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Smartphone Hardening. Privacy advice?
(lemmy.today)
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this post was submitted on 04 May 2025
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Privacy
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If you are looking for a hardened phone, I would consider trying GrapheneOS for a bit, see if it does what you are looking for. Uses SELinux and a seccomp-bpf policy for app sandboxing, as well as runs a hardened kernel with a hardened memory alloc. Great isolation approach, too, so that you can run apps on a 'completely different phone,' so to speak -- think of the isolation like a small version of the OS that can keep apps entirely separate. Finally, if desired (and needed for certain apps), you can sandbox all Google services so that they don't have direct access. It's is a different approach to, say, microG.
GrapheneOS is all about hardening. Security is solid.
VPN wise, Mullvad wireguard servers are also solid. You can do multihops, which help you obsfucate traffic to degree. They have also been playing around with packet shaping (if you use their app directly).
Sim cards can be swapped out if use a VoIP service like jmp.chat.
What is the best thing to do with Calyxos smart phone for privacy, and anonymity. ? Like how to achieve this simply, and also, what VPN should I use if I stay with Calyxos in my Pixel 8A?
As a calyxOS user, if your key concerns are security and device hardening, I'd recommend you just make a seedvault backup and switch to graphene.
The two projects have somewhat different scopes and I don't think you'll achieve the same degree of sw security on calyx.
I prefer Calyxos. over Grapheneos, hence, I'm seeking the most appropriate way to make my Pixel 8a Calyxos phone an Anonymity, a Safe phone.
I want the advice, and want to know what my options are if I stick with calyxos.
Also, recommend settings/configuration guides.
I feel that, I just wanted to set your expectations. I prefer and will continue to use CalyxOS but I have no expectation that they will deliver the same level of protections/mitigations at the OS side as Graphene given their project scope is different.
CalyxOS aims for a private, yet simple (attainable) Android experience, and I align more closely with their ideology on having a FOSS replacement for Google Play Services in MicroG.
I suppose one thing you could levarage is work profiles on Calyx to "jail" apps you do not trust, though I'm not sure that meaningfully builds upon Android 15s own application sandboxing.
Perhaps as a long term goal you could look into making a custom fork of CalyxOS for your device and incorporating parts of Graphene's hardening but this will be a lot of work.
There's no shortcut you can use to achieve things simply, especially if you want actual anonymity (an extremely high bar). Installing GrapheneOS is the bare minimum (Calyx doesn't even come close). Then you need to avoid services that ask for personally identifiable info, use VPN for everything (and use public wifi for initial setup), avoid a KYC SIM or SIM in general (also use airplane mode / wifi whenever you can).
But really I'm guessing you don't actually need proper anonymity (privacy in general is more reasonable).