Help replicating an iphone setup on Graphene OS

treenutz68

I appreciate all the thoughtful recommendations.

I think he's stuck on the Proton UI, I think it feels much more familiar for people who are used to things like gmail and google calendar. Perhaps he will just need to suck it up and use google play services with the proton suite. And maybe make the switch to protonvpn and ditch mullvad to take advantage of the VPN that he's already paying for (and not using) with proton.

On the jabber/cheogram front, he would need to pay for 3 numbers on something like jmp.chat right? I guess that would add another $10/month cost or so roughly...

Yes, I also have had mixed experiences with silent.link. He doesn't care to go non-kyc on the sim front (although maybe its a worthwhile cause), he uses a SIM card in the US that was purchased non-kyc but is effectively burned anyway as everyone knows that number is associated with him so it is easily linkable to him via social graph (and I'd imagine via location tracking).

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treenutz68

I've been using Molly instead of Signal. Molly doesn't require Sandboxed Google Play (SGP) for push notifications. It does run full-time but is very easy on the battery.

Signal can send notifications by running full-time in the background but the last time I tried to install Signal it wanted me to grant sms access to SPG. I found this odd as I didn't have to do that in the past. I didn't have time to research why the change in behaviour so I just went with Molly.

Velocity9490

[deleted] I agree that Molly is much better in terms of privacy, security, and battery usage. But there's an even better option: Molly now supports UnifiedPush, which reduces the battery consumption even further and in my experience works better. Signal doesn't officially support UP, but Molly created a custom proxy called mollysocket to handle this. When using mollysocket, the server is added just like a linked device in Signal, but it only receives notifications, neither the actual messages, nor the decryption keys. That way, it is highly secure and it doesn't matter if the server is compromised. This also means that you don't have to host it yourself, but you can actually use a public instance of mollysocket, which is hosted by someone else. A good example of this is the adminforge.de public mollysocket instance. (I learned about all of this from this German blog post: https://www.kuketz-blog.de/messenger-wechsel-von-signal-zu-molly-unifiedpush-mollysocket-ntfy/) The improvement in battery life is even larger, if you use other UnifiedPush apps. For example, the new Element X (GitHub) client has support for UP, as well as many other FOSS apps. Unfortunately Proton doesn't support this yet - there's a proposal on the ProtonMail UserVoice: https://protonmail.uservoice.com/forums/284483-proton-mail/suggestions/47423924-support-unifiedpush-for-android-notifications
Please upvote it, so that it hopefully gets implemented one day. For the mean time, I'll stick with You Have Mail.

treenutz68

Velocity9490 [deleted]

Those are helpful suggestions. I'll have him use Molly instead of Signal. Don't think any of the other apps he uses could utilize unifiedpush, so perhaps there isn't a benefit to the standard molly foss?

On the Proton front, are you both satisfied using You Have Mail? I take it you both use this because of not wanting to have sandboxed google play services on your device?

I don't know much about it, but it seems like Proton has some google interaction even without play services installed.
https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/12728-proton-apps-pinging-google-api-sending-reports-back-after-opting-out

Do you guys utilize any VOIP services for multiple numbers? Or just using the main sim number for legacy calls/sms?

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GlytchMeister

You are correct about Tuta - their app does notifications without SGP.

What the battery consumption like for You Have Mail? Proton's app is about the only reason I have SGP installed.

GlytchMeister

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You Have Mail uses basically no battery compared to the rest of my activity. Less than 1%

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treenutz68

I am satisfied with Your Have Mail but this is my first day with the app. I'm trying to find out it's battery consumption but settings > battery isn't showing me anything today.

I use VoIP.ms with two numbers - they are very much KYC but there isn't privacy with telecoms.

GlytchMeister

treenutz68

Re: VoIP services for multiple numbers: I haven't gotten a second number but I am happy enough with Jabber/JMP.chat/Cheogram that I will likely get a second number with them for work when I get around to it.

Velocity9490

treenutz68 You Have Mail works well enough. I don't use it all the time, only when I expect an important email. I do have SGP in my main profile, but with no network access. I only need it because some apps just don't work without it, but I don't want it to connect to the internet. I also completely blocked all connections to Google in NextDNS using the "No Google" blocklist. This also ensures, that no Proton apps can contact any Google servers.
No, I don't use VOIP at the moment. I don't use legacy calls at all, and I only need SMS for receiving verification codes.

treenutz68

Those are wonderful responses!

Velocity9490 - can you use NextDNS along with a VPN, or do you not bother with a VPN? I like the idea of blocking all connections to Google that way, but he does want to use a Mullvad always on connection.

[deleted] What app do you use with VoIP.ms?

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GlytchMeister

That was my experience as well. Less than 1% and it's polling every minute.

Thanks for mentioning the app, now my phone is finally google free.

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treenutz68

I use Sipnetic for calls and SMS. Most of the time it's force closed because its a battery hog. When the app is closed all calls go directly to my Protonmail as an mp3 file. SMSs also go to Protonmail but this just look like regular emails. I'm notified by You Have Mail.
There is an app on F-Droid called VoIP.ms which can handle SMS. Its not official despite the name and, for me, it's very buggy.
I followed Michael Bazzell's Extreme Privacy: Mobile Devices to set this up.

GlytchMeister

treenutz68

I have been told it is possible to use RethibkDNS with the mullvad VPN AND the mullvad DNS (for less unique fingerprint) while using GOS to maintain an always-on VPN with a killswitch... Sk I think you can use RethinkDNS to block google and keep mullvad just as desired

I have yet to do this myself. I have been robbed of all my mental spoons lately via life being hellish, so it will be a bit before I get around to figuring it out for myself, but I'm sure when I do, I will make a thread about "wtf am I doing" or "I broke something, help" and that will probably end up containing more or less most of the info needed to make this setup work lol

Velocity9490

treenutz68

can you use NextDNS along with a VPN, or do you not bother with a VPN? I like the idea of blocking all connections to Google that way, but he does want to use a Mullvad always on connection.

Yes, it works very well with a VPN. In fact, I use it with Mullvad all the time. No issues whatsoever.

mmmm

GlytchMeister I have been running rethink with proton and proton DNS for the past couple of weeks. It works great. I suppose the only issue I see (although its not been one yet) I'd that the 'always on vpn' applies to rethink itself, and not the actual vpn running within rethink. That could probably be an issue should the connection to proton be severed, but I'm not sure yet if this is the case.

Rethink has a lot of power that I'm struggling to know how to manage, but bit by bit I'm getting there. Right off the bat you can do things like block all apps for the network when the phone is locked. Thats just the sort of thing I want to be able to do.