[csmattryder]

I got it installed last weekend, really powerful mobile OS.

I did do about three weeks of research, as I worried that maybe a number of apps wouldn't run on it or needed some form of deep attestation. Didn't find much, OpsGenie and other work apps are happy with the GOS level of attestation provided.

Great to have Google kicked off the phone. So nice to shut off the network permission for any apps that only require an internet connection to serve ads.

One tip from me, if you came from stock Pixel: You can download the default Pixel sounds and set them up like it was. Have a look for "Your New Adventure" online, the message sound is "Eureka".

[yellowapple]

I've got a Pixel 9a expected to arrive today, specifically for it to run GrapheneOS. One of my old phones was a Nexus 6P running CopperheadOS (prior to the dispute that spawned GrapheneOS), and it was great back then. Looking forward to how things have progressed in the years since.

I wish GrapheneOS would support non-Pixel hardware, though, specifically my Fairphone 4. I get why that probably won't ever happen, but it feels like a massive regression in terms of repairable hardware to move away from that.

[W3zzy]

Don't you have Lineage OS on you phairphone?

[1vuio0pswjnm7]

"Great to have Google kicked off the phone"

Except the default browser is Chromium with some changes

This reminds me of a recent HN comment I saw that suggested using Firefox was "kicking Google where it hurts" or something like that

Like Firefox, this project depends on Google. For the hardware, the web browser and who knows what else

It even offers a sandboxed Google Play Store

It tries to copy Google paternalism

It swaps a Google mothership for a Graphene mothership

What if the computer owner does not want a mothership

Can connections to Graphene servers be blocked, i.e., are these connections optional or mandatory

Even Netguard which works on any hardware and does not require root makes unnecessary connections to ipinfo.io servers effectively giving them a list of almost every domain the user's phone trying to access

If the concern is apps that only require internet connection for ads, Netguard solves that problem without root

Most apps but not all will try to connect to the internet at some point, even if you never use them

The user-hostile design of Android is that apps keep running in the background after they are "closed"

(There are crude apps one can use to automate manually killing each process with "Force stop" but no one uses them. This doesn't prevent apps from trying to access the internet on some preset schedule)

Netguard will show when apps try to connect and block the connections. It provides DNS logs and PCAPs.

One does not even need Netguard to see this subversive activity

Try this at home

Enable IP forwarding on a computer you can control, i.e., one that is running an OS you can compile yourself such as Linux or BSD

Put the phone on the same network as this computer

Set the phone's gateway address to the address of the computer

Run tcpdump on the computer and filter for the phone's IP address

[reincoder]

I work for IPinfo. What is the context mentioning us here? I'm unsure if graphene uses our data. We process trillions of requests at the moment. I have no clue which services or software even use our data, let alone identifying individual IP addresses.

Is making a connection to our API a cause for concern? If that is the case, we welcome OSS projects to user our local IP databases, which includes our free IPinfo Lite database that we primarily designed for firewall and privacy applications.

[1vuio0pswjnm7]

GrapheneOS may give a computer user all the control they want from Android

However it does not remove Google's control, e.g., ability to pull the plug

Google controls the hardware and the source code for the default browser

Some users might want more control, less dependence on Google

"Paternalism" is a belief by developers that they "know better" than the computer owner what choices should be made for someone else's computer

For example, pre-installing software, or connections to remote servers, and enabling these choices by default

Paternalism dismisses any idea of personal autonomy

Providing a computer user with choices rather than "defaults" could mean loss of control by the developer and any associated revenue

[1vuio0pswjnm7]

When viewing the "Show log" screen in Netguard, under the top right, three dot menu there are checkbox options for "Show names" and "Show organization". Netguard sends requests to ipinfo.io to get information about IP addresses. These requests to ipinfo.io do not show up in the Netguard log.

There is no cause for concern necessarily. These are design choices, nothing more.

Users have no idea what happens to the data that leaves their computers. To quote from another story currently on the HN front page: "It's incredibly easy to give information away. But once that data is out there, it's nearly impossible to take back." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44689059

Promises made by developers are reassuring to some, but rarely if ever legally enforceable in the event something goes wrong, and the harm already caused may be beyond redress. As a proactive measure users can, among other things, seek to minimise the amount of data they send. For example, some users might want the _option_ to stop their phones from constantly trying to ping or connect to remote servers _without any explicit user intent to do so_. Maybe they do not want their phone to act like a beacon to someone else's remote server.

The point of the comment is that sometimes there are remote connections being made to servers chosen by developers that are assumed to be OK with all users, e.g., connections to Graphene servers, IPinfo servers, or myriad other examples. Meanwhile there is no option for the user to disable this behaviour. There may be some users who prefer _zero_ remote connections except the ones they themselves choose to initiate or enable. The possibility of such users often seems to be overlooked or deliberately ignored.

Like Firefox constantly sending HTTP requests to remote servers to check for "connectivity". Even when the user is not trying to connect to any server. The requests are sent in the clear. This is not optional behaviour.

[Andromxda]

> Except the default browser is Chromium with some changes

Chromium has vastly superior security compared to Firefox. https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/firefox-chromium.ht...

> It tries to copy Google paternalism > > It swaps a Google mothership for a Graphene mothership

Nonsense claims. All network connections made by the OS are well documented on the official website: https://grapheneos.org/faq#default-connections

There are only a few services GrapheneOS devices connect to:

- a time server (securely, over HTTPS, not insecure NTP)

- the OS update server (obvious; it's just plain HTTP requests, no user identifiers other than the IP address, which can easily be masked by using Tor or a VPN)

- the GrapheneOS App repository, which provides updates for preinstalled apps like Auditor, as well as the Vanadium browser and WebView (it's critical to get security patches for your browser in a timely manner)

- network connectivity checks (required to sign in to public wifis that use captive portals; can be entirely disabled in the settings)

- SUPL and PSDS through GrapheneOS proxies for A-GNSS because there is no network location service enabled by default

> Can connections to Graphene servers be blocked, i.e., are these connections optional or mandatory

You can block all the connections. You don't even need to, since they can all be disabled in the settings. If you disable the System Updater app, you're gonna have to adb sideload your system updates https://grapheneos.org/usage#updates-sideloading.

> If the concern is apps that only require internet connection for ads, Netguard solves that problem without root

You don't need Netguard, GrapheneOS has a built in network permission toggle, which offers even better protection than a firewall, since it completely blocks access to the underlying network socket (https://grapheneos.org/features#network-permission-toggle)

> The user-hostile design of Android is that apps keep running in the background after they are "closed"

You can deny apps running in the background, even on stock Android. This isn't unique to Android btw, I'm sure you've come across the system tray in Windows before. Those are all apps running in the background. Android basically has the same thing, it's in the notification center, and you can also stop background apps from there.

[exe34]

> So nice to shut off the network permission for any apps that only require an internet connection to serve ads.

For those of us who aren't ready to cut the umbilical cord to the mothership, you can also root/firewall on normal android to stop this. In fact I choose to not be able to use banking apps in order to cut out the crappy ads.

[Harvesterify]

For those who don't want to root the phone, you can still avoid most of the ads by using a filtering DNS server with the Private DNS functionality on stock Android ROMs (or only at browser level if your favorite browser support DNS over HTTPS).

It comes with some minor usability issues with captive Wifi portals sometimes, but the trade-off of not having ads in app or while browsing is way worth it IMHO.

[strcat]

> For those of us who aren't ready to cut the umbilical cord to the mothership

You can use Google apps and apps depending on them on GrapheneOS via sandboxed Google Play. The vast majority of Android apps can be used. You don't need to stop using Google apps/services or other mainstream apps to use GrapheneOS. It's likely nearly all the apps you use or even all of them work on GrapheneOS. There's a per-app exploit protection compatibility mode toggle (and finer-grained toggles) to work around buggy apps with memory corruption bugs. We avoid turning on features breaking non-buggy apps by default and hardware memory tagging is temporarily opt-in for user installed apps not marked as compatible due to how many memory corruption bugs it finds.

A small number of apps are unavailable due to checking for a Google certified device/OS via the Play Integrity API. These are mostly banking apps, but most banking apps do work on GrapheneOS. There are tap-to-pay implementations which can be used on GrapheneOS in the UK and European Economic Area. Several banking apps recently explicitly added support for GrapheneOS via hardware-based attestation as an alternative to the Play Integrity API. We're pushing for more apps to do this and for regulation disallowing Google from providing an API to app developers for enforcing devices licensing Google Mobile Services. Play Integrity API often portrayed as a security feature but Google chooses not to enforce a security patch level. They're permitting devices with years of missing important privacy and security patches but not a much more private and secure OS. Only their strong integrity level has a patch level check, but the check is only done for recent Android versions and only requires they aren't more than 12 months behind on patches which serves no real purpose.

> you can also root/firewall on normal android

This is different from our Network permission which not only blocks direct access but also indirect access via APIs requiring Android's low-level INTERNET permission. Our Network permission also pretends the network is down through many of the APIs. For example, scheduled jobs set to depend on internet access won't run.

[backscratches]

Graphene has a really great sandboxed google servicen implementation, so barring a handful of banking apps not working, switching to graphene is a very gentle cutting of the mothership. For me it was very subtle, with better battery life!

[jrexilius]

The Netguard app worked well for me for that on vanilla burners and such. No root, "VPN" that I had block pretty much everything but the browser and Signal.

[jeroenhd]

Even without root, a VPN-style firewall will work against all non-system apps. The downside of this approach is that you can't combine one with another VPN app.

[morserer]

Root, while more efficient, isn't strictly necessary. AdAway (FOSS, F-Droid) can run without root using the stock Android VPN backend.