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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: December 22nd, 2023

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  • Tbh, I don’t like that e/os is a few months behind in security updates. But making claims about the developers’ intentions is just bad faith. And for that matter, a few months behind in updates is by no means good, but it isn’t as dramatic as it might seem. Normal people who don’t do illegal stuff or aren’t important journalists don’t really need the best security. The most important thing for them is not using Google by default. (Security and privacy are not the same.) Yes, Graphene is more secure, no question about that, but you also need to think about threat model and ease of use. So saying “Graphene = good, e/os = bad” is just wrong. Just generally: e/os:

    • many devices supported
    • very long device support (Google Pixel 1 and OnePlus 5 are still supported)
    • you can buy devices from them directly with e/os and proper support
    • long time between updates (a few months)
    • (privacy-respecting) preinstalled apps can’t be uninstalled

    graphene:

    • security/updates
    • no extra apps
    • only Google Pixels
    • (my opinion) quite toxic developers. They can’t accept that other custom ROMs don’t aim for NSA-level security.

    The whole debate about MicroG vs. sandboxed Google Play Services is another thing.

    btw, I’m using Lineage on my Fairphone right now because I was quite annoyed with the slow updates by e/os and would probably use Graphene if it were available, but to say that e/os is malicious or anything else is not what is happening. They just cater to different groups of users.


  • I wouldn’t call it “writing on the wall,” but they have done some not-so-good things over the last few years:

    1. Handing over data for their email services (which was legally required) (ref).
    2. Releasing a Bitcoin wallet. The problem for me is that Bitcoin is inherently not private.
    3. Lying in marketing. Proton claims “no data or speed limits” for their free VPN (ref), which is just plain wrong. If you download a few gigs, it will slow you down to a few Mbit (if I remember correctly). I even contacted their support about this, and they just said, “They are balancing the servers for the free VPN.” But then why was it fast in the beginning, and if I reconnected to the same server, would it be fast again. Just to be clear: I have no problem with the speed limit/balancing itself, just that they are lying about it.
    4. Proton incentivizing free email accounts to connect to a Gmail account to get 500 MB more storage. (You need to go through the “tutorial” steps to get the 500 MB extra, and one of them is to have a Google Mail account send all their emails to your new Proton inbox.)

    This is why I personally decided against Proton.