I know Helium still supports V2 extensions including being bundled with uBlock Origin pre-installed. That and Brave are the only ones I really use or recommend so I can’t account for anything else.

What do you mean? Manifest v2 and v3 are still available in other Chromium browsers

Not that i don’t wish there were more than 3 browser engines, but in practice right now it does not matter. Chromium isn’t a bad engine, but Chrome is a bad browser because Google shoves their shit into it. The open source Chromium parts are fine.

Definitely GrapheneOS.

Re-Google Maps: I use Here We Go, it is much better than the open street maps apps, has live traffic data, and reviews. Unfortunately needs to be downloaded from Play Store for use with Android Auto though (not even Aurora works).

I recommend using a separate user profile for work.

Preaching to the choir here buddy

If there’s one thing GrapheneOS is good at, it is calling people out.

Based

Do you want push notifications from your browser? If so, then probably. Unified Push is a trusted, commonly used alternative to Play Services push notifications.

The problem with universal clients like that is that it inherently breaks encryption, shares it with a third party, and then MAYBE re-encrypts it correctly. And it does not prevent the third parties like Discord or whatnot from having access to your messages just because you run it through Beeper. It still goes through them. It’s not even particularly more convenient. You still have to create an account with the other provider, and often times this can only be done by downloading the app.

So there are a lot of downsides, and the only upside is not having as many apps installed, and I doubt you’re hurting THAT bad for storage.

It’s cool because online based chats have more features but are more susceptible to enshittification. A federated, online based, encrypted open standard like Matrix is the future.

Congrats! I know too many foreigners to get rid of WhatsApp. I try to count my blessings that it’s not WeChat or Facebook Messenger that inexplicably became popular worldwide.

It’s sort of a loaded question. Depends on threat model and what you’re trying to accomplish. Apple is frequently the “good enough… I guess” privacy and security choice, believe it or not, but heavily skewed towards security. And at the end of the day, iPhone privacy comes with an asterisk that Apple may keep others from spying at a mildly acceptable level, but Apple themselves will know a LOT about you. iMessage is E2EE (from iPhone to iPhone) but do you trust the trillion dollar company to not have a backdoor? I don’t, they’ve proven they scan content in messages.

You can mitigate privacy AND security concerns with GrapheneOS on Android. I do this and use JMP instead of Google Messages/RCS. This is the move on GrapheneOS, because Google Messages/RCS is not fully implemented, and hotfixes often break due to Google’s changes. You could also try a Linux phone, but usability has mixed reviews. These are the best options.

If that’s not an option, it’s almost better to just stick with iPhone, since other custom ROMs often have security tradeoffs in the name of privacy, and stock Android has HUGE privacy tradeoffs in the name of security.

So, assuming you are sticking with iPhone. iMessage is more secure than SMS, no doubt there. And since SMS security is not there, the privacy of the content of the messages are in question if it is intercepted. Although, these days, intercepting SMS usually require a targeted attack, and targeted attacks are almost always through social engineering. Note that iMessage will also use SMS if texting a non iPhone. But it is more common to go iPhone to iPhone vs using an app with XMPP to another app using XMPP, so in practice iMessage is more secure. Features are slightly better on iMessage. Sometimes I miss being able to edit my texts, not having them be split up into multiple messages, and group chat is slightly simpler (assuming everyone is on iMessage, if not it goes right back to the same functionality)

Are you worried about approximate location data from your mobile provider? If so, JMP is a great choice for that, since you can sign up for some carriers anonymously, and you won’t be using the phone number they provide to you. You can even get a data only Sim card. JMP almost entirely prevents SIM swaps. It’s harder for governments to pull your cellular location data and tie it to you, though they can get it from Apple depending on the situation and if they know to look specifically for you. Some websites scan your device info, which can include your SIM phone number. Even JMP itself, when I went to sign up, offered me numbers to choose from that were the same area code as my SIM card number. Only…I specifically picked an area code for a state I’ve never been to. So if you use that SIM number, many sites that will be able to tie it to your real name from public records or people search sites. Lastly, JMP can give you multiple numbers for half the price of the first, which can be pretty useful for dating new people you don’t trust yet, spam, restaurant wait lists, calling a company anonymously, selling stuff locally, etc.

Money wise it is about the same. JMP costs extra money on top of your separate SIM bill, but since you don’t care about your SIM number, you can constantly get new customer deals that usually last up to a year, and further obscures your cellular location history.

All of this assumes you have a factory unlocked phone. If it is locked to a big name carrier, it becomes harder to sign up anonymously. If you have a carrier locked phone, may as well stick with iMessage.

Tl;Dr: JMP is a fairly significant privacy boost at a slight security decrease and slight feature loss, but there’s a lot more to it.

I wouldn’t say it is irrelevant when there is a worldwide push towards authoritarianism and countless examples of unreasonable search and seizure.

Plus, everyone has their own threat model. It’s almost a meme in the privacy community, but there’s a reason threat modeling and prioritization is step #1. It may not be a big concern to you (in your opinion), but imagine if it didn’t exist for someone who needs it.

Depends on what features you need. For some people the whole idea is that you can take and make calls on your watch, as well as messaging. Sometimes the health tracking stuff requires a proprietary app instead of Gadget Bridge.

The most private watches are glorified notification machines. I got my wife a Garmin Venu and she uses their app. It’s not perfect but they’re fairly private as far as smart watches go. She needs all the bells and whistles so that’s the best I was able to find that is high end.

Remember that time you trusted a fart that you shouldn’t have while doing a presentation in front of the class? IT WAS ME BARRY! I WAS THE SHART IN YOUR PANTS!

That sounds wildly unnecessary and resource intensive tbh. You’re already trusting their software, but you don’t trust…what? Their server security? Their signing process? Their honesty about the open source code being what you’re downloading? I’m really struggling to understand your thought process here.

But then I wouldn’t have been able to make this meme.

I get you, I wasn’t being sarcastic. Going through something difficult has a way of bringing people together, especially if you still love it after the effort.

Hm yeah that blows.