Windows personal/induvidual edition is absolutely not private in the sense your data is yours and not leaking to M$. That should be abundantly clear when they now are now deeply integrating ChatGPT, and it's just another step in their road of showing you more and better ads based on what you do in their OS.
Don't forget they have for many years sniffed on the idea of giving Windows away for free, and they are already doing it for tons for ppl with free major upgrades.
dgzeij I don't see the problem with free, I made donations for bromite and today it's abandoned... I'd love the ads to be better targeted so I don't run into ads for men's city shoes when I'm a woman and live in the country. And that's on Google.
[deleted] I'd like to understand you and your threat model better. Please let me know if I get you correctly:
For clarity: Security to me means protecting your data/assets against unauthorized access. Privacy means controlling the (meta)data you give away (and ideally giving away as little as possible). Anonymity would be the ability to hide in a mass and not be identifiable, even if some of your data can be seen. While all three can empower/enable each other, they are mostly independent.
Let me know if I'm correct, because from this perspective your comments make a lot more sense to me (except the "Windows is secure and private" statement, but our definitions might differ here).
[deleted] why don't you just stick with the stock, I can't see how Graphene can help you here, if anything it only complicates things for you and confuses others (those who truly care as much about privacy as well as security). What are you even doing here I ask?
[deleted] it is not my intention to push Aliceoff out of here. This is an open community and they're just as welcome as everyone else. Having a security-only threat model would be no reason to exclude someone, especially since GOS is the most secure mobile operating system out there in my opinion. From what I can see Aliceoff makes a lot of good points and is very active, I would rather have someone like them stick around.
Let's try understanding each other better to avoid confusion when it comes to details and semantics, that is all I want.
N1b Excuse me, you don't my point. I am not trying to push anyone out of here. Now that I have finally found sort of solution though to privacy invasion, I won't take no "Google is good for you" for an answer. I hope you can forgive my insolence.
You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.
"Friedrich Nietzsche"
And with that said I wish you sweet dreams
N1b It's important to understand that your anonymity or privacy depends on what you do with your applications. Even open source software can't protect your privacy if you share your personal photos or reveal your identity. Indeed, a program's security comes first. And yes, the ad-supported funding model is the most invisible and viable for a developer, and don't forget that the information collected is anonymized. Most people here are in favor of a donation-based funding model, but who donates except the fervent defenders of free software? Of all the people who downloaded the signal following Elon Musk's tweet, how many made a donation? I don't know anyone who does that. Do you really think that only Google and other gafams are pumping out your data? But I die laughing when I read this kind of thing, the entire web is pumped by security agencies, even if you use tor or proton or whatever. But if you feel safe with free applications and think your privacy is protected, good for you, but you're wrong.
[deleted] I use grapheneos for security reasons. Just like Google or any other
N1b Above all, it's about remaining rational and not living a lie. The entire web is sucked up by security agencies and it doesn't matter what license your applications have. The ad-based funding model saves money for users and if ads bother you use an alternative dns.
And I'd like to remind you that even Google lets you delete your advertising ID, it lets you cancel the correlation between contacts, it lets you cancel position tracking, it lets you delete your Google mail... And above all, you don't have to give your first and last name or anything personal. The day an open source software editor is able to create such an ecosystem, I'll be the first to use it.
[deleted] What you say here is just on the surface. It's what the big brother wants you to believe. If you think that Big G lets you burn the bridge and carry on as a brand new man, then that is living a lie. I am way off topic here, but so are you. I don't use Windows since I started using Linux. Since I started using Linux, I never use my PC. Trust is like a vase, once it’s broken, though you can fix it, the vase will never be same again.
Windows Sandbox really is neat. I use it for opening and viewing PDFs and other files from web pages I do not fully trust. Much quicker than spinning up a Virtualbox instance or the like.
(Only available in Pro or above, sadly).
[deleted] Yes, but linux is far behind on security and has no place here on the grapheneos forum. You're talking about digital fingerprints and you can't escape them no matter what you do. Whether you use duckduckgo on chrome or Firefox or tor it's exactly the same.
[deleted] What you're doing is called badness enumeration. You replace Windows, for example, because of privacy problems, but you replace it with Linux, which has much more serious security problems and doesn't prevent Gafam from tracking you when you surf the Internet.
[deleted] I think I am better off talking to a wall. At least that will just stand there in a calm agreement...
[deleted] You talk too much. Go for a walk out in the woods and give the rest of us a break.
Well, I agree to some extent. @[deleted] has a good point, Linux is not more secure than Windows, contrary to popular belief. This is especially true when it comes to LUKS and Secure Boot.
At least not out of the box (Android is an exception here). A very interesting read is: https://0pointer.net/blog/authenticated-boot-and-disk-encryption-on-linux.html
But I will always prefer Linux, because it allows me to tinker and does not send a shitload of telemetry.
A gentle reminder that Graphene18 was asking for hardening guides for Windows. Please try to keep this thread on that topic.
treequell Whonix on Windows lets you compartmentalize data, so I don't see what else you can do. Sorry for the off-topic. Even with whonix privacy may not be guaranteed for many reasons. If I may summarize, Windows employs hundreds of people in charge of security, so for me it's stronger than the others, just like Mac OS.
