I find paradoxal that some people here go through the trouble of installing graphene but then want to use google pay.. thus giving google your payment and other information on your purchases and what not..

i choose graphene to get away from google fingerprinting and profiling me.and i would for nothing in the world give my real name/payment information to google. I am ok with a google account with fake data in order to get the odd app that cannot be installed from obtanium , f-droid or aurora.

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    m4ri0g I use it along with my ios devices. I need an iPad and a Mac for work, and I use my old iphone as a work phone, thus separating my life in to two parts, digitally.

    I have a pixel 8 for graphene which has mainly open source apps from droidify, accressent and Obtainium.
    I use it for personal life, browsing, reading, music, video/yt, retro games, training, mapping and navigation. I feel much better doing these types of activities with private and mainly opensource system than I ever did with Apple.
    I have Molly and the Proton suite and the scourge that whatsapp (most people use it here) so I dont need my iPhone on me if I don't want it.

    Having an iPhone means I can use that for all of the privacy invading apps that I may (or may not) need. I keep the banking apps and all the other 'official' stuff on it. I already have been using an iphone since they came out so Apple has all of this info on me already. I would not like to have to get all of the same apps again for GrapheneOS if it meant giving all that info to Google as well. That would be very much the opposite of what I want to achieve, having been 'degoogled' for many years now.

      Few years back was looking for an alternate OS as I found my phones were too busy or loud with apps I did not want, or background services always active, etc. I was not looking to de-google at the time but oddly enough found GOS through a de-googled web search ?

      I go back and forth between all FOSS apps, to playstore with a few basic must have apps. Looking for that perfect mix that fits me.

      • [deleted]

      mmmm don't be mistaken that with Apple you are not sharing data with Google, you share more than you would like, it's just not so in your face, more behind the scenes.

        [deleted] oh of that I am sure! Its simply a case of the devil you know for me, and as of this year, it's all purely for work and not private life.

        m4ri0g I find paradoxal that some people here go through the trouble of installing graphene but then want to use google pay.. thus giving google your payment and other information on your purchases and what not..

        Different people have different threat models!

        If somebody wants to run basically the entire Google ecosystem, but wants faster patching and additional security mitigations, GrapheneOS can do that. Just because that's not what you want doesn't make it paradoxical.

        The GrapheneOS developers have put in a lot of time so that the Play infrastructure runs on GrapheneOS (including weird special-case things like the thermometer app). Are they spending that time paradoxically?

        leafnose Though I don't speak for the GrapheneOS project, I suspect that the effort that has already been put in to support the Play ecosystem, and especially things like the thermometer app, indicate that the project would be happy to support Pay as well.

        My claim is that the GrapheneOS project appears to believe that supporting the Play Store, Play Services, Android Auto, and even the thermometer app, is all consistent with the project's goals. It appears the issue with Pay is on Google's end.

          Why grapheneos? I Use GOS because I believe it to be vastly more secure (against sloppy coding, malware, virus, network attacks, etc.) than other options. Like most folks here, I practice safe hex; but could become infected through carelessness or a clever zero-day, in which case GOS would be my best friend.
          As to getting apps, I use aurora, f-droid, accrescent, and obtanium.
          I'm GUESSING that IPC scopes will be a privacy game changer, and my next phone will try a heavily-scoped single user GOS, using fid02's technique to create a burner account - if necessary.

          de0u
          I only said that for the sake of the discussion, and I’m still under the impression that some of the responders read ‘Google Play’, that’s all. My comment was not directed only to you.

          But I agree with both of your comments.
          GrapheneOS use cases are on a continuum, and the reality is that the sweet spot for many of us includes the use of the Play infrastructure.

          m4ri0g
          Let’s not forget that when it comes to paradox, nothing beats the paradox of abhorring Google and nonetheless proceeding to give it several hundred dollars to buy one of its devices…

          Payment and purchases tracking, while still being potentially harmful and the gold standard entry point for ID correlation, is pretty old school. It’s merely an additional tool for Google; it gets way more information with everything else – Gmail, Search and Maps would be among the worst.
          In this sense, as @de0u said, there’s nothing that distinguishes Google Pay from other Google services. I’m saying that knowing that some GOS users use real name Google accounts.

          For instance, some people may want to hide certain parts of their lives, while not being particularly concerned with their consumer habits. And nothing keeps them from using more lowkey payment methods when deemed necessary.

          I've always been interested in custom Android OS.

          Over time privacy and security became more important to me and that led me to GrapheneOS.

          I try to run minimal apps as much as I can. I was using the OS before Sandboxed Play Services so I wasn't dependant on that although I have used it in the past.

          This OS offers something for almost everyone, which is good for the long term health of the project.

          My favorite feature is being able to disable network permissions while using official proprietary apps. Zero telemetry basically with no internet access and no Google Play services.

          • vagr replied to this.
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            Agree with calpurtmun That's one of the reasons - revoking network permissions for the odd apps I've no option but to use. Bluetooth, WiFi timeout, storage scopes are some of the other features.

            no real threats - just to have no bloatware in cellphone, contact scopes, etc

            GOS is the perfect foundation to build my private user experience on. Nowadays I wonder why people wouldn't use GOS as a baseline (besides the obvious reasons of not knowing and not being educated about it, or needing one of the few unsupported features).

            No matter if I need Google Services, invasive apps or multiple eSIMs, I work from a clean sheet and can set up my profiles, permissions and security settings granularly. Privacy is not about hiding my data, but controlling access to it. Only GOS gives me that agency and control.

            But even if I didn't want to fine tune, the default settings are top notch for people who just don't want Google or Apple to invade every corner of their life...

            m4ri0g

            Google collects too much data, I removed all social apps because I hate it. Honestly, I'm feeling very good not utilizing Google apps but idk why most people I watched switched to graphene OS they still wanted to use Google Camera, google maps, Google Wallet, gboard, etc... and as a result Google can still track you, if they want using google apps it's not better to return to using the default OS that pixel provide? There are many good open source apps as alternatives.

            Btw another thing I love of Graphene OS is that cover also about the security of the phone, I love it.

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              TRoy there is a big difference running Google Play as a regular app with all the added restrictions GrapheneOS provides as opposed to having literally no control over it in privileged mode. So in that respect, using Google Play on GrapheneOS is still an improvement. But some of us aim to go further.