GrapheneOS responded as follows:
I see that graphene does not endorse rob braxmans products and
services, as a layman i have limited information about privacy and
security so all i can do is try to find trustworthy sources.
His products and services are unsafe including containing actual
backdoors proven by security researchers. Braxman and his community are
the opposite of a trustworthy source as he’s a blatant charlatan and
scammer widely exposed as such by actual experts.
Personally i’ve been watching many of braxmans videos and found alot
of them interesting.
His videos are entertainment which misinforms people. They’re not real
privacy and security content. They’re filled with his fabrications. He
tells people what they want or expert to hear with many false claims and
outrageous fabrications mixed into it.
I have also heared and read many times that grapheneos is currently
the only truly secure and private operating system for mobile. Turns
out to be quiet difficult for me to make up my mind on who to trust,
no offense it’s just a struggle. I will confront the brax community
with the information i got and see how they react.
Go to Privacy Guides or another legitimate privacy community instead of
the community based around a charlatan/scammer.
I’m copy-pasting the last reply from the brax community:
Please stop directing hate from Braxman and his community towards us by
unnecessarily involving him and antagonizing him and his community. We
do not want anything to do with him. He regularly attacks GrapheneOS
with fabrications and libel/bullying towards our team. You’re going to
encourage more of it by doing this.
I’m personally not interested what they say, I’m just a user and if I wanted
privacy from the state I would live without technology in some foerst. For
the time being the cellular network knows my position every moment though
I’m using a 2G phone and I’m captured by thousands of cameras every day,
both state owned and other people’s normie phone cameras. I’m already
included in millions of other people’s photos and especially kids’ who
upload them directly to Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.
Nothing of value said here. Privacy and security nihilism is a way
people are convinced they can’t make meaningful improvements to their
privacy and security when they absolutely can. Braxman heavily engages
in this and presents his unsafe products/services as the solution to
profit from it. By consuming he’s content, you’re misinforming yourself
more and more.
Ask Rob the details about the Titan M chip or watch his past videos about
that.
They’re blatant fabrications with no basis.
Also ask Graphene what do they know about Google’s SoC and its interaction
with Titan below the level of the Linux kernel and about Google’s binary
blobs.
There’s no basis for claiming this hardware is worse than bottom of the
barrel MediaTek hardware. MediaTek has included actual backdoors in
their products rather than people making illogical and baseless claims
of it.
Another thing is that Google started locking down more code than usual for
the Pixel devices starting from Android 16 and this is why some
distributions like Calyx had paused temporarily and they try to work it out.
This is not true. Calyx had all 3 of their core developers leave along
with the leader of the organization.
Soon Pixels will probably be a solution to be avoided for privacy and
probably the whole degoogled scene will be in trouble with what is coming in
terms of surveillance and digital ID.
This is absolutely nonsense with no basis. It’s based around Braxman’s
outright fabrications to promote his products.
I personally don’t like to hold a device built by Google with its own chips
who is also building the OS itself.
How is Google worse than any of these other companies? Do you want to
use hardware from a company known to include actual backdoors and from
Braxman who is also proven to have backdoors in his products/services?
They have no substance behind any of their claims. They’re only telling
you want you want to hear and think is true based on bias rather than
critical thinking. What’s the actual basis for claiming the most secure
Android devices with the only proper deployment of updates and
hardware-based security features in the Android world are worse than
companies with far worse privacy and security practices? It doesn’t have
a basis, it’s just ignorance.
Practically I don’t consider GrapheneOS Pixel or Brax3 different in terms of
privacy, it’s just a matter of taste.
This is an outrageously false claim. You’re not going to get the truth
from the community based around scam products/services.
Hello again, i’m still struggling to understand the nature of the situation
between grapheneos and brax, what is the truth?
You should buy an iPhone and use Advanced Data Protection with Apple
services because you’re only going to harm yourself trying to do better
than that high bar.
Please stop involving Braxman and his community in anything to do with
GrapheneOS.
As a layman i don’t have much technical knowledge and thus can only attempt
to make up my mind through listening to each party and see who has the most
logical arguments.
If you can’t figure out that Braxman is a scammer including by getting
information from reliable sources about him, you should really just stop
and go with an iPhone.
Here is what the brax community responded after i shared the email
conversation with them,
Why are you going to Braxman’s community rather than a neutral place
such as Privacy Guides with informed people? You’re going to people who
have been duped by a scammer or are directly involved in his scams.
We spent time writing replies to you in order to protect you from being
misled and scammed. Why are you involving Braxman and his supporters in
a way that’s going to result in more harassment and libel being directed
our way and further harming the GrapheneOS project?
This is an blaming war that Graphene people started years ago.
Braxman has been spreading fabrications about privacy and security for
years. He has been selling unsafe products and services scamming people
into buying them for years. He regularly misled people about GrapheneOS
with misinformation and has targeted our team with libel and harassment
in order to try to harm it and promote his products.
We have asked them as users to port Graphene to Brax3 but they refuse.
We aren’t going to support an extraordinarily insecure and non-private
device which cannot come anywhere close to meeting our privacy and
security requirements. It’s the opposite of the kind of hardware we want
for GrapheneOS.
Rob has admitted that Graphene has good security patches but security and
privacy are different things.
This is a completely bogus claim and one of the many examples of Braxman
engaging in blatant fabrications. GrapheneOS is a privacy project. It
has major privacy improvements including Storage Scopes, Contact Scopes,
Sensors toggle, Network toggle, per-connection Wi-Fi privacy including
but not limited to per-connection MAC randomization, fixes for all 5 of
the known Android VPN leaks not tied to Private DNS, many improvements
fixing data leaks to applications, networks, services, etc. and far
more.
Privacy depends on security so GrapheneOS so GrapheneOS heavily works on
security in order to protect privacy.
Security has to do with physical attacks, that is someone holds the device
in his hands, while privacy has to do with surveillance from big tech
corporations which is countered by the combination of a private device and
the behavior of the user like in the case of Tor and VPNs.
This is absolute nonsense. Security against physical attacks for
extracting data is a very tiny part of overall security. Security is
most important for protecting against apps and websites for regular
users. It’s also needed to protect from remote attacks. There are very
widespread exploit tools for already patched vulnerabilities.
The accusations about leaking cryptographic keys is not something that I can
verify.
It’s proven that Braxman’s products/services have repeatedly included
actual backdoors.
Graphene runs only on Google devices and that is quite concerning since you
can’t know what Google has incorporated in the SoC and the Titan chip has an
ID that can identify uniquely your device.
MediaTek has repeatedly shipped actual backdoors in their products which
is a proven fact. MediaTek is known for making very low security
hardware, and the BraX3 is a particularly low security form of it. It
also has horrible privacy too, not just due to the poor security but due
to lack of basic privacy and security patches.
The claim about iPhone is completely ridiculous, iPhone is constantly
reporting to Apple what you are doing on the device, the same as a normal
Android device does with Google.
Both of these claims is nonsense. Neither is spying on you in the way
this person is claiming. On the other hand, MediaTek and Braxman have
both included actual backdoors in their products.
Security is a totally different thing and maybe iPhone is indeed the most
secure device since nobody outside Apple knows the source code or how the
hardware works.
iPhones provides far stronger privacy against websites, apps and from
Apple themselves when using end-to-end encryption vs. what Braxman is
peddling to people.
In the case of the authorities the situation is different since the
government could ask Apple to unlock the device and the story ends there
while with a degoogled phone they will have to hack it some way or force you
to give the password.
No, that’s extraordinarily inaccurate. Apple does not have the
capability to do that and it’s not how encryption is implemented.
You really can’t tell you’re being misled with fabrications?