use the Play Store or Not It seems ~50%+ or so of privacyguides users (How do you obtain your Android applications) might choose to install Google Play Services so they don’t have to deal with the headache (and risks of downloading junk via obtainium), and probably Google is not in their theat model, which is fine.
3. Graphene is the best way to cut off network access for the OS and Apps Graphene should be doing what it says when it shuts off Network access to apps, and Airplane mode in Graphene should be as good as a faraday bag.
4. Graphene is more tinfoil hat friendly than I originally assumed Graphene CAN REASONABLY be used in a way that leaks nothing to Google, but it’s not necessarily the most popular way to use it.

IDK how else to say it, or if I missed something important… but you can close us out if you like @Lukas