🗓️ 2024‑11‑08 • #Android #Privacy #Security

@Prometheus A Fairphone 4 with /e/ has very poor privacy and absolutely atrocious security. It's years behind on a bunch of important privacy and security patches including having an end-of-life 4.19 kernel without updates available. They lag months behind on partial backports of patches.

/e/ has invasive services of their own including sending user data to OpenAI without consent. Despite their marketing, It always uses Google services and gives Google apps/services privileged access.

@Prometheus /e/ lags far further behind LineageOS on providing major OS updates and partial backports of patches to older releases. Those are far behind the standard pace which is itself far behind GrapheneOS.

LineageOS rolls back privacy and security a fair bit compared to the standard Android Open Source Projects, especially on most devices where many patches are missing. /e/ drastically reduces privacy and security compared to that. /e/ is not simply LineageOS with bundled apps/services.

@Prometheus GrapheneOS is a privacy and security hardened OS greatly improving those compared to the Android Open Source Project. /e/ is the opposite of that and is a far worse option than an iPhone for privacy and security. /e/ is not at all a safe option and it's not a legitimate a privacy project despite being marketed as one. No privacy project it telling users to use their supposedly private speech-to-text service which actually sends their sensitive speech data to OpenAI and much more.

@Prometheus Strongly recommend reading https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/24134-devices-lacking-standard-privacysecurity-patches-and-protections-arent-private and the third party sources linked in there including the posts from Divested Computing, Mike Kuketz and the comparison from Eylenburg.

If you care at all about privacy and security, avoid /e/ and avoid Fairphones. Use an iPhone if you want a device with solid privacy and security without thinking about it. Don't fall for the false marketing of these phony privacy and security products. No device Murena sells is at all safe to use.

@Prometheus Strongly recommend reading https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/24134-devices-lacking-standard-privacysecurity-patches-and-protections-arent-private and the third party sources linked in there including the posts from Divested Computing, Mike Kuketz and the comparison from Eylenburg.

If you care at all about privacy and security, avoid /e/ and avoid Fairphones. Use an iPhone if you want a device with solid privacy and security without thinking about it. Don't fall for the false marketing of these phony privacy and security products. No device Murena sells is at all safe to use.

@Prometheus@infosec.exchange @GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social But that means having to decide if I want a modular of a secure phone, sadly theres none which can do both.

@nyovaya @Prometheus Fairphone 4 and Fairphone 5 already have an end-of-life kernel branch. Even the Fairphone 6 is not receiving proper updates. It's still on the initial yearly release of Android 15 rather than Android 16 QPR2 and still has the November 2025 patch level. Meanwhile, the patches for February 2026 through May 2026 are already nearly fully available for OEMs to ship early and June 2026 is beginning to get filled out now that the March 2026 patches are finalized.

@nyovaya @Prometheus What do you mean by modular? Having official replacement parts available for many years? iPhones and Pixels provide those. That's not really a modular device. It's not as if you can replace the SoC or other components to upgrade it over time and avoid end-of-life. An iPhone or Pixel gets proper update support over the long term while Fairphone fails to provide that even for the first year after launch and it's downhill from there. Samsung flagships get better updates.

@nyovaya @Prometheus What do you mean by modular? Having official replacement parts available for many years? iPhones and Pixels provide those. That's not really a modular device. It's not as if you can replace the SoC or other components to upgrade it over time and avoid end-of-life. An iPhone or Pixel gets proper update support over the long term while Fairphone fails to provide that even for the first year after launch and it's downhill from there. Samsung flagships get better updates.

@nyovaya @Prometheus What do you mean by modular? Having official replacement parts available for many years? iPhones and Pixels provide those. That's not really a modular device. It's not as if you can replace the SoC or other components to upgrade it over time and avoid end-of-life. An iPhone or Pixel gets proper update support over the long term while Fairphone fails to provide that even for the first year after launch and it's downhill from there. Samsung flagships get better updates.

@fun @Prometheus @nyovaya They sell official kits for replacing parts which are expensive and to an extent they prevent using unauthorized parts.