GrapheneOS version 2025022700 released

angela I like this but don't know if I agree with it.

Well, please just agree with it. Otherwise you could just as well not use Tor or a VPN to begin with. You mustn't reveal to the other end who you are, that ruins all anonymity such solutions give. And if you are telling the other end which Wifi hotspots are closest to you, you are revealing to the other end exactly where you are. Tor and VPN are supposed to enable you to send out traffic without the other end being able to tell where you are or who you are. If you intentionally tell them that anyway, by telling the other end your exact location, what was the point of even using Tor or VPN?

I mean, it is pretty much equivalent to using VPN+Tor to create an anonymous social media account, and then immediately make a post on that social media account at which real-life residential address you are located. Not very meaningful.

ryrona if you don't want it to go through VPN, presumably adding the Network Location system app to your vpn's split tunneling would achieve that purpose. I'd rather not have system apps secretly bypassing my VPN connection. We should be able to decide that for ourselves on an individual level depending on our threat models

GrapheneOS It doesn't bypass the VPN. That only applies to connectivity checks in order for them to work, the standard Android NTP functionality we don't use in order for it to work reliably and fix time issues impacting VPN connections and Wi-Fi calling/texting due to it using an IPSec tunnel which can't be routed through every VPN.

In that case I suggest to add a clear warning to the screen where network location provider can be enabled that it is not safe to use it together with a VPN, as enabling it will nullify any anonymity the VPN otherwise would give. As already evident from this thread here, people do not realize it will deanonymize them.

Even better, force disable network location provider if a VPN is set. Since @vincente213 answer makes me uncertain people would even listen to a warning. And it is easy to forget one have network location provider enabled, if one add on the VPN at a later point in time.

Does the network location provider use the owner VPN, or the current profile VPN? Is network location provider enabled per profile, or globally for the device?

ryrona one of the purposes of a VPN is to mix your traffic with that of other people. Without this factor, the government can just use data from your ISP for connections to the VPN and data from the social media company for connections from the VPN to correlate what traffic is yours.

How could they correlate 2 requests outgoing from the same VPN as coming from the same individual user, while at the same time, being unable to correlate one outgoing request as coming from one user?

Even if you don't use network location, the government already knows that you used the VPN and a VPN user made the social media post. Using network location only tells them that you are a user of the VPN, which they already know

dhhdjbd I agree that it is possible to connect your identity to your VPN activity. My point was more that the only way to connect your two VPN connections is to connect each of them to you seperately, because there is nothing common between the requests besides you. But, if they are able to connect the social media post to you, they don't even need to bother with connecting the network location request to you because they already know you made the post. In this situation, using network location doesn't leak any information about you that wasn't already known.

However, by disconnecting the network location service from my VPN, Apple and my ISP, and by extension, the government, will easily be able to deduce that I (my real identity) use GrapheneOS (since I don't have an iPhone and am connecting to Apple's location servers). It would attract special attention on me, which I would like to avoid.

fid02 How is the adversary controlling the VPN?

I didn't say they control the VPN. I said they are after the VPN.

You -> Your ISP -> Your VPN provider -> Websites / Adversary

vincente213 one of the purposes of a VPN is to mix your traffic with that of other people.

No. That is not part of the security expectations of a VPN. A VPN cannot and won't even try to guarantee there are other users connected to the same VPN node as you are, at the same time as you are. On top of that, little analysis have been done or even possible to do on what additional privacy or anonymity you would get from more users using the same VPN node as you during the same time. Probably far less additional anonymity than most would expect, because uptime and usage pattern and device and so on might still be correlatable.

In the VPN model we only expect one thing, and that is that the requests to websites and services will look like they are coming from the VPN node IP address rather than your own real IP address. That is, your location is masked. That is the only guarantee we have from VPN, and the only expectation we can have. If you then send your real location to the remote services, you will deanonymize yourself.

vincente213 Without this factor, the government can just use data from your ISP for connections to the VPN and data from the social media company for connections from the VPN to correlate what traffic is yours.

They can always do this. This is called a traffic confirmation attack. One type is called tagging attack. Not even Tor can protect against this, and the Tor project have published a lot of information about these kinds of attacks and why they are hard to protect against. If the adversary already suspect it is you that is responsible for some activity, they can trivially confirm it actually is you. Neither VPNs nor Tor try to protect against this, it simply isn't feasible. Instead, they try to protect you when the adversary has no idea who is responsible for the activity, and try to backtrack through the network to find out who.

vincente213 How could they correlate 2 requests outgoing from the same VPN as coming from the same individual user

You might be the only one using GrapheneOS that is using that specific VPN node at that specific point in time, for example. Or one of only 10, which already that gives a very small anonymity set. That would be pretty revealing. Phones makes this especially obvious, as they turn off network when screen is off, and start sending traffic from many apps at once when screen is turned on again, as a battery saving function.

vincente213 Using network location only tells them that you are a user of the VPN, which they already know

No! It also tells them exactly where you are!

dhhdjbd he

I am a woman. Please do not assume people's gender.

dhhdjbd means it is a unecessary risk to have your "anonym" ip and location having a correlation, since this is not necessary/ has only drawbacks

It is an understatement, but yes. All anonymity guarantees made on VPNs assume you aren't sending your true identity or location through the VPN. If you do, it gets very hard to prove you still have any anonymity at all, even in specific use cases, because there are still all kinds of correlations, and in general, you don't have any anonymity anymore at that point. The general case being, no HTTPS used.

Better use VPNs as they are intended to be used. And that means, do not send your true identity or true location over the VPN.

vincente213 My point was more that the only way to connect your two VPN connections is to connect each of them to you seperately, because there is nothing common between the requests besides you.

There are plenty of things in common with them.

vincente213 However, by disconnecting the network location service from my VPN, Apple and my ISP, and by extension, the government, will easily be able to deduce that I (my real identity) use GrapheneOS (since I don't have an iPhone and am connecting to Apple's location servers). It would attract special attention on me, which I would like to avoid.

Hiding from your ISP is a valid use-case, but not the one I am considering.

My intention with the post was only to alert the GrapheneOS developers of this anonymity concern, so they can make a good decision about what to do about it, preferably before the new release reaching stable, but at the very least soon after. Many people specifically need their activity over VPN to not be correlated with their real identity or real location. Maybe this is not the case for you, and you worry more about your ISP knowing what OS you use. But believe me, it is very much a concern for activists, which is the group I belong to. So I do hope the GrapheneOS team takes these anonymity concerns seriously.