Although the nice thing about Aurora Store is it allows you to install apps without a google account linked to your device, keeping Google Play Services signed-out.
Somewhere in the FAQ GOS advertises that Play Services can be used without signing in, but they also recommend the official Play Store (which requires signing in) and explicitly don't recommend Aurora (which doesn't).
Unless I'm missing something, I don't see how you can functionally use Play Services signed-out when in order to obtain those apps in the first place, you need to sign into a Google Account for Google Play.
That's personally what I used Aurora for, plus as an easy way to export APK files.
Some apps offer direct APK downloads from their websites. If Google Play Services is detected, they use it for push notifications. Otherwise, they fall back to an internal background connection. WhatsApp is an example.
You still need to supply Play Services:
GrapheneOS uses Sandboxed Google Play. LineageOS requires flashing a package like MindTheGapps. There is also microG, an open-source reimplementation of Play Services APIs.
I've had no end of trouble registering an account on our corporate SIMs as the phone numbers (not the actual SIM cards) had been recycled as employees leave.
So many systems cannot handle known pattern of a phone number changing. Who's decided these are imutable values? That I have only one? That it's not shared?
Even with a burner sim, there is the International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) number, which is tied to the phone, and is known to all apps with the android.permission.READ_PRIVILEGED_PHONE_STATE permission.
As of Android 10, apps cannot obtain permission to access non-resettable hardware identifiers such as the serial number, MAC addresses, IMEIs/MEIDs, SIM card serial numbers and subscriber IDs. Only privileged apps included in the base system with READ_PRIVILEGED_PHONE_STATE whitelisted can access these hardware identifiers. Apps targeting Android 10 will receive a SecurityException and older apps will receive an empty value for compatibility. The currently enabled carrier-based messaging app for SMS/MMS/RCS is a special case that's given access to certain device identifiers including the IMEI. This is normally the GrapheneOS fork of AOSP Messaging but can be changed to another app by the user.
Since these restrictions became standard, GrapheneOS only makes a small change to remove a legacy form of access to the serial number by legacy apps, which was still around for compatibility. It used to need more extensive changes such as disallowing access to the serial number but those restrictions are now standard.
I don't know however if sandboxed google play is such a privileged app.
I couldn't immediately find whether GrapheneOS grants READ_PRIVILEGED_PHONE_STATE to Google Play. It might very well be that the GrapheneOS sandbox spoofs a fake IMEI, and I do hope so.
In any case, my parent comment was meant for stock Pixels, as mentioned by armadyl further up in this thread.
> Google Play receives absolutely no special access or privileges on GrapheneOS as opposed to bypassing the app sandbox and receiving a massive amount of highly privileged access.
It doesn't mention IMEI here, but hopefully READ_PRIVILEGED_PHONE_STATE is included in "privileged access."
That's also incorrect, because the gmscompat app is just a helper app. Play services can and does request additional permissions. Those permissions are handled by the OS under the play services app, not gmscompat. If you want RCS for instance, you must grant play services and google messages phone and ICC auth access, which isn't seen in gmscompat at all.
> That's also incorrect, because the gmscompat app is just a helper app.
Hmm, ok. I was reasoning the helper app was needed to get around the default assumptions from Google Play Services.
> Those permissions are handled by the OS under the play services app
Yes, but I assume you don't mean that as that GOS makes special hard-coded provisions for the play services. GOS claims to run Play Services like any other unprivileged app, and so any additional permission it would want would have to be consented by the user and should be visible to the user. If not, then GOS wording would be quite a bit unfortunate at least.
EDIT: "GmsCompatConfig is the text-based configuration for the GrapheneOS sandboxed Google Play compatibility layer. It provides a large portion of the compatibility shims." [1] This seems to indicate that the permissions requested by Play Services are being honored with the shims from the helper app. That would alleviate the permission problem.
That's the application software side. I would assume the IMEI and IMSI are both going out to the cell network though, and I would presume that it's trivial to tie a phone number to those with how the mobile industry generally sells subscriber data to various data brokers. The only question is how permissive those data brokers are (their major constraint is how much most people become aware of this dynamic), but when dealing with a major APT like Google I'd assume they're tuned into the best ones with songs about bona fide purposes.
Yes I am talking with a US perspective. I would hope the GDPR would prevent such things in (most of) Europe. But I also personally wouldn't assume so given that there are still the same dynamics of keeping the info flows private to avoid scrutiny, and claiming plausible "legitimate purposes" and "consent".
Its possible to set up a phone with a google account without even a sim card in it and use it as a wifi only device, so Im pretty sure what your saying is wrong.
> You can also just get a burner phone number for a few bucks.
But you have to keep paying the monthly cost, if you loose access to a phone number in your Google account it's game over for any account recovery or "let's verify it's you" it might decide to throw your way.
> > a Google Account that isn't tied to anything else.
> Isn't that pretty much impossible? You need a phone number for verification, which effectively ties it to that phone number.
I just want to follow-up on this because some people claim this is not correct because they have managed to create accounts without phone numbers.
Indeed, I think to this day, under special circumstances (like e.g. on reasonably recent Android devices) you might be able to setup a Google account without phone number.
The trick is, that in the general case, you can not keep this account online indefinitely.
First thing to note: This way of account creation does not seem to work anymore.
Second thing to note: After once logging in from a different country, trying to login again REQUIRES me to provide a phone number after successfully giving username/password/2FA code. No way to use the recovery code instead...
Also, given that this account was never before connected to a phone of any kind, by definition, the addition of a phone number cannot provide additional security confirmation (it's data that simply wasn't present before and any "personal" phone number could potentially do -- of course I haven't tried, because that's the point of not linking a phone number).
I think this way it is finally proven that they only do this to harvest the data/phone numbers and any claim of enhanced security is void.
I write this after having lost the second account to the phone number required screen despite being in possession of all the credentials which were ever assigned to that account...
What? Buy a phone in cash and have it billed to what, your monero wallet? This isn’t possible in today’s world, in the west anyways. Phones are tied to people.
And “worried about anonymity in that way”… that’s the topic being discussed here.
You can buy a phone with physical cash from a store or used p2p…
As far as cell service goes well yeah there is no such thing as anonymity. Towers will always know your location as long as the radio is on and that can be correlated easily.
People report that it works even on grapheneos with sandboxed google play. My guess there's some fingerprinting going on, not necessarily that they're tying the account to some account id.
It's the SomethingAwful model: go to the store and find the cheapest Android phone from some prepaid company for :tenbux: then use it to set up your Google account during out-of-box-setup while on the store's free public WiFi (since Google OOBE allows free account creation without a number or existing email), then toss the phone in a drawer afterwards.
"Hope ya got ten bucks!"
(I got a random 5G Moto phone for ~$10 on clearance and it was an absolute shitter of a phone full of garbage packed in malware, but after cleaning and debloating as much as I can, it's at least a nifty toy to poke at Termux or something.)
> Google Account that isn't tied to anything else.
At the risk of being a privacy absolutist / fatalist: Google’s entire business model is surveillance. They follow you around and track your habits so you can be influenced. Given that, a Google account is always tied to something else.
Piggybacking on this... I create my fair share of "burner accounts" and almost always they (not just Google) connect it to my true identity. Granted I'm not using VPNs or really trying to hide the connection but it seems trivial for them to associate.
My experience has been that all the consumer privacy/security tools are varying degrees of “good” at keeping away bad actors, trackers, advertisers, and most third parties, but when it comes to the big dogs, there’s nothing you can really do to stop them. Google, Facebook, etc. just have too many data points already available to them so they can easily build a picture of you. There are simply too many services that have them running around in the background or just straight up depend on them.
All you can do is leave their ecosystem as much as you can and accept you will never be fully rid of them
Their tracking is baked into various apps even if you don't have an account with them. Anything with social media integrations can report back to the mothership behind your back.
I'm happy enough not using them however lately even government services (which I have no choice but to use) require loading a captcha from either google or cloudflare. The situation is absurd.
They have required unique phone numbers for accounts I've tried lately, or parent's phone numbers. Facebook is worse though, they are quick to ban an account/phone number.
I'm under no illusion that google doesn't know I own my multiple accounts. They most certainly do. I usually use the same user agent (with containers) on the same IP, after all.
But my goal is to avoid a stranger gaining access to my google services if they manage to unlock a lost device or steal my TV/streaming box that has no lock at all.
I wish Google supported a permission system per device. For example on most of my android devices all I really want is to be logged into Youtube and the play store. I most certainly do not want those devices to have access to my contacts, emails, calendar, keep, drive, payment, etc. (I don't personally use all of those things, but you might and that's what a random thief would gain access to.)
Google's business model is providing you services that are excellent, while also providing advertisers access to your willing eyeballs when you use those services.
Yes, the advertising targeting is incredibly invasive, but let's not pretend they aren't providing world class Search, Email, Docs, Maps, Video (YT), etc in exchange.
GrapheneOS is focused on privacy but that must come from a secure baseline.
GrapheneOS is much more privacy focussd than any other mobile operating system. Accrescent is the end goal for a secure and private app store but it's still in alpha. GrapheneOS is also the best for degoogling (eliminating all google services) because it comes with zero Google services unlike all the other ones listed here: https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm
How can you call other OSes more privacy focused when they haven't closed as many VPN leaks as GrapheneOS? That's like bare minimum for privacy.
> Which is very much contrary to software freedom.
Yeah, the goal is privacy although the OS is completely open source.
They do improve user experience by allowing disabling emergency alerts, call recording without alerts, no mandatory camera noise in Japan, no extra warning popup from installing APKs from the web (it's the same permission in every app store iirc), increases password length to 128 digits. All the network services are open source afaict while all the other mobile operating systems listed in that android comparison connect to Google's closed source services, netowrk permission, sensors permission, storage scopes, contact scopes.
You can still easily install whatever Android app you want on GrapheneOS and you can install dangerous apps like shizuku and apps with way too many permissions. But yeah the goal is privacy so that everyday people can protect themselves as well as journalists can protect themselves. I want journalists to get the best privacy possible without having to know a ton of technical things or making many choices.
Verified boot does indeed make this more complicated, but it's totally possible to build Graphene with your own signing key and get full control over the OS that way (i.e. https://github.com/schnatterer/rooted-graphene).
Looking at their public statements on the matter, it seems like the problem isn't exactly that they treat the user as a potentially hostile actor so much as that they treat the system UI and persistent storage as a potentially hostile actor (though I admit from a practical perspective that's nearly the same thing): https://www.reddit.com/r/GrapheneOS/comments/13264di/is_root...
I believe you misunderstand what "software freedom" means. You can compile and install GrapheneOS yourself, and you can grant yourself admin access. This is software freedom.
Software freedom does not mean that you should run everything as an admin, always. And just in case: software freedom does NOT mean that you should remove your firewall and let everybody SSH into your server by having a blank password.
You can't grant yourself admin access with the official build. Only the Graphene devs have the ability to push changes to the OS on your phone. Yes you can fork the software and build a version with your own signing key, then wipe your phone and install your custom build and thereby take back control, but then is that really still Graphene?
I think it's fair to say that that's at least borderline anti software freedom, even if it's true they have good security reasons for doing things that way.
Thinking about possible ways they could retain the same security properties without impinging software freedom... maybe there's a way they could make the root of trust default to a signing key embedded in the device's own secure hardware? Then by default that key could sign Graphene's own signing certificate to allow them to push updates, but the user would retain the ability to revoke that signature and sign someone else's certificate instead (or their own certificate) if they decided they didn't trust Graphene anymore, or wanted to give themselves root.
> I think it's fair to say that that's at least borderline anti software freedom
Then you don't understand software freedom either.
Software freedom doesn't mean AT ALL that random projects on the Internet MUST implement the features YOU want. Never, not at all, it's not borderline, it's not up to debate.
Software freedom is about being able to use the software the way you want, as in "you get access to the sources, you modify them, build them and run them". You can do that with GrapheneOS (well except for the binary blobs situation, but that's not in GrapheneOS' hands at all). Software freedom is NOT about GrapheneOS giving you root access on official builds because you want it. And it's also NOT about GrapheneOS installing Doom on the official builds because I want it.
> Software freedom is about being able to use the software the way you want
You can't use the software in the way you want if it uses hardware backed cryptography to block you from doing so.
> you get access to the sources, you modify them, build them and run them
This is completely infeasible for 99% of the population. If you technically have a freedom but have no practical way to exercise it, it may as well not exist.
You could argue "but someone else could modify it for you, build it, and make an easy way for you to install it", and normally I'd accept that, but given that installing that modified version would require you to completely reset your phone and install the new modified OS from scratch, I think it's debatable at that point whether you'd still be running Graphene, rather than a fork. And if exercising your freedom requires you to stop running Graphene and start running something else, is it really fair to say Graphene itself supports that freedom? Like I said, borderline.
If you're still not convinced, consider what would happen if companies started using remote attestation to verify you're running the official GrapheneOS build and block forks...
> You can't use the software in the way you want if it uses hardware backed cryptography to block you from doing so.
You can use the software the way you want, from sources. If I run an open source server at home, it does not give you the right to enter my house and come reboot my server, does it?
> This is completely infeasible for 99% of the population
Sure, it isn't. Still that's what software freedom is.
> If you technically have a freedom but have no practical way to exercise it, it may as well not exist.
I disagree, I'm very happy that free software exists.
> I think it's debatable at that point whether you'd still be running Graphene
It's not: you're running a fork at that point. That's precisely how free software works.
> And if exercising your freedom requires you to stop running Graphene and start running something else, is it really fair to say Graphene itself supports that freedom?
Yes! Again that's precisely what software freedom is about! When you run GrapheneOS, you have the freedom to fork it and run it however you want. When you run Windows or macOS, you don't.
> If you're still not convinced, consider what would happen if companies started using remote attestation to verify you're running the official GrapheneOS build and block forks...
Well GrapheneOS would still be free software?!?!? It's the software from those companies that wouldn't be. I hate remote attestation as much as the next person, and typically banks absolutely suck because they love doing that kind of bullshit. But because banks suck does not mean that GrapheneOS is not free software?
Note that I am not trying to contradict you for the sake of it. I believe too few people understand how open source works, and that is a pity because it is important to understand it. When I open source some code I wrote, I make it available for people to do whatever they want with the code. I don't give them ANY RIGHT on the products I sell (even if those products are running said open source software) or on the feature I implement.
Too many people believe that because it's open source, they have a right to tell the authors what features they should implement. This is wrong. You want root access on your GrapheneOS? Go fork it. I don't want it, I am happy with GrapheneOS. If GrapheneOS gave me root access, I would fork it to remove it. And that would still be free software!
GrapheneOS will always choose security over privacy, even if that means playing into the hands of malicious actors like Google. For example they have stated they won't try to spoof SafetyNet because "we don't lie about security features"
I personally would prefer to have both but choose the privacy side when both are into conflict.
Both viewpoints are valid, but I don't use GrapheneOS for this reason.
Its quite obvious they dont want to spoof SafetyNet because it would anger Google and GOS developers will no longer get privileged access to security bulletins.
The OEM is Motorola. The partnership was announced earlier this year.
You are correct about them not getting early access from Google. There was a post within the last few months saying that Google no longer releases a lot of the code via git, but instead requires submitting a form and downloading the code via Google Drive. Google are actively trying to make third-party development difficult.
>For example they have stated they won't try to spoof SafetyNet because "we don't lie about security features"
They said they don't want to do it because it would stop working in the future when Google move to enforcing hardware-based attestation and it is not sustainable.
It seems wise to have at least one alternative mobile phone app store. Even if it isn't very good. If the government can tell Google to do trivial things like, for example, change the name of bodies (plural now) of water, it can turn off your app updates, trapping you on insecure versions indefinitely. This probably matters more if you live outside of the US, but if I had a plan B for an app store on my phone, I would certainly at least evaluate it.
Name changes happen all the time and I would expect Google to match what the government sources use locally. The fact that the government is capricious is no reason for me to desire Google to become an alternative naming center.
The government didnt ask google, they changed the name on the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), which is the official legal mapping source which other companies like Google etc use. Hence the change filtered down through software from the top official channel.
Right, the government pulled a lever, and google complied within days. If the FTC declares app stores can't provide security updates without government license, that is another lever they can pull, and google will comply.
Wether or not the most recent example is the best example, doesn't matter. What matters is when the government says "jump" in legalese, google's lawyers say "how high?"
For example, the banking app I have refuses to be installed from the Play Store on GrapheneOS due to "not-certified" device, but works perfectly fine when installed by Aurora.
The check seems to be purely store-based and never enforced later.
Do you trust the banking app installed from Aurora enough to do your online banking?
I don't, and I really wish there would be a decent way to verify that the installed/provided apps are legit. For me this is the biggest downside of using GrapheneOS, which I'm otherwise extremely happy with.
(for me, the whole point of using GrapheneOS is privacy and not sending data to Google, so using the PlayStore is not an option)
I'm pretty sure if I try calling my bank or searching the website to confirm the developer's public key fingerprint, there's not going to be any answer. You have to ask Google's servers to give you the APK and trust what it gives you, either via the front-end called Aurora or the front-end called Play Store
Maybe not in practice, but in theory, it works. I don't think there's a better way of handling this without relying on some centralised authority (Google) to validate the authorship of an app, which is hardly desirable.
I think in general trust is established for Play Store apps by downloading the app with the Play Store on a phone with Google Certified Android. Then the app can get the signing key for storage in the database. Then this can be used to verify APKs downloaded outside the play store.
> you can sign into the Play Store with a Google Account that isn't tied to anything else.
The problem with this is that increasingly Google is insisting on having a phone number to create a Google account. Further, they are aggressively deleting old accounts that appear to be dormant.
The good old days of creating a Google account with just an email seem to be swiftly becoming a thing of the past.
I recently had to set up a new Android device for work. Since I keep all my personal accounts separate from my work accounts, I needed to create a new Google account on that phone. I ended up paying $8 for a month of the cheapest service I could find just to get a phone number so I could create that account.
Better security, for once. You get (security) updates a lot faster with GrapheneOS.
Also on GrapheneOS, Play Services and Play Store come unprivileged, sandboxed like any other app. So Google is not an admin on your phone, which I would argue is one step towards "severing the umbilical cord".
Moreover, GrapheneOS doesn't have any issue with apps sideloading.
And more. There are many reasons to use GrapheneOS.
GrapheneOS (the project) might recommend for or against certain things in relation to their specific objectives, but that doesn't mean all GrapheneOS users have the same objectives or need to comply with the opinions of GrapheneOS.
For instance, I use GrapheneOS because it provides better security and privacy out of the box than LineageOS, but I'm also not so paranoid that I'm going to just blindly listen to advice against using F-Droid. What I want out of my Android instance is good security defaults with no bloatware, not to stop the NSA from looking at my travel photos and what HN articles I once looked at. It's okay if my OS is great but not perfect.
So yes, I am a GrapheneOS user who is [modestly] hurt by this. Signing in with a dummy account is just another one of those things that will end up being futile in years to come when Google requires iris scans, DNA samples, and anal probes in order to get a new account. Personally, I'd prefer installing whatever software I want on whatever devices I [pretend like] I own, without telemetry or jumping through hoops.
I've honestly never understood why F-Droid even still exists. Every time I've tried to use it (as recently as half a year ago) it's still a shitshow and never displays or updates apps correctly. Half the time an app showed up on the website that didn't show up on the phone app. The other half of the time even when I did get something installed, it would just never understand that an update existed and needed to download and update a given app. It's one of the worst pieces of software I've used in a while, and I can tolerate a good bit of jank from FOSS apps.
> Every time I've tried to use it (as recently as half a year ago) it's still a shitshow and never displays or updates apps correctly. Half the time an app showed up on the website that didn't show up on the phone app.
Sounds like an accurate recreation of the Play Store experience to me.
This is not me simping for Google, I would honestly prefer literally anyone else with an acceptable app store experience, but I can honestly say I've never had that experience with the Play Store. If there's an update, it updates. If there's an app, it appears in search. On the rare occasion an app doesn't appear and I go to the Play Store website looking for it, the reason the app didn't show up is because it's listed as incompatible with my device (usually Android version too low or too high).
> never displays or updates apps correctly. Half the time an app showed up on the website that didn't show up on the phone app. The other half of the time even when I did get something installed, it would just never understand that an update existed and needed to download and update a given app
You probably "just" need to pull down while on the "Latest" or "Updates" tab, to update your repository (it will show a small banner at the top while it's doing that). It's incremental, so it may take a while if it has been some time since you last did it (and auto-updates are disabled).
The way F-Droid works is that it downloads the whole index and then the catalog, version checks, etc, all runs locally, quite similarly to some package repositories actually.
I am not claiming its intuitive, but I think that part works fine once you understand how it works.
The last time it wouldn't update an app, I could see in the app store and on the website that my app had a new version, but no matter what I did, I could not make it update the app. I don't know what I was doing "wrong", but I think if I couldn't figure it out or make it happen, there's something very wrong with either the app or how it's "supposed" to work. Neither of which is an acceptable user experience for me.
F-Droid builds all apps by themselves, which especially with their old servers took a lot (between detecting that the update exists, building the app and going to sign everything at their air-gapped signing computer).
Now a lot of apps use the "reproducible builds" feature, which means that F-Droid will distribuite them as they come from the author, leaving their digital signature; but they still need to build those apps before distributing them, to verify that what the author built corresponds to the declared source code.
With the much powerful servers that they've had for a few months builds are a lot quicker, but there are still steps that can take several days, especially the part of signing the apps' index on their air-gapped computer.
There's a ton of things that could be improved, and it would be best if there were an alternative with better maintainers, but they're currently the only service of this kind for Android (well, IzzyOnDroid is a partial alternative, if you're careful to check their reproducible builds results).
My understanding is that F-Droid is hosted out of some home servers (instead of some universities like other similar package managers) so the bandwidth leaves much to be desired. But the UX is definitely a big part of the problem. I don't understand why it tends to abort downloads when I background it, and I don't understand why it doesn't show a toast that it aborted the download.
I very much prefer Obtainium these days despite the setup steps. I don't think it's a coincidence that Obtainium, Aurora, Zapstore, etc. are gaining mindshare over F-Droid, just like how Brave has explosive growth over FF.
Doesn't match my experience (or anyone I know that uses F-Droid), FWIW.
We search for stuff, install it, it updates in the background. We install some of our own repos, but the bulk of our apps come from F-Droid's default repos.
Hard to reconcile your account with my experience without specifics.
Yeah, the experience isn't great and there are better alternatives but F-Droid was there before anything else existed. It's also great to just have it as an option.
Yes, F-Droid and its apps are great <3 They add so much security by simply not having a lot of tracking code that can be exploited and tries to hook all over your system. And they have reproducible builds which is something the commercial stores don't even bother with. This is really important for security. I don't understand that GrapheneOS advises against them.
And yeah the iris scans sound like a scare but only 2 years ago there was a constant line of zombies here in the shopping mall giving their eye scans to altman.
The masses really don't care about privacy if you give them a worthless trinket.
I use it on a phone with (unfortunately) regular google play services. If I sign into the play store, that same account will be used for all other google services on the phone too. I'm not going to do that. I just don't want a google account (nor an apple one for that matter)
...with a Google Account that isn't tied to anything else
That isn't completely possible these days. Last I checked they want an existing email address and/or a cellphone number for verification. I guess "not tied to anything else" is proportional to how much you trust them to delete either of these bits of info after they are used, and not associate them with other accounts you might have used them with in the past/future.
GrapheneOS is defending against different things I guess. My personal threat model is protecting myself from the tentacles of these behemoth tech companies. To that end, GrapheneOS approach of "just install google play" is not good enough for me. I fail to see the privacy advantages compared to e.g. MicroG".
So, GrapheneOS is a supposed alternative to using Google's OS and their surveillance and adware - except you're supposed to run it on Google hardware, and apparently with a Google account and connecting to Google's services.
I use Aurora on GOS. I get that they say sandboxed Play is more secure than Aurora, but I prefer it for its lack of toxicity and absence of shitty dark patterns.
I think the increased popularity of GOS is going to draw in more users like me who picked it for reasons adjacent to Graphene's original purpose, and I hope it's not too annoying for their community.
I actually think there's already a lot of us in the 'community' as-is. I personally describe it as 'Valuing Privacy/Freedom over Security'. One pretty clear example of this is how they don't recommend using FireFox Mobile and F-Droid, both of which I use regardless because I'm not willing to put up with worse privacy/usability tradeoffs in the name of (imo 'hyper-')security.
I think it's fine the mission of the project isn't directly aligned with some of us, though I can tell we often get on the core contributor's nerves lol
FYI, there are ungoogled chromium builds for Android. Firefox Mobile really is a lackluster browser unfortunately both from a usability and security standpoint (e.g. IonStack worked on Fennec)
I'm using Firefox mobile for many years exclusively (since chrome forced some stupid feature on me, I think it was tab groups which I hated and couldn't turn off. And of course no ubo). Could be a bit faster probably? Otherwise don't see any issues.
I would actually argue the exact opposite. All of the Chromium-based forks are a usability disaster. I have to use grid view only to see my tabs? It took them most of a decade to finally get the relatively common place bottom bar, and it still arbitrarily decides to ignore your setting if it thinks your screen is "too big"? It's just failure after failure. I absolutely dread when some shitty site I'm forced to use refuses to load in anything but chrome and I have to open up Vanadium for the first time in forever.
pretty sure Cromite allows more options than just grid view which I hate, I usually use List, though I recently switched back to Firefox, already even forgot the reason
They actually ban people from their Discord (which is their official support channel - so much for privacy/security!) for mentioning F-Droid. I'm starting to think the creator of F-Droid must have run over their dog.
I have mentioned F-Droid many times in the official Matrix before they moved to Discord and not been banned. You might be misunderstanding what actually happened or have not asked the moderators why someone was banned.
This is the exact reason I quit using Graphene. It felt exactly like selling out control of my device to the Graphene devs in the same way a stock phone is controlled by Google.
Far, far too "opinionated" for my taste. I frankly do not need the hyper paranoid security features like a hardened memory allocator or disabled root. I would rather be able to use my device the way I want, even if that's notionally "less secure".
I really wish there were another option. Lineage is too far in the opposite direction and feels like ad-blocked stock. Google still owns my phone, there's just a more pleasant coat of paint on it.
they do similar things for people trying to use magisk, but also relock the boot loader. I gave up trying to bother, since the whole reason I use roms is for root first, privacy second.
> I frankly do not need the hyper paranoid security features like a hardened memory allocator
I get the part about disabled root - you're choosing to sacrifice freedom for security - though I don't understand why you wouldn't want a hardened memory allocator. It provides additional security over the stock OS for very little cost (slightly more resource consumption), in an era where we absolutely need as much security as we can get; what are you losing by gaining this?
They're both security, just security "against" different things. Graphene frequently fails to clearly describe the threat model when calling something "more secure".
For example, let's say hypothetically I want to be secure against the threat of Google pushing a targeted update to my phone that runs malicious code. Turning on automatic software updates from Google would make me vulnerable to that threat. Using MicroG instead of Google Play Services would make me less vulnerable to that threat. But Graphene devs say things like "MicroG is less secure than Google Play Services".
Similarly, if you want privacy you might secure your device by locking the bootloader with your own keys - not a third-party vendor's keys. Saying that's "insecure" is extremely misleading: it just puts you in charge of security, instead of abdicating to someone else.
I wish there were something like GrapheneOS that let you choose, yourself, who to trust instead of requiring you trust an OS vendor implicitly.
> Turning on automatic software updates from Google would make me vulnerable to that threat. Using MicroG instead of Google Play Services would make me less vulnerable to that threat
I would say that any auto-update mechanism is a threat, so in both cases you would disable auto-updates.
But Graphene devs say things like "MicroG is less secure than Google Play Services".
It is. microG runs Google DroidGuard blobs in a privileged process (to pass Play Integrity Basic). Reminder for those who forgot about DroidGuard: it's an obfuscated binary blob delivered to you by Google on each request that uses a special VM with constantly changing registers, etc. to avoid analysis.
Actually, MicroG by default doesn't download or run droidguard binaries at all.
You're missing my point here, which is that failing to describe a particular threat scenario leads to meaningless words spoken about ill-defined "security". Security has to be against some particular threat... it's not an absolute concept.
> I hope it's not too annoying for their community
There's plenty of people like that in the GOS community (the forum and the Matrix). Everyone generally understands that different people have different threat models and may want to do things that aren't the most secure. Otherwise everyone would be using GOS in airplane mode with disabled cameras and only paying for things with Monero.
The core dev team is obviously a bit more security absolutist, but even they usually dont mind
> Everyone generally understands that different people have different threat models
Citation needed. If there are such people in what can be considered a grapheneos community that haven't gotten fed up yet and left, grapheneos themselves sure doesn't understand this
> Otherwise everyone would be using GOS in airplane mode with disabled cameras and only paying for things with Monero.
Nah, they're fine with tracking, so long as it happens in their sandbox. The official website has an install guide for google's background services, saying it's fine because it's in their security model. So long as the modem can't access your contacts without a permission prompt, there is no tracking in baghdad
>Citation needed. grapheneos themselves sure doesn't understand this
The GrapheneOS team understand full well that in cases where the Play Store does not allow installing an app on your device due to device or georestrictive rules you may have no choice. I have seen them mention this and acknowledge it first hand. What they do not want is for people to become satisfied with subpar solutions instead of striving for bare minimum privacy/security standards. They want a Play Store alternative front end to at least be able to guarantee you are receiving the right app you want instead of being a substitution attack risk. I don't think that is unreasonable.
>The official website has an install guide for google's background services, saying it's fine because it's in their security model.
The context is that before sandboxed-play-services were introduced people were sourcing APKs in unsafe/via unverified routes and having all sorts of problems with app compatibility because since GrapheneOS is a privacy project that do not accept sending copious amounts of data to one party with a mediocre privacy policy they included no Google services at all. sandboxed-play-services is a specific solution to the problem of apps being dependent on Google Mobile Services for functionality, and in that sense it is entirely optional. It was the best way for them to provide compatibility without destroying the privacy of their platform by introducing a privileged Google binary that can glean and abuse your production environment. It's reduced to the same level as any other app the user might choose to install themselves (which GrapheneOS want absolutely no say over as a user freedom protecting project).
GrapheneOS do not bundle any Google services in their official installation. They do not endorse Google's data collection and service practices. They do not believe Google tracking is fine in anyway, and the evidence is here: https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm
What they have done is provide a workaround for people who have no alternative, while making sure it does not violate the device owners device in a special way compared to any other app they might install.
I feel the title editorializes a bit too much. The thread only confirms the bug, not a specific cause yet. As sibling comments indicate, the effect on GrapheneOS users is undetermined.
This is standart, and happens constantly with Invidious (youtube frontend). This happened before on AuroraOSS too. They probably just flagged the accounts and no API change or A/B testing an API change.
If anything, it seems more poised to damage the usability of systems which actively rely on Aurora Store, like CalyxOS and the likes. Graphene actively discourages using Aurora.
Please add to the title "... and all other degoogled devices", which are many orders of magnitude more than GOS: almost all Huawei devices (degoogled out of the box), custom Roms, rooted and all non-logged in. I am a non-GOS hurt victim.
I've been stuck with unupdated apps because Aurora hasn't been working for me for a while. A few of them have been nagging me to update. I have everything Google disabled or removed, and no I won't reenable any of it. Also I use anon strictly on Aurora, and no I won't login with my Google account; haven't logged in on a phone for over 8 years now and I have no intention of breaking the streak.
I had last successsful update on August 26, which I wouldnt call for a while, tried yesterday, I've got error messages everyone mentions
today I bothered to try various anonymous Aurora accounts and found finally the one working (like 5th in row) and updated the apps, I can live with updates once a week, not exactly sure what is OP doing
I mean if they are really rate limited just give me waiting time, I don't really care whether I have to wait in queue for an hour if it will update the app later without my intervention
btw. I am not using graphene, find it too paranoid for my taste, though I use my phone without google account for like 10+ years and current phone is first where I have (not disabled/have preinstalled) google play services
Unfortunately Google doesn't return a waiting time, and the limits are probably high enough to be irrelevant for normal users (although I've seen articles of it happening on the Play Store, over the years).
I maintain my grandmothers phone, which comes down mostly to just updating WhatsApp once in a while. Obviously she doesn't have a google account, so I've installed her AuroraStore.
It's a shame that there is no official way to install apps on android without a google accout[1], since it's a basic functionality, just like calls or a web browser.
[1] For obvious reasons I don't want her to download apks from the internet.
Is it not possible to just download the updated whatsapp apk from some online source? That is the benefit of android after all, side loading is still possible relatively easily.
There are whatsapp cracked apks which actually work as whatsapp... and they have "extras", and I would never install it, although I have seen it installed
There are other Android stores. Amazon ran one for the longest time. Many brands have their own app stores as well.
It's the app publishers defaulting to Google that's the biggest issue.
At least WhatsApp has an official APK download, most apps don't.
That said, Google will still let you update apps without being signed in. Hold the Play Store icon to open the quick action menu. From there you can go to "my apps" and update all of the apps on your phone, bypassing the login prompt. Not great, but a workaround that should do the trick while Aurora finds another way to hack their way into the Play Store APIs.
Aurora hasn't worked right for the most part for a year due to device attestation shit.
I'm meh on it. Not being able to install the shit from play store isn't such a bad thing. It is lame as hell that Google is doing their damndest to make apple look user friendly.
Installing apps from Aurora Store still does seem to work, although only occasionally. It is more likely that Google is deploying a new API schema on its Play API endpoint that the app doesn't know how to parse correctly yet.
Honest question, because AFAIK there's no guarantee or (legal) requirement to support any API. Whether that's fully documented, has SDKs or whether it's something reversed-engineered doesn't matter WRT the support the company owning the API is supposed or required to give.
An official API is an API described in official documentation and explicitly open to the public, an unofficial one is one not documented publicly and only meant for the company's products.
If it's rate limits, I wonder if Aurora Store could just download and mirror the apk for the top 40 most popular apps (probably >50% of their downloads) and serve that mirror to most Aurora Store users who click the "download" button? Then for less popular apps they can use the old system.
AuroraStore is/was really nice for running purchased games on Android-based game consoles (Retroid Pocket, Ayn Odin, etc.) because a lot of games seem to be incorrectly marked as incompatible with those devices.
Play Store won't let me install them, but AuroraStore will, and most of the time they work fine after that.
For example, I have Balatro running on my Ayn Thor this way.
Annoying but this kinda thing happens every 6 months or so. Sometimes Google starts throttling, other times doing some API checks. Every time the Aurora guys figure out a way around it. They're our heroes <3
Even this particular error ("Server busy, try again later"). I've been seeing over the past weeks but then a few days later it worked again. I'm not too worried. It also happens or me right now indeed.
yeah, nothing new really, last update I had on august 26 without issues, tried yesterday, had issues, so today switched couple of accounts until it worked, been using aurorastore for many years
and in the end I don't really care whether my apps won't get updated anyway, only app which will start bitching about being outdated is whatsapp, which can be for now downloaded directly from whatsapp without playstore (I have also telegram as backup which also allows direct APK download) so not too worried even if Aurora was down for couple of months, I don't use any banking/payment apps in my phone for a reason
Looks like I might start using Aptoide again. I was using it back when I was running de-Googled LineageOS. What's the consensus on it vs. Play Store or F-droid?
Okay, it was a bit of clickbait. Didn't expect it to be picked up like this.
Mistake from me: apparently GrapheneOS does not recommend Aurora Store (citation needed). Kind of weird though; it means Google still knows a lot about you, which doesn't seem very privacy conscience.
Google blocking Aurora Store was a conclusion made in the bug thread. It was not my conclusion.
And for the nit pickers: Sailfish OS is not Android, but its emulation layer _is_. :shrug: Even though Sailfish is nice, without its Android layer it is practically unusable.
Funny thing: the 'busy server' problem existed for almost a week. I could download 1 app per day max on my Jolla C2. But just now, now that this thread makes top of Hackernews, everything started working just fine!
> Kind of weird though; it means Google still knows a lot about you, which doesn't seem very privacy conscience.
I remember being in the GrapheneOS room and hearing them directly recommend using Windows 10 over Linux, as it was more secure. They are known to prioritize security over privacy.
Yeah, there's definitely a happy middle ground. I'm a firm believer in gaining a good understanding of your threat model before taking steps to protect it -- quite a surprising amount of people use Qubes, Graphene, Kicksecure and such without really understanding what they want to protect themselves against. In a lot of cases, that just adds unnecessary friction and overcomplexity that ends up doing more harm than good. I was guilty of this myself.
On paper, I'm sure Windows does have stronger userspace and kernel-space protections against intrusion and such, though I most certainly wouldn't use it.
It's not about a middle ground, their idea of security is wrong.
They largely ignore any threat that could come from US agencies, and are very presumptuous about some of their convictions (e.g. that open source is irrelevant for security).
There is a balance to be made, given that there often isn't any ideal option, but they often get that balance assessment wrong, in my opinion.
I appreciate exposing the security weaknesses of other products, but they end up adding threats that they don't have with some of their drastic views.
They (GrapheneOS development team) live and breathe the principled stance you seem to be describing.
They are staunchly against authoritarianism and mechanisms that are vulnerable to government coercion which is why they promote Android IAR and criticise Play App Signing for being mandatory.
I have understood their position to be that software is not automatically secure because it is open source, but being open source is one of the best ways to ensure to maximise attack resiliency (they believe in kerchoff's principle, shallow bugs, collaboration as a pragmatic help to get there not taken for granted or a guarantee). You'd probably be interested to know the founder once proclaimed publicly that they would never work on proprietary software.
Don't pay too much heed to how community members frame things, they are human and get things wrong in service of trying to reduce conversation to specific facts and technical assurances instead of discussing the bigger picture.
GOS's intended audience are those who are in danger of being hacked or persecuted, not privacy conscious users trying to escape surveillance. Google, for all their faults, is pretty unlikely to hack your phone and reveal your secrets.
But not for everyone for free. What it means is Epic, or anyone like Epic, will be able to write to Google, send a nominal amount of money, and get some API key and bare documentation which is only allowed to be used in Epic. It's a B2B commercial transaction under court-ordered terms, not an open API. Same as the Apple browser API. If you want, you can register a company "Kotakat App Store Inc" and get access to the same terms but you'll probably need to sue Google to make them give you access. Apple hasn't approved any browsers, either.
Also, EU is pushing towards more "open" app-stores through anti-trust.
Not that it requires Google to "open up" their play-store, but that they must allow other app-stores to work on the same level. So basically allowing devs and users to move elsewhere.
Remember when people kept justifying Android over Windows Phone/Maemo/WebOS/BlackBerry/FirefoxOS on the grounds that it was free and open source software, infinitely customizable, and that Google was a good-faith partner who wanted openness in the mobile market?
AOSP is still open. The problem is nobody wants to bear the (monumental) cost of polishing and convincing brands to allow installing it in THEIR devices. Google was motivated back then for creating an alternative and openness was a good bait.
The fact that no one wants to bear the cost to pre-load it on devices, when combined with the fact that it's not nearly as easy to install OSes on mobile devices as it is on most laptop/desktop/server machines, means that it might as well be closed-source. The point of software is to be executed. If I don't have a good way to execute the software for its intended purpose, I have a collection of ones and zeros, and nothing more.
The window to have a real open mobile OS is starting to close. If there is to be a meaningful change, it must happen soon.
This is exactly why I switched to Android. Running any Linux binary with just a small bit of patchwork to get Xorg running (this was before Wayland) felt like magic. So much power in your pocket, I could plug a keyboard and display into the device and use it as a computer! And internet-connected 24/7! Coming from a literal Nokia where I made some web-apps for the javascript-supported browser (that was already a major leap for a mobile phone), it blew my mind. The sole reason Android blew up is the endless possibilities developers saw (starting with the device manufacturers of course). Now the developers are here, the competitors haven't been competing because who cared about Firefox OS or Windows Mobile even back in 2014, and so Google can do whatever
> Aurora uses burner account for anonymous login. looks like their account pool is flagged
This seems like it was destined to get banned somehow... and I don't think it means that the store itself is blocked, just the pool of accounts they (ab)use.
That’s quite the conclusion to derive from a Gitlab issue. Do you mind sharing your thought process or was that just a knee jerk reaction without any reasoning behind it?
Market price for a Google account is about $1.50, you can also buy a burner SIM to set up the maximum number of accounts Google will let you with the same phone number.
You don't need a sim card to make accounts for a phone in the first place. Not sure how, but on android devices they let you make an account without giving them a phone number. Probably because even Google realizes how bad gating application installs on new phones on having a phone number would look.
The problem is that even if you have separate google accounts on each android device, Google can still track you by looking at your contacts.
AuroraStore uses a pool of burner Google Play Store accounts to facilitate anonymous downloads. This is what happens when those burner accounts get flagged.
You could suck it up and do the phone number verification, it usually costs around $5 for a phone number.
Or you could go through the android phone sign-up process which doesn't require one. Buy a cheap android phone and keep resetting it and making a new account each time.
Or you could buy an account on the grey web from someone who already did this. Should be under $2.
If you are really into this you could become a phone company and own a whole block of phone numbers.
The whole point of avoiding the verification in my case is for privacy reasons... I don't want google or anyone else tracking what I do through the use of an account.
> Or you could go through the android phone sign-up process which doesn't require one
This is worse IMO because now the number is associated with that device forever. And unless I'm willing to risk my account to compromise from a future owner of the same number OR device, I must now keep both... forever.
> grey web
I don't want to give them my info either, nor have my account associated with sketchy individuals.
> you could become a phone company
I do own DID blocks but this is unhelpful because google's verification specifically requires SMS over real mobile numbers, and I'm not interested in becoming an MVNO or cellular carrier.
Bad news - Google doesn't need an account to track your app downloadsm
Perhaps you'd be more interested in creating a website that downloads all the apps from the play store using burner accounts and makes them easily anonymously accessible.
GrapheneOS is not sending app downloads to Google that happen outside of Google's apps, which I don't use. And there are other ways to download APKs from the Play Store; EFF even makes their own tool for it, and there are third-party archive sites and alternative non-Google app stores as well.
btw. you can get prepaid physical SIM cards in Czechia for free send by mailbox, you just need some available mailbox wheere you can pick it up, like put Donald Duck sticker on your mailbox and address it to Donald Duck
I used android sign up process to create my other dummy account I use in TV only for smarttube and app updates, that seems like great option if it still works
I'm using my Proton account in my phone and in play store. now i tried adding my proton account in AuroraStore, and it worked flawlessly. so my question: why AuroraStore uses google accounts instead of another providers?
what happened? if you're trying to say that this is "impossible", its not. But if you're trying to say about privacy, that account I tried is another one of mine. im not stupid to use my primary proton account in my phone.
They suggest PlayStore if you need to get apps that are only available on the Play Store. They do not recommend it above other options, and have mentioned that they very much disapprove of Play App Signing being mandatory.
Sailfish OS user on Jolla Phone 2: Aurora is working fine here.
P.S. Sailfish OS is NOT an Android distribution. It is a proper Linux system and they have their own custom Android runtime (AppSupport) as a layer on top for running Android apps. This runtime _is_ Android under the hood, but is separate from Sailfish itself (has its own native app ecosystem).
GrapheneOS actually recommends against using Aurora and instead just using the Play Store, so this shouldn't really hurt users.
For extra privacy, you can sign into the Play Store with a Google Account that isn't tied to anything else.
Although the nice thing about Aurora Store is it allows you to install apps without a google account linked to your device, keeping Google Play Services signed-out.
Somewhere in the FAQ GOS advertises that Play Services can be used without signing in, but they also recommend the official Play Store (which requires signing in) and explicitly don't recommend Aurora (which doesn't).
Unless I'm missing something, I don't see how you can functionally use Play Services signed-out when in order to obtain those apps in the first place, you need to sign into a Google Account for Google Play.
That's personally what I used Aurora for, plus as an easy way to export APK files.
Some apps offer direct APK downloads from their websites. If Google Play Services is detected, they use it for push notifications. Otherwise, they fall back to an internal background connection. WhatsApp is an example.
You still need to supply Play Services:
GrapheneOS uses Sandboxed Google Play. LineageOS requires flashing a package like MindTheGapps. There is also microG, an open-source reimplementation of Play Services APIs.
Having to have a account is absolutely a downgrade and privacy-hostile.
> a Google Account that isn't tied to anything else.
Isn't that pretty much impossible? You need a phone number for verification, which effectively ties it to that phone number.
Accounts created on stock Pixels don’t require phone numbers.
that haven't been true since pixel 4. it just picks your phone in the background.
a burner sim, like a literal criminal, is the only way today.
assuming the number you get hasn't previously been assigned to a google account
I've had no end of trouble registering an account on our corporate SIMs as the phone numbers (not the actual SIM cards) had been recycled as employees leave.
So many systems cannot handle known pattern of a phone number changing. Who's decided these are imutable values? That I have only one? That it's not shared?
Even with a burner sim, there is the International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) number, which is tied to the phone, and is known to all apps with the android.permission.READ_PRIVILEGED_PHONE_STATE permission.
That can't be true? <https://grapheneos.org/faq#hardware-identifiers>
I don't know however if sandboxed google play is such a privileged app.
I couldn't immediately find whether GrapheneOS grants READ_PRIVILEGED_PHONE_STATE to Google Play. It might very well be that the GrapheneOS sandbox spoofs a fake IMEI, and I do hope so.
In any case, my parent comment was meant for stock Pixels, as mentioned by armadyl further up in this thread.
https://grapheneos.org/usage#sandboxed-google-play
> Google Play receives absolutely no special access or privileges on GrapheneOS as opposed to bypassing the app sandbox and receiving a massive amount of highly privileged access.
It doesn't mention IMEI here, but hopefully READ_PRIVILEGED_PHONE_STATE is included in "privileged access."
There is an AppStore app, I am not sure if this is the one we are talking about? <https://github.com/GrapheneOS/AppStore/blob/main/app/src/mai...>
That one lists:
That's grapheneos's own app, separate from the play store or play services.
True. I think this one is closer to the truth: <https://github.com/GrapheneOS/platform_packages_apps_GmsComp...>
There is no READ_PRIVILEGED_PHONE_STATE mentioned there.
That's also incorrect, because the gmscompat app is just a helper app. Play services can and does request additional permissions. Those permissions are handled by the OS under the play services app, not gmscompat. If you want RCS for instance, you must grant play services and google messages phone and ICC auth access, which isn't seen in gmscompat at all.
Hmm, ok. I was reasoning the helper app was needed to get around the default assumptions from Google Play Services.
Yes, but I assume you don't mean that as that GOS makes special hard-coded provisions for the play services. GOS claims to run Play Services like any other unprivileged app, and so any additional permission it would want would have to be consented by the user and should be visible to the user. If not, then GOS wording would be quite a bit unfortunate at least.
EDIT: "GmsCompatConfig is the text-based configuration for the GrapheneOS sandboxed Google Play compatibility layer. It provides a large portion of the compatibility shims." [1] This seems to indicate that the permissions requested by Play Services are being honored with the shims from the helper app. That would alleviate the permission problem.
1. https://github.com/GrapheneOS/platform_packages_apps_GmsComp...
That's the application software side. I would assume the IMEI and IMSI are both going out to the cell network though, and I would presume that it's trivial to tie a phone number to those with how the mobile industry generally sells subscriber data to various data brokers. The only question is how permissive those data brokers are (their major constraint is how much most people become aware of this dynamic), but when dealing with a major APT like Google I'd assume they're tuned into the best ones with songs about bona fide purposes.
Are you talking about the US here? I am hoping this would be off-limits in Europe.
Yes I am talking with a US perspective. I would hope the GDPR would prevent such things in (most of) Europe. But I also personally wouldn't assume so given that there are still the same dynamics of keeping the info flows private to avoid scrutiny, and claiming plausible "legitimate purposes" and "consent".
Play services isn't an "app", it's a highly privileged system service that has access to everything and some more.
It still works without a SIM card, how do you explain that?
Its possible to set up a phone with a google account without even a sim card in it and use it as a wifi only device, so Im pretty sure what your saying is wrong.
You can create an account with no phone number during Android device setup.
You can also just get a burner phone number for a few bucks.
> You can also just get a burner phone number for a few bucks.
But you have to keep paying the monthly cost, if you loose access to a phone number in your Google account it's game over for any account recovery or "let's verify it's you" it might decide to throw your way.
What's the problem then? If it happens, discard that account and make a new Aurora Store burner account.
> You can create an account with no phone number during Android device setup.
Yeah now they have IMEI and all the other device specific info anyway they might as well forego the phone number
> > a Google Account that isn't tied to anything else.
> Isn't that pretty much impossible? You need a phone number for verification, which effectively ties it to that phone number.
I just want to follow-up on this because some people claim this is not correct because they have managed to create accounts without phone numbers.
Indeed, I think to this day, under special circumstances (like e.g. on reasonably recent Android devices) you might be able to setup a Google account without phone number.
The trick is, that in the general case, you can not keep this account online indefinitely.
I once worked out a trick to get it going and I was feeling safe because I had setup 2FA and backup codes (see https://masysma.net/37/google_how_to_create_an_account_witho...).
First thing to note: This way of account creation does not seem to work anymore.
Second thing to note: After once logging in from a different country, trying to login again REQUIRES me to provide a phone number after successfully giving username/password/2FA code. No way to use the recovery code instead...
Also, given that this account was never before connected to a phone of any kind, by definition, the addition of a phone number cannot provide additional security confirmation (it's data that simply wasn't present before and any "personal" phone number could potentially do -- of course I haven't tried, because that's the point of not linking a phone number).
I think this way it is finally proven that they only do this to harvest the data/phone numbers and any claim of enhanced security is void.
I write this after having lost the second account to the phone number required screen despite being in possession of all the credentials which were ever assigned to that account...
Same thing happens to me.
Doesn’t Google make it very hard to create an account tied to nothing (no phone or alt email)?
If you create it on a stock Pixel device the phone requirement gets dropped.
It’s undoubtedly tied to the phone with is tied to the owner
Well yeah. But if you care about anonymity on that level there are ways around that (i.e. buying in cash and creating the account using public WiFi).
What? Buy a phone in cash and have it billed to what, your monero wallet? This isn’t possible in today’s world, in the west anyways. Phones are tied to people.
And “worried about anonymity in that way”… that’s the topic being discussed here.
You can buy a phone with physical cash from a store or used p2p…
As far as cell service goes well yeah there is no such thing as anonymity. Towers will always know your location as long as the radio is on and that can be correlated easily.
People report that it works even on grapheneos with sandboxed google play. My guess there's some fingerprinting going on, not necessarily that they're tying the account to some account id.
I tried and it didn't work, it kept asking for my phone number.
How is your phone tied to you? You bought it through GOogle store?
What??
It's the SomethingAwful model: go to the store and find the cheapest Android phone from some prepaid company for :tenbux: then use it to set up your Google account during out-of-box-setup while on the store's free public WiFi (since Google OOBE allows free account creation without a number or existing email), then toss the phone in a drawer afterwards.
"Hope ya got ten bucks!"
(I got a random 5G Moto phone for ~$10 on clearance and it was an absolute shitter of a phone full of garbage packed in malware, but after cleaning and debloating as much as I can, it's at least a nifty toy to poke at Termux or something.)
The "Twitter counter" to that is, "We've detected suspicious activity on your account. To continue, please verify your phone number."
> Google Account that isn't tied to anything else.
At the risk of being a privacy absolutist / fatalist: Google’s entire business model is surveillance. They follow you around and track your habits so you can be influenced. Given that, a Google account is always tied to something else.
Piggybacking on this... I create my fair share of "burner accounts" and almost always they (not just Google) connect it to my true identity. Granted I'm not using VPNs or really trying to hide the connection but it seems trivial for them to associate.
My experience has been that all the consumer privacy/security tools are varying degrees of “good” at keeping away bad actors, trackers, advertisers, and most third parties, but when it comes to the big dogs, there’s nothing you can really do to stop them. Google, Facebook, etc. just have too many data points already available to them so they can easily build a picture of you. There are simply too many services that have them running around in the background or just straight up depend on them.
All you can do is leave their ecosystem as much as you can and accept you will never be fully rid of them
> leave their ecosystem
Their tracking is baked into various apps even if you don't have an account with them. Anything with social media integrations can report back to the mothership behind your back.
yes I believe I said that in my previous comment more or less
I'm happy enough not using them however lately even government services (which I have no choice but to use) require loading a captcha from either google or cloudflare. The situation is absurd.
They have required unique phone numbers for accounts I've tried lately, or parent's phone numbers. Facebook is worse though, they are quick to ban an account/phone number.
I'm under no illusion that google doesn't know I own my multiple accounts. They most certainly do. I usually use the same user agent (with containers) on the same IP, after all.
But my goal is to avoid a stranger gaining access to my google services if they manage to unlock a lost device or steal my TV/streaming box that has no lock at all.
I wish Google supported a permission system per device. For example on most of my android devices all I really want is to be logged into Youtube and the play store. I most certainly do not want those devices to have access to my contacts, emails, calendar, keep, drive, payment, etc. (I don't personally use all of those things, but you might and that's what a random thief would gain access to.)
Yep, something like checkboxes on login:
Adding more would require to login anew.
Google's business model is providing you services that are excellent, while also providing advertisers access to your willing eyeballs when you use those services.
Yes, the advertising targeting is incredibly invasive, but let's not pretend they aren't providing world class Search, Email, Docs, Maps, Video (YT), etc in exchange.
AFAIK Graphene is mainly focused on security and not privacy. It just seems to have become a sort of go-to for people who want to deGoogle I guess.
GrapheneOS is a privacy first project. Security is improved for the sake of privacy.
GrapheneOS is focused on absolute security. For those of us on more privacy-oriented ROMs with MicroG, we're very happy with Aurora.
GrapheneOS is focused on privacy but that must come from a secure baseline.
GrapheneOS is much more privacy focussd than any other mobile operating system. Accrescent is the end goal for a secure and private app store but it's still in alpha. GrapheneOS is also the best for degoogling (eliminating all google services) because it comes with zero Google services unlike all the other ones listed here: https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm
How can you call other OSes more privacy focused when they haven't closed as many VPN leaks as GrapheneOS? That's like bare minimum for privacy.
The problem is that to achieve privacy through security, Graphene has to treat the user as a potentially hostile actor.
Therefore, the system needs to protect itself and other apps from the user. Which is very much contrary to software freedom.
> Which is very much contrary to software freedom.
Yeah, the goal is privacy although the OS is completely open source.
They do improve user experience by allowing disabling emergency alerts, call recording without alerts, no mandatory camera noise in Japan, no extra warning popup from installing APKs from the web (it's the same permission in every app store iirc), increases password length to 128 digits. All the network services are open source afaict while all the other mobile operating systems listed in that android comparison connect to Google's closed source services, netowrk permission, sensors permission, storage scopes, contact scopes.
You can still easily install whatever Android app you want on GrapheneOS and you can install dangerous apps like shizuku and apps with way too many permissions. But yeah the goal is privacy so that everyday people can protect themselves as well as journalists can protect themselves. I want journalists to get the best privacy possible without having to know a ton of technical things or making many choices.
Verified boot does indeed make this more complicated, but it's totally possible to build Graphene with your own signing key and get full control over the OS that way (i.e. https://github.com/schnatterer/rooted-graphene).
Looking at their public statements on the matter, it seems like the problem isn't exactly that they treat the user as a potentially hostile actor so much as that they treat the system UI and persistent storage as a potentially hostile actor (though I admit from a practical perspective that's nearly the same thing): https://www.reddit.com/r/GrapheneOS/comments/13264di/is_root...
I wonder how they'd feel about something like protected confirmation to enable sudo: https://source.android.com/docs/security/features/protected-...
> Which is very much contrary to software freedom
I believe you misunderstand what "software freedom" means. You can compile and install GrapheneOS yourself, and you can grant yourself admin access. This is software freedom.
Software freedom does not mean that you should run everything as an admin, always. And just in case: software freedom does NOT mean that you should remove your firewall and let everybody SSH into your server by having a blank password.
You can't grant yourself admin access with the official build. Only the Graphene devs have the ability to push changes to the OS on your phone. Yes you can fork the software and build a version with your own signing key, then wipe your phone and install your custom build and thereby take back control, but then is that really still Graphene?
I think it's fair to say that that's at least borderline anti software freedom, even if it's true they have good security reasons for doing things that way.
Thinking about possible ways they could retain the same security properties without impinging software freedom... maybe there's a way they could make the root of trust default to a signing key embedded in the device's own secure hardware? Then by default that key could sign Graphene's own signing certificate to allow them to push updates, but the user would retain the ability to revoke that signature and sign someone else's certificate instead (or their own certificate) if they decided they didn't trust Graphene anymore, or wanted to give themselves root.
> I think it's fair to say that that's at least borderline anti software freedom
Then you don't understand software freedom either.
Software freedom doesn't mean AT ALL that random projects on the Internet MUST implement the features YOU want. Never, not at all, it's not borderline, it's not up to debate.
Software freedom is about being able to use the software the way you want, as in "you get access to the sources, you modify them, build them and run them". You can do that with GrapheneOS (well except for the binary blobs situation, but that's not in GrapheneOS' hands at all). Software freedom is NOT about GrapheneOS giving you root access on official builds because you want it. And it's also NOT about GrapheneOS installing Doom on the official builds because I want it.
> Software freedom is about being able to use the software the way you want
You can't use the software in the way you want if it uses hardware backed cryptography to block you from doing so.
> you get access to the sources, you modify them, build them and run them
This is completely infeasible for 99% of the population. If you technically have a freedom but have no practical way to exercise it, it may as well not exist.
You could argue "but someone else could modify it for you, build it, and make an easy way for you to install it", and normally I'd accept that, but given that installing that modified version would require you to completely reset your phone and install the new modified OS from scratch, I think it's debatable at that point whether you'd still be running Graphene, rather than a fork. And if exercising your freedom requires you to stop running Graphene and start running something else, is it really fair to say Graphene itself supports that freedom? Like I said, borderline.
If you're still not convinced, consider what would happen if companies started using remote attestation to verify you're running the official GrapheneOS build and block forks...
> You can't use the software in the way you want if it uses hardware backed cryptography to block you from doing so.
You can use the software the way you want, from sources. If I run an open source server at home, it does not give you the right to enter my house and come reboot my server, does it?
> This is completely infeasible for 99% of the population
Sure, it isn't. Still that's what software freedom is.
> If you technically have a freedom but have no practical way to exercise it, it may as well not exist.
I disagree, I'm very happy that free software exists.
> I think it's debatable at that point whether you'd still be running Graphene
It's not: you're running a fork at that point. That's precisely how free software works.
> And if exercising your freedom requires you to stop running Graphene and start running something else, is it really fair to say Graphene itself supports that freedom?
Yes! Again that's precisely what software freedom is about! When you run GrapheneOS, you have the freedom to fork it and run it however you want. When you run Windows or macOS, you don't.
> If you're still not convinced, consider what would happen if companies started using remote attestation to verify you're running the official GrapheneOS build and block forks...
Well GrapheneOS would still be free software?!?!? It's the software from those companies that wouldn't be. I hate remote attestation as much as the next person, and typically banks absolutely suck because they love doing that kind of bullshit. But because banks suck does not mean that GrapheneOS is not free software?
Note that I am not trying to contradict you for the sake of it. I believe too few people understand how open source works, and that is a pity because it is important to understand it. When I open source some code I wrote, I make it available for people to do whatever they want with the code. I don't give them ANY RIGHT on the products I sell (even if those products are running said open source software) or on the feature I implement.
Too many people believe that because it's open source, they have a right to tell the authors what features they should implement. This is wrong. You want root access on your GrapheneOS? Go fork it. I don't want it, I am happy with GrapheneOS. If GrapheneOS gave me root access, I would fork it to remove it. And that would still be free software!
> Accrescent is the end goal for a secure and private app store but it's still in alpha
Note that nobody (new) can submit to it today; the developer console HTTP 503s and is only available to an allow-list of developers.
GrapheneOS will always choose security over privacy, even if that means playing into the hands of malicious actors like Google. For example they have stated they won't try to spoof SafetyNet because "we don't lie about security features"
I personally would prefer to have both but choose the privacy side when both are into conflict.
Both viewpoints are valid, but I don't use GrapheneOS for this reason.
Its quite obvious they dont want to spoof SafetyNet because it would anger Google and GOS developers will no longer get privileged access to security bulletins.
As far as I'm aware, they do not get the security patches and early bulletin access from Google. They get that from an undisclosed OEM.
The OEM is Motorola. The partnership was announced earlier this year.
You are correct about them not getting early access from Google. There was a post within the last few months saying that Google no longer releases a lot of the code via git, but instead requires submitting a form and downloading the code via Google Drive. Google are actively trying to make third-party development difficult.
>For example they have stated they won't try to spoof SafetyNet because "we don't lie about security features"
They said they don't want to do it because it would stop working in the future when Google move to enforcing hardware-based attestation and it is not sustainable.
It seems wise to have at least one alternative mobile phone app store. Even if it isn't very good. If the government can tell Google to do trivial things like, for example, change the name of bodies (plural now) of water, it can turn off your app updates, trapping you on insecure versions indefinitely. This probably matters more if you live outside of the US, but if I had a plan B for an app store on my phone, I would certainly at least evaluate it.
Name changes happen all the time and I would expect Google to match what the government sources use locally. The fact that the government is capricious is no reason for me to desire Google to become an alternative naming center.
The government didnt ask google, they changed the name on the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), which is the official legal mapping source which other companies like Google etc use. Hence the change filtered down through software from the top official channel.
Right, the government pulled a lever, and google complied within days. If the FTC declares app stores can't provide security updates without government license, that is another lever they can pull, and google will comply.
Wether or not the most recent example is the best example, doesn't matter. What matters is when the government says "jump" in legalese, google's lawyers say "how high?"
Sometimes you just can't.
For example, the banking app I have refuses to be installed from the Play Store on GrapheneOS due to "not-certified" device, but works perfectly fine when installed by Aurora.
The check seems to be purely store-based and never enforced later.
I have similar problems installing region locked apps as someone who's fairly frequently in different regions.
This is exactly why I switched to Aurora. I couldn't even install Balatro from the Play Store.
Do you trust the banking app installed from Aurora enough to do your online banking? I don't, and I really wish there would be a decent way to verify that the installed/provided apps are legit. For me this is the biggest downside of using GrapheneOS, which I'm otherwise extremely happy with.
(for me, the whole point of using GrapheneOS is privacy and not sending data to Google, so using the PlayStore is not an option)
Doesn't Aurora download the packages directly from Google?
Presumably the parent does not want to have to trust Aurora to do that
Android apps are signed. Can't you verify the signature?
Can you?
I'm pretty sure if I try calling my bank or searching the website to confirm the developer's public key fingerprint, there's not going to be any answer. You have to ask Google's servers to give you the APK and trust what it gives you, either via the front-end called Aurora or the front-end called Play Store
Maybe not in practice, but in theory, it works. I don't think there's a better way of handling this without relying on some centralised authority (Google) to validate the authorship of an app, which is hardly desirable.
Doesn't AppVerifier allow you to do just that?
Privacy Guides is building a database of signing keys with a verifier app:
https://github.com/privacyguides/verified-apps-android
https://github.com/privacyguides/verified-apps/
I think in general trust is established for Play Store apps by downloading the app with the Play Store on a phone with Google Certified Android. Then the app can get the signing key for storage in the database. Then this can be used to verify APKs downloaded outside the play store.
Same. Twint (basically the Swiss Venmo) insists that my phone is not compatible with it.
But using Aurora I can install it just fine and it works flawlessly.
> you can sign into the Play Store with a Google Account that isn't tied to anything else.
The problem with this is that increasingly Google is insisting on having a phone number to create a Google account. Further, they are aggressively deleting old accounts that appear to be dormant.
The good old days of creating a Google account with just an email seem to be swiftly becoming a thing of the past.
I recently had to set up a new Android device for work. Since I keep all my personal accounts separate from my work accounts, I needed to create a new Google account on that phone. I ended up paying $8 for a month of the cheapest service I could find just to get a phone number so I could create that account.
"For extra privacy, you can sign into the Play Store with a Google Account that isn't tied to anything else."
lol. lamo, even.
A Google account is a personal identifier, it is linked to your person. Therefor trying to untie it from anything else is futile.
Google states: Using a false name or incorrect information when creating a Google account is against Google's Terms of Service.
> GrapheneOS actually recommends against using Aurora and instead just using the Play Store, so this shouldn't really hurt users.
Interesting, I never tried Aurora on Graphene. For me the combination of Play Store and F-Droid worked really well so far.
The main reason for me to use GrapheneOS would be to sever the umbilical cord to google.
I don't really see the point of using GrapheneOS instead of Stock Android if I then have to use the play store.
Better security, for once. You get (security) updates a lot faster with GrapheneOS.
Also on GrapheneOS, Play Services and Play Store come unprivileged, sandboxed like any other app. So Google is not an admin on your phone, which I would argue is one step towards "severing the umbilical cord".
Moreover, GrapheneOS doesn't have any issue with apps sideloading.
And more. There are many reasons to use GrapheneOS.
GrapheneOS (the project) might recommend for or against certain things in relation to their specific objectives, but that doesn't mean all GrapheneOS users have the same objectives or need to comply with the opinions of GrapheneOS.
For instance, I use GrapheneOS because it provides better security and privacy out of the box than LineageOS, but I'm also not so paranoid that I'm going to just blindly listen to advice against using F-Droid. What I want out of my Android instance is good security defaults with no bloatware, not to stop the NSA from looking at my travel photos and what HN articles I once looked at. It's okay if my OS is great but not perfect.
So yes, I am a GrapheneOS user who is [modestly] hurt by this. Signing in with a dummy account is just another one of those things that will end up being futile in years to come when Google requires iris scans, DNA samples, and anal probes in order to get a new account. Personally, I'd prefer installing whatever software I want on whatever devices I [pretend like] I own, without telemetry or jumping through hoops.
I've honestly never understood why F-Droid even still exists. Every time I've tried to use it (as recently as half a year ago) it's still a shitshow and never displays or updates apps correctly. Half the time an app showed up on the website that didn't show up on the phone app. The other half of the time even when I did get something installed, it would just never understand that an update existed and needed to download and update a given app. It's one of the worst pieces of software I've used in a while, and I can tolerate a good bit of jank from FOSS apps.
> Every time I've tried to use it (as recently as half a year ago) it's still a shitshow and never displays or updates apps correctly. Half the time an app showed up on the website that didn't show up on the phone app.
Sounds like an accurate recreation of the Play Store experience to me.
This is not me simping for Google, I would honestly prefer literally anyone else with an acceptable app store experience, but I can honestly say I've never had that experience with the Play Store. If there's an update, it updates. If there's an app, it appears in search. On the rare occasion an app doesn't appear and I go to the Play Store website looking for it, the reason the app didn't show up is because it's listed as incompatible with my device (usually Android version too low or too high).
> never displays or updates apps correctly. Half the time an app showed up on the website that didn't show up on the phone app. The other half of the time even when I did get something installed, it would just never understand that an update existed and needed to download and update a given app
You probably "just" need to pull down while on the "Latest" or "Updates" tab, to update your repository (it will show a small banner at the top while it's doing that). It's incremental, so it may take a while if it has been some time since you last did it (and auto-updates are disabled).
The way F-Droid works is that it downloads the whole index and then the catalog, version checks, etc, all runs locally, quite similarly to some package repositories actually.
I am not claiming its intuitive, but I think that part works fine once you understand how it works.
The last time it wouldn't update an app, I could see in the app store and on the website that my app had a new version, but no matter what I did, I could not make it update the app. I don't know what I was doing "wrong", but I think if I couldn't figure it out or make it happen, there's something very wrong with either the app or how it's "supposed" to work. Neither of which is an acceptable user experience for me.
Ok, you clearly don't know what F-Droid is.
F-Droid builds all apps by themselves, which especially with their old servers took a lot (between detecting that the update exists, building the app and going to sign everything at their air-gapped signing computer).
Now a lot of apps use the "reproducible builds" feature, which means that F-Droid will distribuite them as they come from the author, leaving their digital signature; but they still need to build those apps before distributing them, to verify that what the author built corresponds to the declared source code.
With the much powerful servers that they've had for a few months builds are a lot quicker, but there are still steps that can take several days, especially the part of signing the apps' index on their air-gapped computer.
There's a ton of things that could be improved, and it would be best if there were an alternative with better maintainers, but they're currently the only service of this kind for Android (well, IzzyOnDroid is a partial alternative, if you're careful to check their reproducible builds results).
Have you tried Neo Store for accessing F-Droid and other repositories? In particular, I use the IzzyOnDroid F-Droid and Guardian Project repos.
I have not, but honestly, at this point, I just don't really care anymore. I can only try and be rebuffed by a product so many times.
The software and many parts of the project are bad, but I don't see how you can't understand its reason to exist.
You're sure you understand what it does?
My understanding is that F-Droid is hosted out of some home servers (instead of some universities like other similar package managers) so the bandwidth leaves much to be desired. But the UX is definitely a big part of the problem. I don't understand why it tends to abort downloads when I background it, and I don't understand why it doesn't show a toast that it aborted the download.
I very much prefer Obtainium these days despite the setup steps. I don't think it's a coincidence that Obtainium, Aurora, Zapstore, etc. are gaining mindshare over F-Droid, just like how Brave has explosive growth over FF.
Doesn't match my experience (or anyone I know that uses F-Droid), FWIW.
We search for stuff, install it, it updates in the background. We install some of our own repos, but the bulk of our apps come from F-Droid's default repos.
Hard to reconcile your account with my experience without specifics.
Try using the Droid-ify client: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.looker.droidify/
or APKUpdater, which covers besides F-Droid as well APKMirror, Aptoide, IzzyOnDroid, APKPure, GitLab and GitHub
https://github.com/rumboalla/apkupdater
though personally I use it only for Fdroid, Gitlab and Github
Yeah, the experience isn't great and there are better alternatives but F-Droid was there before anything else existed. It's also great to just have it as an option.
Yes, F-Droid and its apps are great <3 They add so much security by simply not having a lot of tracking code that can be exploited and tries to hook all over your system. And they have reproducible builds which is something the commercial stores don't even bother with. This is really important for security. I don't understand that GrapheneOS advises against them.
And yeah the iris scans sound like a scare but only 2 years ago there was a constant line of zombies here in the shopping mall giving their eye scans to altman.
The masses really don't care about privacy if you give them a worthless trinket.
There are apps I cannot install via the Play Store in GrapheneOS, only via Aurora store.
Yes but Aurora isn't only for GrapheneOS.
I use it on a phone with (unfortunately) regular google play services. If I sign into the play store, that same account will be used for all other google services on the phone too. I'm not going to do that. I just don't want a google account (nor an apple one for that matter)
It DOES still hurt.
For example the eBay app. Does not allow installing from the play store on grapheneos.
>For extra privacy, you can sign into the Play Store with a Google Account that isn't tied to anything else.
Like my personal phone?)
Installing Google Play service is in itself a privacy downgrade.
...with a Google Account that isn't tied to anything else
That isn't completely possible these days. Last I checked they want an existing email address and/or a cellphone number for verification. I guess "not tied to anything else" is proportional to how much you trust them to delete either of these bits of info after they are used, and not associate them with other accounts you might have used them with in the past/future.
GrapheneOS is defending against different things I guess. My personal threat model is protecting myself from the tentacles of these behemoth tech companies. To that end, GrapheneOS approach of "just install google play" is not good enough for me. I fail to see the privacy advantages compared to e.g. MicroG".
i don't even have google play serices installed, let alone the play store...
> with a Google Account that isn't tied to anything else.
How can I get this wonderful thing?
Try installing an app that requires Play Store Integrity, say, ProShot by RiseUp Games.
Braindead dev claims this is to limit the "piracy" and bug reports, nevertheless it's either Aurora or APKMirror.
> For extra privacy, you can sign into the Play Store with a Google Account that isn't tied to anything else.
I dare you try creating a Google account that isn't tied to anything else.
Nowadays you can't even create an account in desktop browser without first having to scan a qr code from a mobile device first.
So, GrapheneOS is a supposed alternative to using Google's OS and their surveillance and adware - except you're supposed to run it on Google hardware, and apparently with a Google account and connecting to Google's services.
WTF?
I use Aurora on GOS. I get that they say sandboxed Play is more secure than Aurora, but I prefer it for its lack of toxicity and absence of shitty dark patterns.
I think the increased popularity of GOS is going to draw in more users like me who picked it for reasons adjacent to Graphene's original purpose, and I hope it's not too annoying for their community.
I actually think there's already a lot of us in the 'community' as-is. I personally describe it as 'Valuing Privacy/Freedom over Security'. One pretty clear example of this is how they don't recommend using FireFox Mobile and F-Droid, both of which I use regardless because I'm not willing to put up with worse privacy/usability tradeoffs in the name of (imo 'hyper-')security.
I think it's fine the mission of the project isn't directly aligned with some of us, though I can tell we often get on the core contributor's nerves lol
FYI, there are ungoogled chromium builds for Android. Firefox Mobile really is a lackluster browser unfortunately both from a usability and security standpoint (e.g. IonStack worked on Fennec)
I really like the Firefox usability. For what I do it works great. It has uBo and a bunch of other extensions, and if course it can sync with desktop.
I'm using Firefox mobile for many years exclusively (since chrome forced some stupid feature on me, I think it was tab groups which I hated and couldn't turn off. And of course no ubo). Could be a bit faster probably? Otherwise don't see any issues.
I would actually argue the exact opposite. All of the Chromium-based forks are a usability disaster. I have to use grid view only to see my tabs? It took them most of a decade to finally get the relatively common place bottom bar, and it still arbitrarily decides to ignore your setting if it thinks your screen is "too big"? It's just failure after failure. I absolutely dread when some shitty site I'm forced to use refuses to load in anything but chrome and I have to open up Vanadium for the first time in forever.
pretty sure Cromite allows more options than just grid view which I hate, I usually use List, though I recently switched back to Firefox, already even forgot the reason
They actually ban people from their Discord (which is their official support channel - so much for privacy/security!) for mentioning F-Droid. I'm starting to think the creator of F-Droid must have run over their dog.
I have mentioned F-Droid many times in the official Matrix before they moved to Discord and not been banned. You might be misunderstanding what actually happened or have not asked the moderators why someone was banned.
This is the exact reason I quit using Graphene. It felt exactly like selling out control of my device to the Graphene devs in the same way a stock phone is controlled by Google.
Far, far too "opinionated" for my taste. I frankly do not need the hyper paranoid security features like a hardened memory allocator or disabled root. I would rather be able to use my device the way I want, even if that's notionally "less secure".
I really wish there were another option. Lineage is too far in the opposite direction and feels like ad-blocked stock. Google still owns my phone, there's just a more pleasant coat of paint on it.
they do similar things for people trying to use magisk, but also relock the boot loader. I gave up trying to bother, since the whole reason I use roms is for root first, privacy second.
> I frankly do not need the hyper paranoid security features like a hardened memory allocator
I get the part about disabled root - you're choosing to sacrifice freedom for security - though I don't understand why you wouldn't want a hardened memory allocator. It provides additional security over the stock OS for very little cost (slightly more resource consumption), in an era where we absolutely need as much security as we can get; what are you losing by gaining this?
They're both security, just security "against" different things. Graphene frequently fails to clearly describe the threat model when calling something "more secure".
For example, let's say hypothetically I want to be secure against the threat of Google pushing a targeted update to my phone that runs malicious code. Turning on automatic software updates from Google would make me vulnerable to that threat. Using MicroG instead of Google Play Services would make me less vulnerable to that threat. But Graphene devs say things like "MicroG is less secure than Google Play Services".
Similarly, if you want privacy you might secure your device by locking the bootloader with your own keys - not a third-party vendor's keys. Saying that's "insecure" is extremely misleading: it just puts you in charge of security, instead of abdicating to someone else.
I wish there were something like GrapheneOS that let you choose, yourself, who to trust instead of requiring you trust an OS vendor implicitly.
I would say that any auto-update mechanism is a threat, so in both cases you would disable auto-updates.
The point is that you might know the people behind microG or trust them for any other reason, but not the people at Google
Fair point.
But Graphene devs say things like "MicroG is less secure than Google Play Services".
It is. microG runs Google DroidGuard blobs in a privileged process (to pass Play Integrity Basic). Reminder for those who forgot about DroidGuard: it's an obfuscated binary blob delivered to you by Google on each request that uses a special VM with constantly changing registers, etc. to avoid analysis.
On GrapheneOS that crap runs in a sandbox.
Actually, MicroG by default doesn't download or run droidguard binaries at all.
You're missing my point here, which is that failing to describe a particular threat scenario leads to meaningless words spoken about ill-defined "security". Security has to be against some particular threat... it's not an absolute concept.
> I hope it's not too annoying for their community
There's plenty of people like that in the GOS community (the forum and the Matrix). Everyone generally understands that different people have different threat models and may want to do things that aren't the most secure. Otherwise everyone would be using GOS in airplane mode with disabled cameras and only paying for things with Monero.
The core dev team is obviously a bit more security absolutist, but even they usually dont mind
> Everyone generally understands that different people have different threat models
Citation needed. If there are such people in what can be considered a grapheneos community that haven't gotten fed up yet and left, grapheneos themselves sure doesn't understand this
> Otherwise everyone would be using GOS in airplane mode with disabled cameras and only paying for things with Monero.
Nah, they're fine with tracking, so long as it happens in their sandbox. The official website has an install guide for google's background services, saying it's fine because it's in their security model. So long as the modem can't access your contacts without a permission prompt, there is no tracking in baghdad
>Citation needed. grapheneos themselves sure doesn't understand this
The GrapheneOS team understand full well that in cases where the Play Store does not allow installing an app on your device due to device or georestrictive rules you may have no choice. I have seen them mention this and acknowledge it first hand. What they do not want is for people to become satisfied with subpar solutions instead of striving for bare minimum privacy/security standards. They want a Play Store alternative front end to at least be able to guarantee you are receiving the right app you want instead of being a substitution attack risk. I don't think that is unreasonable.
>The official website has an install guide for google's background services, saying it's fine because it's in their security model.
The context is that before sandboxed-play-services were introduced people were sourcing APKs in unsafe/via unverified routes and having all sorts of problems with app compatibility because since GrapheneOS is a privacy project that do not accept sending copious amounts of data to one party with a mediocre privacy policy they included no Google services at all. sandboxed-play-services is a specific solution to the problem of apps being dependent on Google Mobile Services for functionality, and in that sense it is entirely optional. It was the best way for them to provide compatibility without destroying the privacy of their platform by introducing a privileged Google binary that can glean and abuse your production environment. It's reduced to the same level as any other app the user might choose to install themselves (which GrapheneOS want absolutely no say over as a user freedom protecting project).
GrapheneOS do not bundle any Google services in their official installation. They do not endorse Google's data collection and service practices. They do not believe Google tracking is fine in anyway, and the evidence is here: https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm What they have done is provide a workaround for people who have no alternative, while making sure it does not violate the device owners device in a special way compared to any other app they might install.
> The core dev team is obviously a bit more security absolutist, but even they usually dont mind
Their absolutist of their own view of security
uhm they're
> I get that they say sandboxed Play is more secure than Aurora
I don't see the word "privacy" in that sentence though.
I feel the title editorializes a bit too much. The thread only confirms the bug, not a specific cause yet. As sibling comments indicate, the effect on GrapheneOS users is undetermined.
For me, the issue also only occurs sometimes. Usually I can download apps like normal.
Even in the last days? If you use anonymous accounts it seems to affect everyone, when it works it only works for a few downloads
Yeah, just updated my apps without an account.
Maybe you've been lucky, unless a user's location or activity plays a part in the issue
This is standart, and happens constantly with Invidious (youtube frontend). This happened before on AuroraOSS too. They probably just flagged the accounts and no API change or A/B testing an API change.
This also has nothing to do with GrapheneOS except for some user overlap.
If anything, it seems more poised to damage the usability of systems which actively rely on Aurora Store, like CalyxOS and the likes. Graphene actively discourages using Aurora.
Please add to the title "... and all other degoogled devices", which are many orders of magnitude more than GOS: almost all Huawei devices (degoogled out of the box), custom Roms, rooted and all non-logged in. I am a non-GOS hurt victim.
BRAX3 phone is good example of this problem.
I've been stuck with unupdated apps because Aurora hasn't been working for me for a while. A few of them have been nagging me to update. I have everything Google disabled or removed, and no I won't reenable any of it. Also I use anon strictly on Aurora, and no I won't login with my Google account; haven't logged in on a phone for over 8 years now and I have no intention of breaking the streak.
For a while as in more than a few weeks, when the current issues began?
Have you looked for help? It sure isn't because of any Google component being disabled
I had last successsful update on August 26, which I wouldnt call for a while, tried yesterday, I've got error messages everyone mentions
today I bothered to try various anonymous Aurora accounts and found finally the one working (like 5th in row) and updated the apps, I can live with updates once a week, not exactly sure what is OP doing
I mean if they are really rate limited just give me waiting time, I don't really care whether I have to wait in queue for an hour if it will update the app later without my intervention
btw. I am not using graphene, find it too paranoid for my taste, though I use my phone without google account for like 10+ years and current phone is first where I have (not disabled/have preinstalled) google play services
Unfortunately Google doesn't return a waiting time, and the limits are probably high enough to be irrelevant for normal users (although I've seen articles of it happening on the Play Store, over the years).
I maintain my grandmothers phone, which comes down mostly to just updating WhatsApp once in a while. Obviously she doesn't have a google account, so I've installed her AuroraStore.
It's a shame that there is no official way to install apps on android without a google accout[1], since it's a basic functionality, just like calls or a web browser.
[1] For obvious reasons I don't want her to download apks from the internet.
I am in the same boat. Keep in mind that you are trusting both google and meta. At least you can update whatsapp once every three months (for now)
Is it not possible to just download the updated whatsapp apk from some online source? That is the benefit of android after all, side loading is still possible relatively easily.
I'll be your random online source if you want. Just give me a few days to work on an APK for you to download and install.
How do you plan to get Meta's private signing key so Android will allow it as an update?
I’ll take the same approach Smarsh/TeleMessage uses to load modified WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram APKs on U.S. federal agency devices.
Grandma doesn’t care if it looks like an update or not.
People download apks from pirate sites and install them all the time, I dont think this is much different
Hell yeah they do. I should know.
There are whatsapp cracked apks which actually work as whatsapp... and they have "extras", and I would never install it, although I have seen it installed
The comments here specifically about WhatsApp are weird because WhatsApp download page links to the app store but also provides an APK right there
App verification means she can safely install apps from the Internet. The app developers can simply serve the apks from their own websites.
The official download page for WhatsApp provides the apk. Other apps are problematic
https://www.whatsapp.com/download
There are other Android stores. Amazon ran one for the longest time. Many brands have their own app stores as well.
It's the app publishers defaulting to Google that's the biggest issue.
At least WhatsApp has an official APK download, most apps don't.
That said, Google will still let you update apps without being signed in. Hold the Play Store icon to open the quick action menu. From there you can go to "my apps" and update all of the apps on your phone, bypassing the login prompt. Not great, but a workaround that should do the trick while Aurora finds another way to hack their way into the Play Store APIs.
Using lineageos on an old samsung without any google services, I guess this would impact many "degoogled" users as well
Running LOS on some kind of oneplus.
Aurora hasn't worked right for the most part for a year due to device attestation shit.
I'm meh on it. Not being able to install the shit from play store isn't such a bad thing. It is lame as hell that Google is doing their damndest to make apple look user friendly.
Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for providers of apps you may want/need only put them on the Google store. Example: ProtonVPN.
For me anonymous use of Aurora never really worked, and with a google account it still works.
Yep broken on my /e/OS device too.
https://doc.e.foundation/os/apps/app-lounge/ is still working for me
Working again.
Installing apps from Aurora Store still does seem to work, although only occasionally. It is more likely that Google is deploying a new API schema on its Play API endpoint that the app doesn't know how to parse correctly yet.
They'd cripple older versions of the Play Store if they did that, very unlikely
So an app that uses an unofficial API broke when that API changed?
Not news nor "blocking".
What is an "official API"?
Honest question, because AFAIK there's no guarantee or (legal) requirement to support any API. Whether that's fully documented, has SDKs or whether it's something reversed-engineered doesn't matter WRT the support the company owning the API is supposed or required to give.
Or am I wrong there?
An official API is an API described in official documentation and explicitly open to the public, an unofficial one is one not documented publicly and only meant for the company's products.
No API changed. They just, almost for sure, decreased their rate limits.
It affects using Aurora Store "anonymously" because that means using shared accounts, so far higher activity per account.
It's possible they're also detecting contemporary usage of the same account.
But there's a slight chance that it's just due to someone abusing the accounts outside Aurora Store.
If it's rate limits, I wonder if Aurora Store could just download and mirror the apk for the top 40 most popular apps (probably >50% of their downloads) and serve that mirror to most Aurora Store users who click the "download" button? Then for less popular apps they can use the old system.
Things along that line could indeed be a way to lessen the problems
AuroraStore is/was really nice for running purchased games on Android-based game consoles (Retroid Pocket, Ayn Odin, etc.) because a lot of games seem to be incorrectly marked as incompatible with those devices.
Play Store won't let me install them, but AuroraStore will, and most of the time they work fine after that.
For example, I have Balatro running on my Ayn Thor this way.
Annoying but this kinda thing happens every 6 months or so. Sometimes Google starts throttling, other times doing some API checks. Every time the Aurora guys figure out a way around it. They're our heroes <3
Even this particular error ("Server busy, try again later"). I've been seeing over the past weeks but then a few days later it worked again. I'm not too worried. It also happens or me right now indeed.
yeah, nothing new really, last update I had on august 26 without issues, tried yesterday, had issues, so today switched couple of accounts until it worked, been using aurorastore for many years
and in the end I don't really care whether my apps won't get updated anyway, only app which will start bitching about being outdated is whatsapp, which can be for now downloaded directly from whatsapp without playstore (I have also telegram as backup which also allows direct APK download) so not too worried even if Aurora was down for couple of months, I don't use any banking/payment apps in my phone for a reason
Looks like I might start using Aptoide again. I was using it back when I was running de-Googled LineageOS. What's the consensus on it vs. Play Store or F-droid?
https://en.aptoide.com/
Play Store and F-Droid are both official software repositories. I'm not confident the same can be said for Aptiode.
I'm sure I got malware from there, once - it seems rife with illegitimate apps.
For F-Droid apps I don't use their app. I use Neo Store with the Guardian and IzzyOnDroid repos.
Title is: Aurora Store returns a “&$Server busy, please try again later.” error
Okay, it was a bit of clickbait. Didn't expect it to be picked up like this.
Mistake from me: apparently GrapheneOS does not recommend Aurora Store (citation needed). Kind of weird though; it means Google still knows a lot about you, which doesn't seem very privacy conscience.
Google blocking Aurora Store was a conclusion made in the bug thread. It was not my conclusion.
And for the nit pickers: Sailfish OS is not Android, but its emulation layer _is_. :shrug: Even though Sailfish is nice, without its Android layer it is practically unusable.
Funny thing: the 'busy server' problem existed for almost a week. I could download 1 app per day max on my Jolla C2. But just now, now that this thread makes top of Hackernews, everything started working just fine!
> Kind of weird though; it means Google still knows a lot about you, which doesn't seem very privacy conscience.
I remember being in the GrapheneOS room and hearing them directly recommend using Windows 10 over Linux, as it was more secure. They are known to prioritize security over privacy.
Without realizing that a lack of privacy affects your security a lot
Yeah, there's definitely a happy middle ground. I'm a firm believer in gaining a good understanding of your threat model before taking steps to protect it -- quite a surprising amount of people use Qubes, Graphene, Kicksecure and such without really understanding what they want to protect themselves against. In a lot of cases, that just adds unnecessary friction and overcomplexity that ends up doing more harm than good. I was guilty of this myself.
On paper, I'm sure Windows does have stronger userspace and kernel-space protections against intrusion and such, though I most certainly wouldn't use it.
It's not about a middle ground, their idea of security is wrong.
They largely ignore any threat that could come from US agencies, and are very presumptuous about some of their convictions (e.g. that open source is irrelevant for security).
There is a balance to be made, given that there often isn't any ideal option, but they often get that balance assessment wrong, in my opinion.
I appreciate exposing the security weaknesses of other products, but they end up adding threats that they don't have with some of their drastic views.
They (GrapheneOS development team) live and breathe the principled stance you seem to be describing.
They are staunchly against authoritarianism and mechanisms that are vulnerable to government coercion which is why they promote Android IAR and criticise Play App Signing for being mandatory.
I have understood their position to be that software is not automatically secure because it is open source, but being open source is one of the best ways to ensure to maximise attack resiliency (they believe in kerchoff's principle, shallow bugs, collaboration as a pragmatic help to get there not taken for granted or a guarantee). You'd probably be interested to know the founder once proclaimed publicly that they would never work on proprietary software.
Don't pay too much heed to how community members frame things, they are human and get things wrong in service of trying to reduce conversation to specific facts and technical assurances instead of discussing the bigger picture.
GOS's intended audience are those who are in danger of being hacked or persecuted, not privacy conscious users trying to escape surveillance. Google, for all their faults, is pretty unlikely to hack your phone and reveal your secrets.
Does it? For me, updates still fail, but now silently.
Anyone have issues getting Waymo app to work on Graphine OS?
Didn't Epic get some kind of magic injunction saying that Google had to allow open access to the entire Play Store catalogue or something?
But not for everyone for free. What it means is Epic, or anyone like Epic, will be able to write to Google, send a nominal amount of money, and get some API key and bare documentation which is only allowed to be used in Epic. It's a B2B commercial transaction under court-ordered terms, not an open API. Same as the Apple browser API. If you want, you can register a company "Kotakat App Store Inc" and get access to the same terms but you'll probably need to sue Google to make them give you access. Apple hasn't approved any browsers, either.
Nominal being 5.000$ a year, if you mean the Play Catalog access program (https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...)
Also, EU is pushing towards more "open" app-stores through anti-trust.
Not that it requires Google to "open up" their play-store, but that they must allow other app-stores to work on the same level. So basically allowing devs and users to move elsewhere.
Well, i emailed the DMA team at the European Commission, they don't plan to do anything to Keep Android Open.
Apple moved first with making a special 'sideloading' case for apps not under their control, Google is just copying what they did.
No more free sideloading.
They did, but you still have to sign a contract with them to get access.
Update: As of this evening, not an issue for Calyx.
This happened to me but then got fixed the day later
Looks like the same thing is true for Calyx.
Also for AuroraOS on other phones with google services but no signed-in play account.
Calyx funded Aurora's development for a long time, so it's very true
Web Native then. App Stores are lame anyway.
Try and find a category for "open source" apps on any app store.
On F-Droid that's just the entire store.
Remember when people kept justifying Android over Windows Phone/Maemo/WebOS/BlackBerry/FirefoxOS on the grounds that it was free and open source software, infinitely customizable, and that Google was a good-faith partner who wanted openness in the mobile market?
Good times, good times.
AOSP is still open. The problem is nobody wants to bear the (monumental) cost of polishing and convincing brands to allow installing it in THEIR devices. Google was motivated back then for creating an alternative and openness was a good bait.
The fact that no one wants to bear the cost to pre-load it on devices, when combined with the fact that it's not nearly as easy to install OSes on mobile devices as it is on most laptop/desktop/server machines, means that it might as well be closed-source. The point of software is to be executed. If I don't have a good way to execute the software for its intended purpose, I have a collection of ones and zeros, and nothing more.
The window to have a real open mobile OS is starting to close. If there is to be a meaningful change, it must happen soon.
This is exactly why I switched to Android. Running any Linux binary with just a small bit of patchwork to get Xorg running (this was before Wayland) felt like magic. So much power in your pocket, I could plug a keyboard and display into the device and use it as a computer! And internet-connected 24/7! Coming from a literal Nokia where I made some web-apps for the javascript-supported browser (that was already a major leap for a mobile phone), it blew my mind. The sole reason Android blew up is the endless possibilities developers saw (starting with the device manufacturers of course). Now the developers are here, the competitors haven't been competing because who cared about Firefox OS or Windows Mobile even back in 2014, and so Google can do whatever
> Aurora uses burner account for anonymous login. looks like their account pool is flagged
This seems like it was destined to get banned somehow... and I don't think it means that the store itself is blocked, just the pool of accounts they (ab)use.
From bad to worse.
Sadly I'm gonna have to migrate again to an ios device...
/s?
Google becomes more and more evil by the second now.
That’s quite the conclusion to derive from a Gitlab issue. Do you mind sharing your thought process or was that just a knee jerk reaction without any reasoning behind it?
Android distributions that recommend AuroraStore (such as Graphene OS and Sailfish OS) are now mostly blocked by Google Play Store.
Play store works just fine on GrapheneOS. All of play services run in a sandbox.
You can install the Play store from the GrapheneOS App Store.
In fact I'm pretty sure the GrapheneOS folks advise against Aurora Store, etc.
Yeah, was confused. I'm on GrapheneOS and don't even know what Aurora is.
It's an alternative client app for the google store.
The entire point is so you don't have to have a google account. Aurora actually works fine if you do sign in. This is just blocking anon downloads.
Market price for a Google account is about $1.50, you can also buy a burner SIM to set up the maximum number of accounts Google will let you with the same phone number.
You don't need a sim card to make accounts for a phone in the first place. Not sure how, but on android devices they let you make an account without giving them a phone number. Probably because even Google realizes how bad gating application installs on new phones on having a phone number would look.
The problem is that even if you have separate google accounts on each android device, Google can still track you by looking at your contacts.
AuroraStore uses a pool of burner Google Play Store accounts to facilitate anonymous downloads. This is what happens when those burner accounts get flagged.
How does one even create a new google account in $current_year without requiring phone verification or worse?
You could suck it up and do the phone number verification, it usually costs around $5 for a phone number.
Or you could go through the android phone sign-up process which doesn't require one. Buy a cheap android phone and keep resetting it and making a new account each time.
Or you could buy an account on the grey web from someone who already did this. Should be under $2.
If you are really into this you could become a phone company and own a whole block of phone numbers.
The whole point of avoiding the verification in my case is for privacy reasons... I don't want google or anyone else tracking what I do through the use of an account.
> Or you could go through the android phone sign-up process which doesn't require one
This is worse IMO because now the number is associated with that device forever. And unless I'm willing to risk my account to compromise from a future owner of the same number OR device, I must now keep both... forever.
> grey web
I don't want to give them my info either, nor have my account associated with sketchy individuals.
> you could become a phone company
I do own DID blocks but this is unhelpful because google's verification specifically requires SMS over real mobile numbers, and I'm not interested in becoming an MVNO or cellular carrier.
Bad news - Google doesn't need an account to track your app downloadsm
Perhaps you'd be more interested in creating a website that downloads all the apps from the play store using burner accounts and makes them easily anonymously accessible.
GrapheneOS is not sending app downloads to Google that happen outside of Google's apps, which I don't use. And there are other ways to download APKs from the Play Store; EFF even makes their own tool for it, and there are third-party archive sites and alternative non-Google app stores as well.
btw. you can get prepaid physical SIM cards in Czechia for free send by mailbox, you just need some available mailbox wheere you can pick it up, like put Donald Duck sticker on your mailbox and address it to Donald Duck
I used android sign up process to create my other dummy account I use in TV only for smarttube and app updates, that seems like great option if it still works
I'm using my Proton account in my phone and in play store. now i tried adding my proton account in AuroraStore, and it worked flawlessly. so my question: why AuroraStore uses google accounts instead of another providers?
What the hell are you talking about? Proton accounts to access the Play Store?
what happened? if you're trying to say that this is "impossible", its not. But if you're trying to say about privacy, that account I tried is another one of mine. im not stupid to use my primary proton account in my phone.
What are you talking about???
How could an account from a completely different company let you login to Google's Play Store???
You probably mean a Google account that uses your Proton mail address?
GOS recommends play store
They suggest PlayStore if you need to get apps that are only available on the Play Store. They do not recommend it above other options, and have mentioned that they very much disapprove of Play App Signing being mandatory.
I wasn't aware GOS recommended AuroraStore.
They don't. It's unreliable but they have fixed security issues.
Sailfish OS user on Jolla Phone 2: Aurora is working fine here.
P.S. Sailfish OS is NOT an Android distribution. It is a proper Linux system and they have their own custom Android runtime (AppSupport) as a layer on top for running Android apps. This runtime _is_ Android under the hood, but is separate from Sailfish itself (has its own native app ecosystem).
With anonymous login?
Play store works fine on GrapheneOS.