So I’ve been running GrapheneOS on a Google Pixel 4A for well over a year now in hopes of having found a relatively secure phone, as GrapheneOS is marketed as the most secure and private smartphone OS available.
Graphene only runs on the Google Pixel however (owing to it’s supposedly superior hardware security mitigations), and while I do think that the OS itself is solid, certainly more so than stock Android and probably iOS too, I have always been skeptical about the idea that Google of all companies would build a device that could be configured to offer real security and privacy. That would seem to go directly against their entire ethos, which has basically been the antithesis of privacy.
I have often visited the official GrapheneOS chat channel on Element, and have found it to be useful with alot of very knowledgeable and helpful members there willing to answer questions about installation, configuration etc, and they also have an off topic forum for general tech and security related chat.
Something interesting I have noticed on several occasions though, is that anyone who starts to really publicly question the security of Graphene or the Google Pixel there gets reprimanded quickly, and often ousted entirely from the forum. Any mention of the Snowden disclosures or Prism program will result in an instant ban from the mods. Like they must literally have keyword alerts set up, as ridiculous as that is. I’ve personally been banned there for making statements as benign as “I trust GrapheneOS, but Google, not so much” and “Do you all really believe that Google would build a phone that is truly secure and private? I don’t”.
Given the disclosure and nature of the Prism program, which showed that basically every major tech company was working directly with the NSA to share user data and sometimes even add backdoors to their own products, I think this topic is highly relevant to the discussion of smartphone security. The fact that I and several others on multiple occasions have been swiftly banned from that community for merely bringing this up really makes me question GrapheneOS. I think I need a Librem phone lol.