this post was submitted on 28 May 2024
46 points (91.1% liked)

Privacy

31737 readers
637 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Related communities

Chat rooms

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Dont use system webview as your default browser. Webview is used by apps, your browser can and should be changed if privacy is your goal. Vanadium may be hardened, but it lacks any fingerprinting protection.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)
  1. That makes no sense.
  2. Vanadium have a different approach than trying to block it , blend in instead.
  3. Gecko based browser have crap sandboxing
  4. Again if you have 1 problem adding 1 more makes 2 problems.
[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Your system webview is for in app usage. You aren't browsing the web using your system webview (generally). You can't blend into a crowd if you have no anti-fingerprinting. Firefox does this through RFP by normalizing settings between users, and on mobile there is partial support for screen size normalization through letterboxing. Vanadium isn't special, it is hardened chromium with some specific patches. You cannot form a crowd without special a lot of anti-fingerprint patching. See my other comment for details.

Firefox is missing per-site process isolation. This is theoretical an attack vector in the presence of multiple other major vulnerabilities. It has never been shown to be an attack vector in real world vulnerabilities. Don't call Firefox's sandboxing crap if you don't know why people have said that.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

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

Anti-fingerprinting? By blocking javascript which the half-hearted privacy users can never afford? hahahahaha. Even privacy projects spread dirty javascripts.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Anti-fingerprinting isn't as simple as blocking JavaScript. There are dozens of other parameters. You can fingerprint with pure CSS. When I say anti-fingerprinting is necessary for a crowd, I am referring to data normalization. Like Firefox's Resistant Fingerprinting and letterboxing. I find most of RFP's effects unobtrusive, but it always for a crowd to form in specialized cases. Only Tor browser and Mullvad can reasonably form a crowd.
I dont know what you mean by privacy projects spreading dirty JS. I recommend you read up on actual anti-fingerprinting techniques. Your knowledge of anti/fingerprinting seems limited. Basic anti-fingerprinting is necessary on the modern web, same thing with a content blocker. Security and privacy sometimes come at the cost of convenience, but not always.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

I dont know what you mean by privacy projects spreading dirty JS

They are using js in their websites

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

I read your source and am not convinced. While I do agree that piling on modifications is often fruitless and counterintuitive, Vanadium doesn't have the Fingerprinting protection necessary to create a crowd. At best it can create many islands of crowd for each physical device graphene supports, for each version of the software installed, and only assuming all other method of fingerprinting don't work (for some reason theoretically for the sake of this best case scenario). Read cromite's patch list to see some of the changes needed to produce basic anti-fingerprinting (still not good enough to create a crowd).