Data isn’t overwritten like that. The keys are deleted so the encrypted data is inaccessible.

And if people want a decoy, they can use a profile. I’m not sure why GrapheneOS has to add a feature for something that can already be done.

You cut out 90% of the security issues when you replace it with Lineage.

That’s not true.

The duress PIN/password feature as is makes getting data off the device impossible. The decoy profile approach means handing an unlocked device over to someone with access to forensics software. They can see the other profiles, logs if they’re still around, and other general data. If the profile’s session was ended, they’d need to unlock it to access the data, but since they’re already logged in there’s a much bigger attack surface. Maybe it would make it easier for them to exploit the secure element and bypass throttling, for example. It’s better to not unlock the device at all, even better if it had rebooted.

It’s more complicated than that. Forensics software can get related data easy enough. Logs and other data will still be there until a reboot. If the device is rebooted, there is the hash that makes it clear it’s GrapheneOS + a huge hard to miss triangle grabbing attention. Developer options is only available in the owner profile, so using another profile for that would be obvious too.

GOS devs don’t let anyone incorporate their code.

False

They also refuse to provide basic functionality like inverted navbar buttons.

This is supported in AOSP now.

Because they’re diva devs.

This doesn’t seem like a mature thing to say just because you want to flip buttons and are annoyed that the privacy and security-focused project didn’t add a feature to flip buttons.

That’s very false. There are other OSes with GrapheneOS code or forks of GrapheneOS.

You don’t need to reinstall as many people have suggested. There are instructions on the website for this https://grapheneos.org/faq#preinstalled-devices. Basically, verify the installation and do a factory reset from Recovery.

I may be misunderstanding, but which push? The open source project was started in 2014 and was named GrapheneOS sometime in 2019. You may be seeing more about GrapheneOS because of the Motorola partnership, CalyxOS dying/being on hiatus (so many of their users switched to GrapheneOS), and recent news pushing people to use more private OSes.

GrapheneOS won’t be affected. The developer verification thing will be handled by another app and won’t be part of the OS. That app won’t have permission to block app installs or anything like that.

GrapheneOS will be fine without F-Droid.

At this point GrapheneOS is big enough that there are people who do pay attention to changes and forks that would notice as well.

Well, the fact is it is impossible to target someone with a modified update. The update client sends no IDs to the server, it just fetches static files and determines whether it needs to update or not. The server only has static files.

thet could, in theory, make a single OTA that everybody gets, but checks for a specific IMEI or other device ID and only there enables some malicious payload.

That would be very obvious in the code. And how would devices be targeted if GrapheneOS project members don’t know the unique IDs because they’re not sent in the first place? There are also community members who build GrapheneOS on their own and check if the builds match because GrapheneOS builds are reproducible. It just isn’t possible. But even if people don’t believe all of that, they can still disable the updater app and sideload updates manually. Instructions are on the website.

That’s because they’re the only ones that meet the project’s requirements at the moment, but that may soon change soon. Maybe you’ve seen the news that the project is in talks with an OEM for them to meet the requirements and have official support for GrapheneOS for some of the existing devices.