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  • Social Media ? Location (maps) ?

Hey Folks!

Two questions.....

The top of my priority is privacy!
Which will ultimately lead to a neutral interaction with the services I use.
Unsure on how that sounds however, I believe this community understands fully what I mean.

Is there a way I can make surfing and commenting happen platforms such as Instagram, Facebook and Twitter ?
I have yet to actually install Graphene yet from what I've gathered there are these 'profiles'.
Is it at all possible I could create a 'fake background/id' and use said platforms as I please ?

What about mapping apps such as Gmaps and Waze (Waze is better). I can see myself never using the GPS/Location command and simply using an address as a starting location.
How dose Graphene handle the 'location/mapping' data. Can I still remain anon ?
Advice Advice -- yes!

Altho Ive never used this OS before my fantasy of this makes me happy.

    Keurig Is there a way I can make surfing and commenting happen platforms such as Instagram, Facebook and Twitter ?

    Not sure I understand this question, but one very effective way to continue using these social networking sites is by using their web apps. Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter all have very functioning web apps.

    Benefits of using the web apps include: they don't have access to do IPC or see installed apps on your phone, benefit from both Vandium + Android's sandboxes, safe to use web apps in any profile, web apps have more restrictions to when they can run, you can control permissions to the web apps within Vanadium.

    Keurig I have yet to actually install Graphene yet from what I've gathered there are these 'profiles'.
    Is it at all possible I could create a 'fake background/id' and use said platforms as I please ?

    You can totally create a profile for social media and provide fake info, like fake contacts. I have a social media profile on my phone.

    Here's some info about profiles from the GrapheneOS website.

    Keurig Waze

    I used Waze when I visited the US last. It worked perfectly (but I used sandboxed Google Play to help with GPS)

    Keurig How dose Graphene handle the 'location/mapping' data. Can I still remain anon ?

    You can have the OS handle geolocation on your phone. The biggest disadvantage to using the OS for location is it doesn't work indoors since it only uses GPS signals, as opposed to the Google geolocation which uses lots of data to for better/faster location services. But, since you're driving, the phone should be able to "see" the sky and receive GPS signals. It just probably won't work indoors, in parking garages, tunnels, and maybe under really big bridges. It'll likely be less accurate around many tall buildings.

    Some more info about the OS providing location vs Google Play can be found here, and here's a specific quote:

    Re-routing location to the OS geolocation service will use more power than using the Google Play geolocation service since we do not provide a network-based location service and implement it via GNSS / A-GPS only. In the future, we plan on providing a pseudo-network geolocation service for the OS by using a local database of cell towers, and the location redirection feature can also make use of this future OS implementation for network location requests once it's available.

    Keurig What about mapping apps such as Gmaps and Waze (Waze is better). I can see myself never using the GPS/Location command and simply using an address as a starting location.
    How dose Graphene handle the 'location/mapping' data. Can I still remain anon ?

    Waze is gmaps, just a cartoon UI instead of the regular UI. They used to be a competitor, so gooble bought them and mixed it into gmaps. Have you noticed that gmaps now shows locations for things like speed traps and crashes but doesn't have an interface to add them in? Waze has that interface.

    Anyway, those applications absolutely MUST have a network connection, since the routing is done on remote servers. And the maps are stored on remote servers. And the traffic data is stored on remote servers. And access to that data depends on starting off with your location, therefore your location must be sent to those remote servers! There's really no way around this if those are the programs you want to use.

    Consider using OsmAnd instead of gmaps/waze. The maps are downloaded in bulk to your phone, and routing is also done on your phone. No network connection is required to use this software except for the initial download of maps. So if you're looking for privacy, that would be the ticket.