As much as I'd love to daily drive an OS like GrapheneOS, the risk of running into apps that use Google Integrity API thereby making it impossible to run those apps on Graphene is too much of an inconvenience.
I took a look at this curated list of bank apps[1] supported on Graphene OS and I'm glad that a large majority of them work on Graphene. However, just my luck that one of the banks I use on this list isn't supported.
In my country, the state is enforcing a lot of essential workflows to be digital-first (and in extreme cases digital-exclusive) and I dread to think needing these services at a critical moment and the choice of my OS making it impossible for me. This is more of a commentary on my government's choices but it's a reality for me.
In any case, I don't think it's practical to go cold turkey and switch to a privacy focused phone without testing waters first to see which of your of workflows break and then reason about the tradeoffs/workarounds.
I do admire folks who use GrapheneOS as a daily driver, I'd like to chat them up if I find them in the wild.
> In my country, the state is enforcing a lot of essential workflows to be digital-first (and in extreme cases digital-exclusive) and I dread to think needing these services at a crticial moment and the choice of my OS making it impossible for me. This is more of a commentary on my government's choices but it's a reality for me.
If my country did this I would get a cheap used device for this purpose and keep it powered off. I refuse to carry a pocket spy for the sake of convenience. I find that it’s rarely an issue.
I worried about that too, but jumped in and it hasn't been an issue at all in two years. Including three bank apps. And it's usually so easy to reset to vanilla Android if you need to that it shouldn't be your moat.
I run GrapheneOS as a daily driver and slowly removed all proprietary software from my device by looking for FOSS alternatives on F-Droid. Luckily, I'm able to access banking and government in a web browser on a dedicated profile.
I do have a second Android device with a stock ROM that I keep turned off in a drawer in case I ever need to use an app that requires Play Integrity in an emergency.
Provided GrapheneOS is cleared by Google to launch it as an "Android" device. Given the kind of changes GrapheneOS packs, it may or may not meet Android's mandatory CCD (compatibility) requirements.
Is the app the only way to access what you need? I've never once install the app of any bank I've ever used (10ish) and never found myself wishing I had.
I've seen a couple of apps try to use Play Integrity, get blocked by GrapheneOS, and keep on running. Maybe I'm being locked out of something, but it's not something I use anyway.
Note that I don't use banking or government apps. If I bank online it's via the web.
Agree that "control" is a much better framing, since it doesn't suggest a need for secrecy and therefore embarrassing/unacceptable/untoward behavior that needs to stay behind drawn window blinds. I'm also fond of "agency" and "digital self-sovereignty" as alternatives.
But fine, I'll be the one to say it: Cloudflare isn't one of the good guys here and as an entity it shouldn't be trusted. It doesn't matter how pure their stated motives appear to be now, or how unmarred their track record is so far. It's a corporation that has control over an ever-increasing share of internet infrastructure, and is susceptible to the same risks as any other tech monopolist basket that we all decide to put our eggs in. Maybe more risky than the others, given how deep in the stack its influence is buried.
What happens when a government forces it to NXDOMAIN porn or put nuisance captchas in front of dissident blogs? Is there some reason people think this one is different?
> I use Cloudflare's DNS because I trust them more than other companies; purely based on their business and how their incentives align
The author fails to mention that they are currently working at Cloudflare, I think that should be made clear otherwise I see it as misleading to the reader, like so many pointed it out, Cloudflare is just a corporation like any other corporation out there...
Until they've been burned by unspoken realities of not owning some piece of their own digital lives, most people will continue to prefer being tenants, rather than owners.
Technology is only the most recent domain in which we can observe the human tendency to prefer the short term, incurious ease and license not to think that tenancy provides over the long term, ongoing work and thorough understanding that ownership demands. To become an owner you need some deeper intrinsically cultivated reason to desire it.
My next low hanging fruit is certainly to make my LLM usage local, my queries contain much more sensitive information than what is mentioned by this post.
In the past I dropped off privacy when it was too inconvenient. For example I dropped protonmail because of bad search, left Linux desktop for Windows due to missing software, etc, I still haven't found the sweet spot for LLMs yet.
For the rest, I'm currently running the full macOS, iOS, safari, Apple passwords and I'm decently happy with this middle ground.
> "I don't need to care about privacy because I have nothing to hide." is an argument that I have heard countless times. I found this argument difficult to counter in the past, yet deep-down I knew the reasoning was flawed.
This one is pretty easy to counter. Just ask the person to hand you their phone and go through their messages and photos. There's no one that wouldn't feel restless about it.
The only thorn in the opine is Cloudflare. Everything looks reasonable but CF. I get that DNS is free, it is OP's employer and registry being offered sans margin but it doesn't make up for the fact that CF is on its way to become the biggest gatekeeper and strangle the freenet if it wishes to do so.
What's the story for maps and POI search on GrapheneOS? I'm assuming using Google Maps is a non-starter since that defeats the whole point of all these privacy protections in the first place.
I use organic maps. I also have a seperate user profile that can not run in the background that has Google maps installed and use that sparingly. I've used it once in the last 6 months.
FYI: NetGuard is an open source rootless firewall for vanilla Android which also allows per-app network access control, for those unable or unwilling to go with other OSs. Works by leveraging Android VPN to block instead of tunneling packets.
Who cares what the average person will go through and do though? We’re each responsible for ourselves and how we choose to go about life, even if vastly differs from the general population.
Ironically, if your setup is too niche (e.g. browsing privacy configuration) you can be easily tracked, though no one will bother, but captcha's will certainly not miss you.
> Tech workers: The only piece of technology in my house is a printer and I keep a gun next to it so I can shoot it if it makes a noise I don't recognize.
One of my computer science professors from MIT has installed a smart home. I was over for a dinner and he told me a story about how he hit a third-party API rate limit on opening his garage door. Apparently, these things aren't self-hosted for the most part.
> Domain: I switched to Cloudflare Registrar recently because they offered a lower price ... I don't think Cloudflare really cares to make money on domain registration.
Well, they don't today.
Speaking of "control", it is bad form to keep both the nameservers and registrar with the same company (think takedown requests / account lockout / etc).
As much as I'd love to daily drive an OS like GrapheneOS, the risk of running into apps that use Google Integrity API thereby making it impossible to run those apps on Graphene is too much of an inconvenience.
I took a look at this curated list of bank apps[1] supported on Graphene OS and I'm glad that a large majority of them work on Graphene. However, just my luck that one of the banks I use on this list isn't supported.
In my country, the state is enforcing a lot of essential workflows to be digital-first (and in extreme cases digital-exclusive) and I dread to think needing these services at a critical moment and the choice of my OS making it impossible for me. This is more of a commentary on my government's choices but it's a reality for me.
In any case, I don't think it's practical to go cold turkey and switch to a privacy focused phone without testing waters first to see which of your of workflows break and then reason about the tradeoffs/workarounds.
I do admire folks who use GrapheneOS as a daily driver, I'd like to chat them up if I find them in the wild.
https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compa...
> In my country, the state is enforcing a lot of essential workflows to be digital-first (and in extreme cases digital-exclusive) and I dread to think needing these services at a crticial moment and the choice of my OS making it impossible for me. This is more of a commentary on my government's choices but it's a reality for me.
If my country did this I would get a cheap used device for this purpose and keep it powered off. I refuse to carry a pocket spy for the sake of convenience. I find that it’s rarely an issue.
I worried about that too, but jumped in and it hasn't been an issue at all in two years. Including three bank apps. And it's usually so easy to reset to vanilla Android if you need to that it shouldn't be your moat.
Same. No issues on any apps for me.
Also, there are almost always alternatives, like the mobile website.
Things like Apple/Google Wallet aren’t significantly superior to a contactless credit/debit card.
About the only bank thing I can think of that actually requires an app is check deposit, which is super rare.
I believe there is some support for the API although its not perfect.
I run GrapheneOS as a daily driver and slowly removed all proprietary software from my device by looking for FOSS alternatives on F-Droid. Luckily, I'm able to access banking and government in a web browser on a dedicated profile.
I do have a second Android device with a stock ROM that I keep turned off in a drawer in case I ever need to use an app that requires Play Integrity in an emergency.
> As much as I'd love to daily drive an OS like GrapheneOS
The Play Integrity shenanigans is mostly on app developers.
That said, good thing GrapheneOS will launch its own Android phone: https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/27687-new-manufacturer-theo... / https://piunikaweb.com/2025/10/13/grapheneos-ending-pixel-ex... / https://www.androidauthority.com/grapheneos-phone-wait-or-bu...
Provided GrapheneOS is cleared by Google to launch it as an "Android" device. Given the kind of changes GrapheneOS packs, it may or may not meet Android's mandatory CCD (compatibility) requirements.
Is the app the only way to access what you need? I've never once install the app of any bank I've ever used (10ish) and never found myself wishing I had.
Same, mostly, one bank I keep an account at to support Zelle payments which they only offer through their app
I've seen a couple of apps try to use Play Integrity, get blocked by GrapheneOS, and keep on running. Maybe I'm being locked out of something, but it's not something I use anyway.
Note that I don't use banking or government apps. If I bank online it's via the web.
Agree that "control" is a much better framing, since it doesn't suggest a need for secrecy and therefore embarrassing/unacceptable/untoward behavior that needs to stay behind drawn window blinds. I'm also fond of "agency" and "digital self-sovereignty" as alternatives.
But fine, I'll be the one to say it: Cloudflare isn't one of the good guys here and as an entity it shouldn't be trusted. It doesn't matter how pure their stated motives appear to be now, or how unmarred their track record is so far. It's a corporation that has control over an ever-increasing share of internet infrastructure, and is susceptible to the same risks as any other tech monopolist basket that we all decide to put our eggs in. Maybe more risky than the others, given how deep in the stack its influence is buried.
What happens when a government forces it to NXDOMAIN porn or put nuisance captchas in front of dissident blogs? Is there some reason people think this one is different?
> Cloudflare isn't one of the good guys here
Came here to say the same thing, post was interesting until I got to that point.
> nuisance captchas
Try using the internet outside of the western world and major hubs. Cloudflare make it so painful with captchas and browser integrity checks
> I use Cloudflare's DNS because I trust them more than other companies; purely based on their business and how their incentives align
The author fails to mention that they are currently working at Cloudflare, I think that should be made clear otherwise I see it as misleading to the reader, like so many pointed it out, Cloudflare is just a corporation like any other corporation out there...
At least of now, they do when around when they talk about DNS
> Instead of "privacy" we really should be talking about "control".
Fantastic. This is what I have been shifting towards these past couple years. Hardly anyone likes to be controlled, right?
I don't but it seems a LOT of people do. They even seem to prefer it.
Control means ownership. Ownership means work.
Until they've been burned by unspoken realities of not owning some piece of their own digital lives, most people will continue to prefer being tenants, rather than owners.
Technology is only the most recent domain in which we can observe the human tendency to prefer the short term, incurious ease and license not to think that tenancy provides over the long term, ongoing work and thorough understanding that ownership demands. To become an owner you need some deeper intrinsically cultivated reason to desire it.
My next low hanging fruit is certainly to make my LLM usage local, my queries contain much more sensitive information than what is mentioned by this post.
In the past I dropped off privacy when it was too inconvenient. For example I dropped protonmail because of bad search, left Linux desktop for Windows due to missing software, etc, I still haven't found the sweet spot for LLMs yet.
For the rest, I'm currently running the full macOS, iOS, safari, Apple passwords and I'm decently happy with this middle ground.
> "I don't need to care about privacy because I have nothing to hide." is an argument that I have heard countless times. I found this argument difficult to counter in the past, yet deep-down I knew the reasoning was flawed.
This one is pretty easy to counter. Just ask the person to hand you their phone and go through their messages and photos. There's no one that wouldn't feel restless about it.
I usually ask if they poop with the door closed. We all know what you are doing in there, and we do the same thing. No need to hide.
Or, why do you get your mail in an envelope? I can see that it is your financial statements.
Why do you have curtains on your home? I can go to Zillow and see the interior of your house from years ago.
I think the better argument is (of course, a wrong one), "I trust that big companies won't share my stuff publicly".
The only thorn in the opine is Cloudflare. Everything looks reasonable but CF. I get that DNS is free, it is OP's employer and registry being offered sans margin but it doesn't make up for the fact that CF is on its way to become the biggest gatekeeper and strangle the freenet if it wishes to do so.
Them being employed by Cloudflare means you should take the article with a grain of salt IMO.
What's the story for maps and POI search on GrapheneOS? I'm assuming using Google Maps is a non-starter since that defeats the whole point of all these privacy protections in the first place.
I use organic maps. I also have a seperate user profile that can not run in the background that has Google maps installed and use that sparingly. I've used it once in the last 6 months.
Take a look at CoMaps. It's fully open source with open governance model.
It reached the level of being usable for general population and it improves rapidly due to gained momentum.
OSMAnd and others can do offline maps and POI search if you want.
You could also run Google Maps web through Tor if needed. Tor is easy to use on Android.
Yeah I think most people use Organic Maps or Magic Earth (with the latter being closed and not as privacy-respecting as the former).
FYI: NetGuard is an open source rootless firewall for vanilla Android which also allows per-app network access control, for those unable or unwilling to go with other OSs. Works by leveraging Android VPN to block instead of tunneling packets.
Doesn't running as a VPN mean it's incompatible with running an actual VPN at the same time? That's a pretty big caveat.
pretty sure by design only one vpn can be running at a time per OS
excellent article, you've inspired me to get off Gmail finally (Google's been sending me angry emails about hitting my storage limit for ages anyway).
side note, your link to Tuta is broken - think it's an internal link by accident
They also wrote "Messanging"
Finally. Someone in the wild that runs passwordstore.org
I thought there was only a couple of us.
The ad blocker is uBlock Origin ... the blog misstates it as uOrigin.
The average person won’t go through even 2% of the trouble. Your self inflicted lockdown is a niche within a niche. I respect it though!
Who cares what the average person will go through and do though? We’re each responsible for ourselves and how we choose to go about life, even if vastly differs from the general population.
Ironically, if your setup is too niche (e.g. browsing privacy configuration) you can be easily tracked, though no one will bother, but captcha's will certainly not miss you.
I mean this article is the spirit of hacker news to me.
This reminds me of the old meme:
> Tech enthusiasts: My entire house is smart.
> Tech workers: The only piece of technology in my house is a printer and I keep a gun next to it so I can shoot it if it makes a noise I don't recognize.
One of my computer science professors from MIT has installed a smart home. I was over for a dinner and he told me a story about how he hit a third-party API rate limit on opening his garage door. Apparently, these things aren't self-hosted for the most part.
> Domain: I switched to Cloudflare Registrar recently because they offered a lower price ... I don't think Cloudflare really cares to make money on domain registration.
Well, they don't today.
Speaking of "control", it is bad form to keep both the nameservers and registrar with the same company (think takedown requests / account lockout / etc).
reminder - there's tech out there capable of reading your mind remotely and non-invasively
Care to elaborate?
For you
- WhatsApp is an exception
For others
- Google is an exception