angela I really like what GrapheneOS stands for and that’s probably why I’m even considering nuking my ultra convenient set-up.

I appreciate all the thoughtful responses. A lot of YouTube content focuses entirely on privacy while ignoring security. I find the M2, password scrambling, user profiles, and other features to be most compelling.

    I assume there’s a no politics rule for the forum so I’ll keep this hypothetical very vague.

    If you’re in a country the US has become increasingly hostile towards, but don’t plan on travel to the US, are you at any risk using iOS or Graphene? Since I’d be using play services it seems like they’d be fairly similar if your adversary is the government.

    I’m not actually that worried but when there’s a strong movement to buy local and stop depending on the US you realize tech is the hardest to replace.

    Does Graphene have ties to any country?

      baby_bat what is your replacement for iCloud storage? I looked at Proton which seems okay. For photos it’s a bit janky.

        Sectorsblue If you’re in a country the US has become increasingly hostile towards, but don’t plan on travel to the US, are you at any risk using iOS or Graphene? Since I’d be using play services it seems like they’d be fairly similar if your adversary is the government.

        If your concern is the us goverment spying and not ads, that i would definitly recommend you grapheneOs.

        For example apple disabled end to end encryption in the uk for icloud storage, because their govement wanted a back door. (Please correct me if this is not correct anymore)

        I personally would not trust that the us goverment does not spy on foreign apple users.

        (i can not prove this, i am just saying that it is technically possible)

        And it is not the same, on grapheneOs google play service is just like any other app on your phone. They can not spy like apple could on you with this. (Anyone feel free to provide how they could)

          ignoramous You quote an article that is more than 10 years old... the fact that Apple does marketing is normal, it's a company.

            I often see people talking about espionage on this forum, nowadays if you are spied on you will not know, except by analyzing the lines of code on your phone, or if you know someone in nice espionage and who will inform you (no one)

              I'd share a similar story in terms of switching to GOS.

              I've been "appled" for years after switching from Android (years in also). Then I switched back to Android and it felt like a such a relief. Obviously, without knowing the privacy and security issues.

              Then I went through a rabbit hole and found that there's literary no way to escape from today's privacy burden.

              Long story short, I've switched to GOS since a month ago and can't be happier.

              Less useless notification, no tracking, stable system, etc.

              Obviously it comes with some trade offs and it's all dependable on your "threat-model". I have none apart from keeping my life more private and it works!

              Sectorsblue

              If there were such a threat (such the US government ordering US companies to spy on Canadian users via secret backdoors, with the demand implemented in court), then iOS users would possibly not know.

              Programming languages are readable by humans but not machines.

              A compiler makes them readable by machines (1s and 0s).

              Apple writes code, compiles it, and no one reads the code. So if iOS were to put in a "Snoop on Canadians" backdoor, it would be in 0s and 1s that users can't read.

              Graphene OS is open source. The programming code is listed. The compile code is there, but you can also compile it yourself.

              So how would someone know if the compiled code and written code for Graphene were the same? A hash calculator takes a fingerprint of the code, letting people compare if the files have been tampered with.

              If Graphene developers publish code, and someone compiles it, it should match the hash value of the binary machine code that is released.

              That's why people trust open source code, because corrupt or heroic governments can't force software developers to alter their code when it's open, they can do this with iOS. This doesn't mean they've done that. We don't know.

              Closed source code is Always a guess. Hopefully, this code does what they say and doesn't do anything bad.

              It doesn't mean all open source code is secure. Sometimes open source code is so big (lots and lots of code) that someone can slip in some malicious code. It's rare but has happened.

              If any people who have expertise in computer science want to correct any mistakes in this explanation, please correct them!

                  angela Apple writes code, compiles it, and no one reads the code. So if iOS were to put in a "Snoop on Canadians" backdoor, it would be in 0s and 1s that users can't read.

                  That is not a true statement. Even compiled code can be reverse engineered, although that's a pretty complicated and tedious process. Through other types of forensics you can also have a pretty good guess at what code does. Especially on the network side of things.