Comment by glorth
13 hours ago
Like many people, my concern is not the hypothetical possibility of a security threat; it is the completely certainty that my data is being collected and monetized by private entities who have access to it "legitimately" (i.e., the technology is designed from the ground up to transmit it against my will).
So, sincere question - how is GrapheneOS superior to /e/ in protecting personal privacy against large corporations?
There is a huge list of issues with /e/OS. Let me just give you a few examples:
Android 17 introduced a local network permission. GrapheneOS ported to Android 17 months ago. LineageOS, which /e/OS is based on just recently started releasing Android 17 updates. /e/OS may not be on Android 17 yet, I haven't checked. So, imagine for months apps have had access to the local network. What can they do with that?
That's just one example of how being far behind on updates can affect privacy.
/e/OS is far less deGoogled than GrapheneOS.
/e/OS lacks features like Storage Scopes, Contacts Scopes, Secure Paste, and sensors permission.
The vast, vast, vast majority of Android devices aren't on Android 17 yet. The update has just started rolling out to 2026 flagships from non-google manufacturers.
So, yes, grapheneos piggybacking on google's support for a single device do give them Android 17 faster. But you're saying that as if lineageos, who supports a vast amount of devices, is being lazy/careless with security by pointing to something that only the Pixel has yet (and grapheneos by association).
The post wasn't about LineageOS. LineageOS rolls back privacy and security compared to AOSP in multiple substantial ways but /e/ rolls both back drastically more. /e/ lags far further behind on both major updates and backported patches than LineageOS, lags far behind on browser engine updates, barely updates the Linux kernel, drivers or firmware at all and adds many privacy invasive services itself. /e/ uses far more Google services than AOSP and gives those highly privileged access along with giving privileged access to Google apps.
The vast majority of Android devices have absolutely atrocious security. It's rapidly getting worse due to AI models accelerating vulnerability discovery and exploitation. It's a complete disaster where there are public local exploits for most Android devices available on GitHub and soon it will be remote exploits too.
Most Android devices being quite insecure doesn't justify products which are increasingly unsafe marketed as being private options. Not keeping up with the updates and relying on increasingly incomplete backports of High and Critical severity patches to older releases is one factor among many, not the whole picture at all.
AOSP hasn't had support for Pixels since the release of Android 16. Pixels are in fact much harder to support than many other devices due to needing to keep up with Android updates including the QPR1 and QPR3 updates which are Pixel exclusive and not pushed to AOSP anymore. LineageOS skipped supporting 10th gen Pixels until recently due to this.
GrapheneOS will keep up with Android updates for the upcoming Motorola flagship too and that's starting out on the Linux 6.18 branch. We'll be porting to new Linux kernel LTS branches ourselves soon long before the devices move themselves. We're in the process of moving to Linux 6.18 for Pixels and we'll port all the devices forward to new versions. That's necessary to avoid the ongoing privacy and security disaster caused by the increasingly incomplete backports of Linux kernel patches to the older LTS branches and Android's GKI LTS branches lagging far behind.
GrapheneOS is a privacy project and heavily improves it with important privacy protections including Contact Scopes, Storage Scopes, secure paste and much more. It preserves all of the standard privacy and security of AOSP while greatly improving upon both. It has major improvements to both privacy and security, but it's also starting from the point of the standard privacy and security being intact.
GrapheneOS doesn't connect to Google servers by default and avoids integrating any privileged access for either Google apps or partial replacements for those. The main operating systems integrating microG included always granted privileged access for microG, Google Play executables downloaded by microG (droidguard) which run with the privileged access it's granted and other Google apps including Android Auto.
https://grapheneos.org/features
/e/ greatly reduces both privacy and security compared to AOSP through not keeping up with standard patches, not providing important standard privacy/security protections and adding problematic services. It lags behind incomplete backports to older releases by many weeks or even months while not fully providing all the patches. They set an inaccurate Android security patch level across devices so users believe they have a lot of patches they don't. Users are also led to believe those are all the Android privacy/security patches when it's a minority of the overall patches due to most not being backported. Firmware, driver and kernel updates are largely not provided by /e/ even when those are available from the vendors including for Pixels. Those have extreme delays when they are provided, often being years behind for Pixels.
/e/ also doesn't keep all of the standard security model intact due to the changes made by LineageOS and /e/.
/e/ also adds a bunch of privacy invasive services along with rolling back privacy and security in many other ways.
https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/24134-devices-lacking-stand...