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.
Start with the basics. Use a VPN preferable a good one payed in crypto /XMR or cash. Use Foss apps only check out F-droid.
Also one that blocks malware and ads. If not use adguard.dns or other that filter traffic
Settings , disable 2-3 G if you always have access to 4-5 G .
Don’t change add browsers use vanadium. No gapps obviously.
The more challenging is to just use it as WiFi phone without SIM.
Vanadium doesn’t have good/any fingerprinting protection. Cromite or Mull would be better, Tor would be best.
Why would you use Chrome webview plus something else? You can’t replace just pile on. Not a good idea. https://grapheneos.org/usage#web-browsing
Vanadium is purposefully made this way. It tries to minimise profiling by making your actions noise in a big mass of users. That only works if you use the standard config without anything to discern you.
Mull is the other extreme of this. They try to eliminate fingerprinting by reducing the amount of trackable things in your browser.
It’s hard to say what really is the better option. You can’t completely eliminate fingerprinting, and the more you try, the more you will stick out of the masses.
You can’t blend in with a crowd of vanadium users with the amount of data points given away by the browser. Your fingerprint will be decernable from other users. Without actual anti-fingerprinting, which theoretical can allow for a crowd only when fingerprinting of user browsers results in the same fingerprint ID, the best you can hope to do is thwart naive fingerprinting. Vanadium doesn’t have any anti-fingerprint built in, so the slightest differences between user can be used to easily fingerprint. Vanadium also has no strong method of in browser content blocking (eg an adblocker like uBlock) which is required on the modern web to remove JS tracking scripts (or straight allow and deny lists for specific web contents). Adblock is cyber security: https://www.ic3.gov/Media/Y2022/PSA221221
Examples of metrics include, but are not limited to, the following: Timezone, system and browser fonts (often automatically fetched by websites as a remote font that is cached by the browser), language, screen metrics (DPI, height x width, refresh rate, pixel ratio), canvas, CSS fingerprint, useragent, browsing mode (standard/private), video autoplay policy, audio device fingerprinting, installed plugins, cookie policy, device theme, and of course IP.
As a graphene OS vanadium user, assuming that the browser stays default, you would still have screen, audio, other hardware metrics, canvas (this one is a killer), IP, user agent (differences in installed versions of plugins and vanadium itself), timezone, remote Fonts, and others. Fingerprinting is an insane science which needs actual protection against to even begin hoping to create a crowd.
See some more details below.
Info on fingerprinting (about choosing a desktop browser but still relevant info): https://www.privacyguides.org/en/desktop-browsers
Browser comparison: https://divestos.org/pages/browsers
Fingerprinting test site: https://abrahamjuliot.github.io/creepjs/
I have a sim card in this phone. The sim card is one I heavily rely on. I have disabled the option for disable 2G in sims is this good? Even without the LTE mode as my phone doesn’t seem to have this.
I don’t have any crypto / XMR and in this case, shall I just set the DNS you recommended me without any VPN and just always use that? Thanks.
I used adguard.dns before now I have VPN that have DNS filter. Disabling 2-3g minimize attack surface but just a small thing use 3 g if you need it. You can use both private DNA in settings and a free VPN if you want.
Are you recommending I change Preferred network type " to 3G? other options are 4G only 5G ( recommend ) 4G if I use that DNS with what VPN u recommend, and have allow 2g disable am I good?
It’s only an attack surface minimation , security is better on new generations. I use all since I am in the middle of nowhere. If you don’t need it disable it, otherwise let it be