Hello guys. I recently acquired a Pixel 8A and it was Google stock os I bought it from a man locally all with cash I brought It home and I flashed grapheneos onto this phone.
What else needs to be done to anonymous this phone and make it a privacy phone and a spy free phone no tracking phone no interception phone and no monitored phone.
Any advice welcome!
Thanks.
First off, and most importantly, it is not an anonymous phone.
The phone is tied to your location, your identity with your cell phone carrier, the IMEI, the IMSI, many identifiers you will not be able to change. From a threat modeling perspective, you cannot be attached to a network without tracking, interception, and monitoring.
You can use your phone in a way to minimize third-party tracking, and unnecessary data leakage. You did a good job by installing graphene OS.
Just be mindful of the applications you install on it, if you install sandbox Google apps, just realize Google will still have access to your location and push notifications etc.
If your threat model truly includes not being observed, disable the cell phone part of the phone. Only use the phone via Wi-Fi. That’ll reduce a lot of the risk surface
If you want to be sure you cant be tracked, monitored, spyed on, and calls can’t be intersepted:
Don’t ever connect it to WiFi and don’t insert a sim card.
Graphene or not, your ISP can still share your position or other meta data with government and stuff (in the us they can also be forced to not tell you) - in some countries they legally sell to third party’s, in some probably illegaly
Calls are normally not encrypted so the os doesn’t matter as much if its the government who can force your ISP or if someone is skilled enough for a Man in the middle attack.
Android is a highly complex system, it will never be 100% safe.
If you just want to decrease spying by companies and less powerful people:
Use neo store or fdroid (no google play or aurora) as all apps there are Foss
Don’t install gapps or any other google services/packages
Use shelter for less trusted apps
Use netguard to block apps from accessing the internet
Physically block your cameras
If you want to be absolutely sure no one is recording audio: destroy mics with a needle and connect headset only when you need it
To only use communication apps which are encrypted and you hold the keys should be not needed to be said: matrix, signal, element, xmpp are good, (telegram (normal chats), Facebook, WhatsApp etc is a no go)
Don’t ever connect it to WiFi and don’t insert a sim card.
So… don’t ever use the Internet?
I think they are trying to illustrate the value of being explicit about your threat model.
So if your threat is the network, you can’t use the network. Because the original poster is so vague about what their actual threat is, it could be as simple as use Firefox and an ad blocker, or don’t connect to the network ever for any reason…
Start with the basics. Use a VPN preferable a good one payed in crypto /XMR or cash. Use Foss apps only check out F-droid.
Also one that blocks malware and ads. If not use adguard.dns or other that filter traffic
Settings , disable 2-3 G if you always have access to 4-5 G .
Don’t change add browsers use vanadium. No gapps obviously.
The more challenging is to just use it as WiFi phone without SIM.
Vanadium doesn’t have good/any fingerprinting protection. Cromite or Mull would be better, Tor would be best.
Why would you use Chrome webview plus something else? You can’t replace just pile on. Not a good idea. https://grapheneos.org/usage#web-browsing
Dont use system webview as your default browser. Webview is used by apps, your browser can and should be changed if privacy is your goal. Vanadium may be hardened, but it lacks any fingerprinting protection.
- That makes no sense.
- Vanadium have a different approach than trying to block it , blend in instead.
- Gecko based browser have crap sandboxing
- Again if you have 1 problem adding 1 more makes 2 problems.
Your system webview is for in app usage. You aren’t browsing the web using your system webview (generally). You can’t blend into a crowd if you have no anti-fingerprinting. Firefox does this through RFP by normalizing settings between users, and on mobile there is partial support for screen size normalization through letterboxing. Vanadium isn’t special, it is hardened chromium with some specific patches. You cannot form a crowd without special a lot of anti-fingerprint patching. See my other comment for details.
Firefox is missing per-site process isolation. This is theoretical an attack vector in the presence of multiple other major vulnerabilities. It has never been shown to be an attack vector in real world vulnerabilities. Don’t call Firefox’s sandboxing crap if you don’t know why people have said that.
You can’t blend in with a crowd of vanadium users with the amount of data points given away by the browser. Your fingerprint will be decernable from other users. Without actual anti-fingerprinting, which theoretical can allow for a crowd only when fingerprinting of user browsers results in the same fingerprint ID, the best you can hope to do is thwart naive fingerprinting. Vanadium doesn’t have any anti-fingerprint built in, so the slightest differences between user can be used to easily fingerprint. Vanadium
Anti-fingerprinting? By blocking javascript which the half-hearted privacy users can never afford? hahahahaha. Even privacy projects spread dirty javascripts.
