Hello guys. I recently acquired a Pixel 8A and it was Google stock os I bought it from a man locally all with cash I brought It home and I flashed grapheneos onto this phone.
What else needs to be done to anonymous this phone and make it a privacy phone and a spy free phone no tracking phone no interception phone and no monitored phone.
Any advice welcome!
Thanks.
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If you want to be sure you cant be tracked, monitored, spyed on, and calls can’t be intersepted:
Don’t ever connect it to WiFi and don’t insert a sim card.
Graphene or not, your ISP can still share your position or other meta data with government and stuff (in the us they can also be forced to not tell you) - in some countries they legally sell to third party’s, in some probably illegaly
Calls are normally not encrypted so the os doesn’t matter as much if its the government who can force your ISP or if someone is skilled enough for a Man in the middle attack.
Android is a highly complex system, it will never be 100% safe.
If you just want to decrease spying by companies and less powerful people:
Use neo store or fdroid (no google play or aurora) as all apps there are Foss
Don’t install gapps or any other google services/packages
Use shelter for less trusted apps
Use netguard to block apps from accessing the internet
Physically block your cameras
If you want to be absolutely sure no one is recording audio: destroy mics with a needle and connect headset only when you need it
To only use communication apps which are encrypted and you hold the keys should be not needed to be said: matrix, signal, element, xmpp are good, (telegram (normal chats), Facebook, WhatsApp etc is a no go)
So… don’t ever use the Internet?
Can’t be tracked if you never turn it on.
Exactly. If you want to be 100℅ sure you don’t get tracked AT ALL you can’t use the internet.
The second you connect metadata is gained by ISP and all the servers which get called. This can be enough to track you down for powerful entities like the government.
If only your aunt may with a evening school IT course is your threat, a pin and graphene os is probably enough
Also OP mentioned his sim card is registered on his real life name, so having that connected to cellphones is enough to track you if you have a warrant to force your internet service provider to share the information
Well yes, obviously. That’s not something we need to be told.
Without trying to be mean, the generality with which op asks questions let’s me think this need to be said
Ah yes if they don’t specify that they understand that the Internet exists they need to be told it does
“What else needs to be done to anonymous this phone and make it a privacy phone and a spy free phone no tracking phone no interception phone and no monitored phone.”
Obviously they meant to the best of their ability. An air gapped device is clearly not what they wanted. If they did they wouldn’t have asked.
Interpret it how you want. I think it is better to tell that an online phone will never fulfill this demands and risk stating the obvious than just mentioning things he can do and risk him feeling save and acting as the requirements where met, when they are really not
I think they are trying to illustrate the value of being explicit about your threat model.
So if your threat is the network, you can’t use the network. Because the original poster is so vague about what their actual threat is, it could be as simple as use Firefox and an ad blocker, or don’t connect to the network ever for any reason…
Plus: its google/us hardware. They could always hide something in lower level software like drivers or bios.
(Cant find the arricle i was thinking of, maybe false): It was recently discovered that snapdragons pinged their home server when turning on, which was not noticeable in android as it was on a deeper software level
Source for the last paragraph?
Good question. Tried to find it but couldn’t. Think I saw a post linking to an article somewhere here on Lemmy, but can’t find it anymore. So take it with a grain of salt