I like grapheneos the product.
The staff is super abrasive and they constantly attack other privacy projects. See the recent attacks on Jonah from privacy guides, or the attacks on calyx, or the bs with rossman that forced micay out of the spotlight.
They need to hire an outside professional to manage their PR. The way they communicate is their biggest flaw.
FYI- Its not a ROM.
EDIT: for the person down voting a fact - https://x.com/GrapheneOS/status/1588599635337445377
Let be honest, If your threat model is truly to escape the NSA you probably shouldn’t be risking being on social media.
I think part of the reason people dismiss the idea that someone could have that big of a threat model is in most cases it would be unbelievably bad opsec to risk talking about your threat model on social media or something like the privacy guides forum.
“I’ve searched the web for my name, home, and phone number. Haven’t found anything on myself yet.”
All this means is your not very good at finding that info. You even stated there are 53 pending brokers, meaning that info is available online.
“Your information is already out there”
This is kind of an odd line of reasoning to hide behind. One one hand you are willing to pay to have your data removed, on the other hand you don’t mind a service actively handing over data because its “already out there”
Again this isnt specific to easyoptouts. Other data removal services do this as well. It would be less of an issue if once your data is removed its permanent but there is nothing stopping brokers from re-adding you, and now your on the radar of new brokers.
You can go to inteltechniques and peruse their data removal guide. That is basically a massive list of brokers / sites that may have your data.
I think you and your girlfriend should read about “threat modeling”. You need to figure out what you and her are trying to keep private and from whom. Without knowing that, its impossible to say if a VPN is a good solution.
For example if she is trying to hide her web traffic from her ISP then a VPN is a great solution, if she is trying to be annoymous on the web then a VPN won’t do much as you are still easily fingerprintable amongst other things.
People all to often act like privacy is some sort of list of sub items that you can check off like completing a quest in a MMO.
Each individual’s privacy goals are different, privacy is not a one size fits all problem or solution. Your girlfriends needs may be drastically different then your own.
I would break it up into different catagories.
Your interest in digital privacy is something you can use to talk about your interests and what drives you.
The skills you learned from it is something you could use to supplement how you have progressed other relevant skills for your degree or job your applying to. Be specific about what you did and what it taught you and how its relevant.
Way more. Lineage is not a very good rom in terms of privacy and is an awful choice in terms of security. Both Divest and Calyx are better choices.
Lineage as the name implies is best suited for end of life phones that you need to keep working. Which i would avoid anyway as you are not getting any security updates leaving your phone extremely vulnerable.
Ahh i see.
Yeah it really slims down your VPN choices as having an IP address associated with your account makes it much more identifiable. So some providers wont offer them (such as mullvad).
It also usually costs more. The one I know offers a static IP is express VPN and ive heard Proton has plans on offering it. It looks like PIA offers it too.
What would i be searching for that’s so difficult to find that I would pay for Kagi? Especially when there are multiple options for good free search engines.
That’s not how end to end encryption works.
Your scared of a slide to the right but already falling for their propaganda to undermine privacy by destroying encryption.