Is GrapheneOS a good idea for me

My threat model is this:

  • I’m a regular guy with a family, job and so on.
    Nothing like investigative journalism.

  • I really HATE the data collection that’s going on. Everything from my ISP knowing what I browse to location history to fingerprinting to whatever. I dislike the way we can’t escape these things.

  • I use an iPhone and have disabled location services and only enable them when necessary.
    But I don’t really trust Apple on this point and have no way of checking if it really is disabled.

  • Im not THAT concerned with Apple but l’m always thinking that whatever we do now might be used for something we can’t imagine in the future.

Therefore I like keeping as much as possible off record. I use proton VPN, proton mail and Signal whenever possible. It’s on principle and not because I write dangerous stuff.

  • My family and friends use iPhones and my using GrapheneOS could be annoying on that account.

  • I really like the idea that I decide who gets to use network, location and so on.

So are there anyone here who has some thoughts for me?

This will be the decisive question. How do you communicate with your friends&family - if it’s Signal you’re probably fine with GOS. If they’re all on iMsg you will likely have a really bad time convincing them to switch for you.

Yes, that’s what I was thinking. I have some friends and all family on Signal, so I hope that’ll be good enough.

What I really like about GrapheneOS is updates are painless.

In the past I used to have to know a lot more about flashing android OSes, etc. I’ve had many devices over the years, right back since Android 3. Ever since then it’s been pretty painless.

The advanced functionality on the media scopes and the INTERNET permission, and running GAPPs as a userapp instead of systemapp are probably the two main things I like the most about it.

I don’t do a lot of browsing on my phone, and having Vanadium always there and up to date is nice too. If I did more browsing, I’d probably find DoH ad blocking not sufficient though.

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I honestly dare to say grapheneOS is for everyone. There is no reason not to use it. Everything works, its just more secure and gives you some more privacy settings.

Thanks :slight_smile:
I’m trying it out and there’s a lot to like but it’s obviously not as polished as iOS. But that’s not so important. What I’m most worried about is that I don’t understand it good enough and end up installing something that gives Al my data to Google anyway. Having to choose is still rather give it to Apple than Google although I really don’t want to give it to anyone.