Sorry for replying to your mesage which is so far up.
Appologies if I came off as hostile, I know I said it before but it’s not the point I feel I was too hostile with my reply.
I’ve been finding alternatives from suggestions on here (PG forums) or the PG website which have been great help in reducing and helping me understand about privacy. I’ve been looking on here and the PG website for a few months and I created an account as I wanted answers about a few things that were puzzling me, this being one of them.
I’m still trying to find a balance and figure things out which is why it seems like I’m going back on what I posted.
I’m on the fence on converting to GOS from iOS. Everyone I know uses iOS, ergo I have iMessage encryption with them. I also utilize (privacy invasive..) features like Find My Friends with specific individuals as a means of security if they do not respond after an agreed on time due to living in a higher risk area (security > privacy sometimes). Sadly the latter scenario is what I’m most nervous about losing on conversion to GOS. Maybe I shouldn’t worry about said threat models, but I don’t know a privacy respecting alternative to Find my Friends. I would pay money for an alternative.
The user says that their threat model is modern surveillance capitalism. Security updates are not particularly relevant here, because big tech is not trying to directly hack you. They are just trying to get you to consent to install spyware on your phone.
Because of this threat model, which does not include NSA/FBI trying to hack your phone, other options besides GrapheneOS are viable. But this forum will censor me if I do not sing praises for GrapheneOS, so I say nothing else other than that.
But they also mentioned avoiding big tech companies despite being somewhat comfortable with them. It seems there is an underlying desire to move off of it.
I would argue it depends how deep you are into their services. If youre a recently disillusioned Apple fan with all your life scattered across Apple services, I would say slowly migrate a bit at a time to avoid burnout, but make the conscious effort.
That is really one of the hardest parts so of that doesn’t scare you you’ll be fine. I did this for my 3 and 5 year olds Tablet and they navigate it just fine.
They also expressed concern about updates. I gave the facts of when the security patches arrived this month. Also security patches are not some option thing for people wanting a secure OS, they are the bare minimum for any OS that isn’t actively insecure.
You are not wrong that iPhone is a good option for a lot of people, but I genuinely believe that most people should at least try GrapheneOS and that it can work for just about anyone.
I will say my main reason for moving off of Apple was more ethical vs privacy concern. With GrapheneOS your main option is Pixel which has the highest repairability score and support for 7 years in comparison to the common 2 year upgrade. That’s two Pixel phones for seven iPhones in 14 years. Imagine five less phones for 155 million iphone users in the US alone.
That’s 775 million phones not created if everyone in the US bought a pixel and sideloaded GrapheneOS. Many of which use child labor to mine and recycle hazardous materials.
Can’t help but notice the last available data in the “transparency” report is June 2023..
I have also been test driving GOS as someone who has been fully captured by the Apple ecosystem. It is a process. There have probably been 4-5 times now that I’ve “decided” to just stick with iOS and I don’t need to worry about it for my threat model. But within a day or two something reminds me of why I started going down this road in the first place and I start back up again.
It is a bit like the red pill in the Matrix. Once you start to understand what is being collected and tracked and that there is an option out there where you can have a phone with an OS that doesn’t require an account or a terms of service acceptance every time it pushes an update, it is hard to just forget that and move past it…
That was me when I found out about how much data is tracked. I’m thinking about using GOS especially after the recent UK gov thinking it’s fine to ask Apple to break E2EE Apple ordered to open encrypted user accounts globally to UK spying | The Verge
Not trying to bring the other thread that is talking about this here just thought I’d mention it.
That’s when I tried to reduce as much data as possible that google gets on me same with Microsoft and I found PG.
