Murena sells highly insecure devices without basic privacy/security patches or the standard privacy/security model intact. Direct opposite of GrapheneOS in regards to privacy and security. It also lacks the stability and app compatibility of GrapheneOS…
https://xcancel.com/gael_duval/status/1905171960138547267
Murena, the company behind /e/OS, heavily pushes using both an insecure OS and services. Their services lack end-to-end encryption and are the opposite of private. People purchasing their devices are making a huge privacy and security sacrifice compared to simply using an iPhone.
Murena misleads people into wrongly believing that GrapheneOS is harder to use as their CEO is doing there. GrapheneOS has far better app compatibility, far better stability and unlike /e/OS is a serious production quality OS keeping up with updates and keeping things working.
/e/OS is a fork of LineageOS, a volunteer developed project focused on broad device compatibility and power user features rather than privacy or security. /e/OS is a security disaster even compared to LineageOS with far longer update delays and far more security regressions.
Despite all the money Murena makes selling overpriced insecure devices and grifting EU government funds, they aren’t even able to keep their non-end-to-end encrypted services up. Those services were recently down from early October until mid-February. That’s not remotely serious.
Here’s another example of the CEO of Murena replying to a post about GrapheneOS trying to mislead people about it and promote their products:
https://xcancel.com/gael_duval/status/1904097790977810458
Here’s a high quality third party comparison between Android-based operating systems:
https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm
Here’s another on X:
https://xcancel.com/gael_duval/status/1887528529694273590
Gaël Duval consistently misleads people about the ease of obtaining GrapheneOS, app compatibility, usability and privacy. These desperate posts on X, Mastodon and elsewhere are a small fraction of it. It’s Murena’s company policy.
One thought: when I moved to GrapheneOS, I did not understand how it related to my threat model. I attempted to use multiple profiles, as this is a feature that many people who use GrapheneOS value. I had no concept of my real risk, and tried to segregated FOSS from non-FOSS, etc. This IS actually a bit difficult for the layperson vs stock Android. Things like notifications and app installation work differently at the end user level; e.g., use FDroid vs Google Play, no FCM notification functionality and having to manually configure a replacement.
However, the layperson, using a single profile and sandboxed google play, is already better off than any project out there from my understanding. For adoption, that’s what I would be advertising for GrapheneOS. It just needs a one page explanation of the simple features and advantages for the person coming fresh from stock Android, and avoid (on that page only) getting into the tools for more advanced threat models.
There is a new upcoming site which is made by community and some project members that explains this very thing. You may read about their new article here https://github.com/SePrAnd/seprand.github.io/pull/4/files
This is great to see, and should definitely be front and center for new users! At first glance it seems to have good coverage of the things people run into when working with user profiles.
Yeah, I have never bothered setting up different profiles on my phone. Features offered by the sandbox are already pretty good. Per-app folder access permissions is one of my fav.
Other features I use: pin pad scrambling (change the position of the numbers when you enter your pin), auto reboot when no successfully unlock for 8 hours, automatic Bluetooth switch off.