GrapheneOS user reported to authorities for using GrapheneOS

23Sha-ger

orydeatemi What about spoofing or isolating the OS's identity for a single app (say, Russia's MAX) ?

What will that achieve? Does it behave differently on GOS than any other Android? If an app wants to run only on
"certified" hardware, they can simply check for Google's MEETS_STRONG_INTEGRITY API like banking apps do.
Messengers don't care if you run GOS or not, they just don't want you to run them on rooted devices / emulators.

GrapheneOS

orydeatemi If you don't want connections to identify you as using GrapheneOS then you need the combination of changing connectivity checks to Google from GrapheneOS and using a VPN. If you can't use a VPN then it's impractical to hide which apps and OS you're using from an ISP if they try to detect it. It's technically possible to disable the default connections but isn't a good idea and the absence of connections can also still be used to infer that it's not Google Mobile Services Android which is why Google for connectivity checks is stealthier than Disabled. Disabling connectivity checks also loses the important functionality detecting when internet access is working and detecting captive portals to handle those with the OS captive portal app not requiring disabling the VPN or using another profile to deal with it. Offering the option to disable connectivity checks is mainly just for completeness since some users want it rather than being recommended.

DeletedUser848

GrapheneOS So any app with competent devs can find out what OS someone is using? I guess it would make sense to have government apps on a second phone

23Sha-ger

DeletedUser848 So any app with competent devs can find out what OS someone is using?

Incompetent dev here. This will be fairly enough to read the screen resolution, CPU model, pixel density, amount of
RAM and storage, match it against a database like gsmarena and you have a solid fingerprint even if the device model build IDs and other software identifiers are spoofed. Government apps don't need to use these tactics, simply because this data by itself doesn't have any meaningful value. Law enforcement can request your IMEI from the
carrier, which provides much more information about the device, such as color and when it was activated.

DeletedUser848

23Sha-ger Yeah but that's hardware, I was wondering about software; though only Pixels support GOS at the moment, only a small percentage of owners actually use GOS.

Schaffer

glideB https://www.yoti.com/blog/yoti-does-not-report-grapheneos-users-to-the-authorities/

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