TLDR: Drug dealers in Catalonia have started to adopt GrapheneOS en masse leading to Catalan police suspecting anyone with a Google Pixel is a drug dealer
TLDR: Drug dealers in Catalonia have started to adopt GrapheneOS en masse leading to Catalan police suspecting anyone with a Google Pixel is a drug dealer
Doesn’t a Google Pixel device come with its own OS image by default, independent of Graphene OS? Is there some kind of step that we’re missing here?
Yes. Cops are idiots. Duh.
It does, but a lot of people but the pixels specifically to put graphene on it because graphene they’re compatible and graphene offers better privacy and security. What I’m getting here is drug dealers are using graphene to dodge digital narcs and it’s becoming common enough that the Venn diagram skews heavily to drug dealing.
0.1% up to 2% absolute max?
Some data (250k people installing updates)
I mean yeah, I’d say 250k is a lot for a 3rd party phone OS.
The experience speaks for itself. I dont know of anyone who’s ever willingly gone back to stock android either.
You can buy them with either stock Android, or Graphene. Meaning you don’t need to re flash the device or anything.
You cant buy grapheneos preloaded on anything and doing so would be pretty foolish since it could be backdoored. GraphenOS is aimed at people who value security and privacy, you dont let some rando flash your phone if you value those things.
You absolutely can, just not from the manufacturer. But I agree that it’s dumb, installation is easy and doesn’t come with the added risk of the seller putting on some spyware or whatever.