Yes removing Google Play services will reduce the spying that Google does on you but the mobile company can still possibly spy on you. How do I check that my phone has a randomized MAC address or not?

Sorry for a late reply. The grapheneOS seems to have a problem with not a very welcoming community but their OS is still good with all the security and privacy features that it comes with? If it is not Google Pixel + GrapheneOS that is the most private way of using a mobile phone then what is the most private way? I see this set up recommended in almost every privacy community including this thread.

Thanks. DivestOS is a fork of LineageOS. Website: https://divestos.org/

Madaidan’s article also seems to recommend Pixel + GrapheneOS. Would there be any significant difference between Pixel 3, 4 or 5 when it comes to privacy? Asking since, Pixel 5 costs more than 4 and 3 and whether it would be worth paying an extra hundreds of dollars for the latest Pixel.

Unfortunately privacy and convenience generally just don’t go together and the convenience factor along with the mentality of “nothing to hide, nothing to fear” makes people just go for the most privacy violating stuff and arguing about privacy with those who have that mindset is just not easy either.

This is interesting to hear. So research finds no presence of any backdoors on the TITAN M chips of Google pixel phones. I wanted to buy a new smartphone which is more private and so far the most private OSes are only supported for pixel phones. On a sidenote, how does the GrapheneOS compare to other OSes like the LineageOS or DivestOS?

For me it would be enough that big corps not taking my data or tracking any of my activities. With degoogling you can only decrease the amount of spying that big corps do instead of completely eliminating it?

Librem seems very expensive ranging from $1200-2000. Can’t afford that, I would want something less than $500 and if more preferably to be under $350. Would sticking to android that’s already installed and degoogling it be really enough when it comes to privacy?

Either Pinephone or Pixel + GrapheneOS are the way to go?

Discord is really bad for your privacy. They collect a lot of your data. They do not even allow you to register an account under Tor or VPNs, if you try to do so, they will block you and ask you for your phone number.

The ongoing rampant bigotry on any larger subreddit. Reddit is a hub of misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, racism etc. and the annoying ads as well but luckily ublock origin comes to rescue. You know what I remember something, when I was editing my avatar on Reddit, in just 10 minutes, ublock origin blocked about 22000 ads for me. Yes over 22000 ads.

Woah, it looks quite affordable as well at $220. It isn’t so super costly like librem or system76 laptops whose costs can easily exceed $1500.

This is a very deeply detailed guide. I loved it. Read this once although I just skimmed it mostly.

Capitalism and privacy violation go hand in hand.

Thanks! So for after creating a string general.useragent.override and after creating that string in about:config, I should put a value. What’s the value to be put in to make sites think that I am using Google Chrome on Windows?

What if you use a VPN connected to a country with GDPR protections to send them emails? To them it would seem like you are living in a country with GDPR protections if they look at the IP address from the email you sent.

How do you change your user agent header? Which extensions are required for that? Can you change it without extensions as well? I think using too many extensions would make my browser fingerprint more unique instead

There is a setting that makes websites detect that you are using Windows instead of Linux?

Yeah it depends on your threat model but even if you have the right hardware, it would still be pretty hard if you are a newbie who say, has recently switched to Linux.

The only problem with Qubes + Whonix combination is well it’s not newbie friendly at all.

That would be almost impossible to do I think but yeah a lot of new right wing subreddits or their allies aren’t tagged, the list hasn’t been updated for a long time.

Masstagger really needs an update. IIRC, they did not update the list of right-wing subreddits.