Comment on Fairphone 6 Teardown: Proof Phones Don’t Have to Be Disposable
slauraure@beehaw.org 2 days agoNot in the market to change phones now, but always considering options in case I urgently need to replace it due to catastrophic failure (and fear of making an uninformed choice due to urgency).
With that said, I have an iphone 11 right now with lockdown, stolen device protection, cloud encryption, and FIDO keys enrolled and it feels very secure whilst still letting me use banking apps normally etc. How does /e/OS compare to something like that and how vulnerable is it to being plugged in and downloaded or wormed by malicious actors, zero-click SMS attacks etc?
pasdechance@jlai.lu 2 days ago
I don’t have any of these devices, but Android devices do have lockdown and stolen phone protection if you use a Google account. Same, there is anti-phishing FIDO, etc…
The alternative ROMs for Android devices are based on Android, but there are users that do no want any Google in their phone and that takes away a few functions (like find my phone stuff [correct me if I’m wrong here]).
GrapheneOS is the strict option and locks the bootloader. e/OS can relock the bootloader on official builds. An unlocked bootloader is a security risk.
Different ROMs have different issues when it comes to banking apps or biometrics.
I don’t use an alternative ROM, but I use an Android phone without a Google account. The most concerning missing function is find my phone, but there is an app for that.
If someone has your phone and it isn’t locked, they can potentially connect it to a computer and extract info. A locked Android device, like a locked iPhone, increases friction for whoever is trying to access the device. Relying solely on what I’ve read, iPhones are far more annoying to gain access to.
slauraure@beehaw.org 2 days ago
Thanks this is very detailed! Don’t feel compelled to answer any follow-up questions (but you are welcome to!). Just wanna discuss with whoever has opinions and knowledge about it.
One question about lockdown mode on Android though. This means you can’t unlock using biometrics, so you can’t be forced to unlock? On iOS it means it won’t render a lot of scripts and images with tracking on websites, emails, SMS, apps etc. as to make it much harder to exploit anything remotely. I’m wondering if such a feature exists on Android too. I don’t care that lots of websites look janky, I just feel safer knowing most exploits won’t work.
I used LineageOS before my last phone crapped out on me. Ironically I needed to root my phone and use Magisk to hide root in order to make banking apps work. Because the bootloader had been unlocked it failed some google checks or something. Original software support was a pitiful 18 months, so kind of had to go custom rom too.
Carrot@lemmy.today 2 days ago
Not who you were talking to, but I use GrapheneOS on a Pixel 9. I don’t know if there’s a “lockdown” mode, but I have my phone set up where I can’t use biometrics to unlock the phone, but can use biometrics to log into my apps. As for the website/email based attacks, these are mostly rendered useless with the GrapheneOS subproject Vanadium, which is their security-hardened web browser, that I use by default. (grapheneos.org/usage#web-browsing)
I have a bunch of banking apps (chase, discover, american express, citi bank, ally, and my local bank) and while I did need to turn off some of the more extreme safety features for some of those apps (GrapheneOS has a toggle for them on a per-app basis), all of them work without Google Play Services, something I don’t have installed. Some of my other bills apps don’t work even with that setting turned on (student loans, local utilities, home loan, etc.) But I just add a link to their website to my home screen and it doesn’t really change my experience much. Also all my work apps (Slack, proprietary apps) have worked without Google Play Services. However, a bunch of apps do require google play services, and for my use cases most can be replaced with the website link, some can’t. Google Maps is the biggest one, and while I have devised a way to get the great search from Google Maps anonymously through TOR and import the coordinates into CoMaps (FOSS alternative map app), that’s the last part of my phone use that is still a pretty significant inconvenience.
Any app that needs the stricter security turned off gets put in a separate user on my phone, that can’t run in the background, to prevent any shenanigans there as well.
For all my security needs, I haven’t found a mobile OS that does everything I wanted as low-hassle as GrapheneOS, and I’ve tried a bunch.
slauraure@beehaw.org 1 day ago
Wow, thanks for sharing. This is very detailed. So you tried Calyx, Copperhead etc. too?
The biggest thing turning me off most of these security-oriented roms is having to buy a Pixel. I kind of don’t want to go from one American big tech phone to another.