Opinion Platform

Silenced No More

Views on GrapheneOS, Daniel Micay (strcat, strncat, thestinger), and associates

Summary

Recommendation: Avoid like the plague

May 2, 2023

TL;DR: I cannot trust Daniel Micay or most of his followers and brigading partners (archive.org); therefore, I cannot trust GrapheneOS or its online services.

In contemplating the brigading experiences with the GrapheneOS lead and associates documented at this website, I realized I had been lucky until now to avoid the type of online battling the GrapheneOS lead and associates, and many people in general, have grown accustomed to as part of daily life. For me, there is No Facebook, No Instagram, No Reddit, No TikTok, No Twitter, No YouTube; No online social media; No upvoting, downvoting, banning, or comment deleting and opinion suppression. I believe valuable communications include body language, vocal tone and inflection, and lastly the words. To my knowledge, Daniel Micay and GrapheneOS associates spend their time communicating only in text-only words - Twitter, Reddit and Matrix particularly, and it shows. In his own words, Micay avoids attending in-person events (2019) and blames others for it. Of course I know this website is more of the same - written words only, except without comments, voting, or brigading, and with some evidence provided.

In my opinion, the leader of GrapheneOS - Daniel Micay (strcat, strncat, thestinger) - is a bit of a kook and a loose canon, to put it mildly, and his behavior has been harmful to spreading free or open source software and alternative operating systems, and has discouraged cooperation between developers; however, GrapheneOS is somewhat successful, and has a moderate number of followers, users, and wealthy, generous donors. Page views of articles at Wikipedia may be an indicator of popularity. Although not scientific, based on page views, the interest in the base or default Android operating system is about 40 times higher than leading alternative LineageOS, which is about 33% above GrapheneOS. LineageOS statistics say they have about 1.6 million "active" installations, including non-phone installations. Because GrapheneOS only supports newer Google Pixel devices, it certainly has a much smaller number of active installations.

Micay taking things personally and responding with ad hominem attacks (2015), which disrupt discussions, is an old habit. I am not the first to comment on and document this disruptive GrapheneOS brigading behavior in detail (2021).

Despite all this, at least one reputable IT Security person, Mike Kuketz, is a supporter of GrapheneOS, and even gave away phones with it pre-installed. I assume the email communications they received being more respectful than average Micay communications helps with that, and should be a lesson.

This commentary is obviously not a technical review, but I wanted to mention Default Connections, because it has been a subject of recent interest, controversy, and change, and is an example where the definitive statements by GrapheneOS are subject to change, without explanation. In 2019, when GrapheneOS by that name was getting started, the GrapheneOS website said, about Connectivity Checks,

"GrapheneOS leaves these set to the standard four URLs to blend into the crowd of billions of other Android devices with and without Google Mobile Services performing the same empty GET requests. For privacy reasons, it isn't desirable to stand out from the crowd and changing these URLs or even disabling the feature will likely reduce your privacy by giving your device a more unique fingerprint."

More recently in 2023, the GrapheneOS website is more vague,

"By default, the GrapheneOS connectivity check servers are used via the following URLs:..."

"Changing this to the Standard (Google) mode will use the same URLs used by AOSP and the stock OS along with the vast majority of other devices, blending in with billions of other Android devices both with and without Play services:"

Aside: Micay's favorite weasel word is "substantial", as in "substantial harm", "substantial damage", "substantial improvements", "substantial security benefits" or "substantial portion".

Pros:

• Frequent updates - more than one per month, if you believe the updates are important for fixing vulnerability issues; I have doubts.
• A reputation for putting priority on security. I doubt whether the reputation is deserved, or makes a "substantial" difference, but I've seen no reputable, objective information such as independent penetration testing.
• For proprietary Google app users, which does not include me, they support running proprietary Google Play store apps, with claims they improve security and privacy. I don't believe one can run typical apps that need your location, etc., to give you useful information like weather, gasoline prices, or online navigation, without loss of privacy.

Cons:

• For proprietary Google app users, which does not include me, they support running proprietary Google Play store apps, with claims they improve the security and privacy... (see above).
• Community: Leader and followers who view the internet as a battleground, and use any means necessary to push their agenda, including brigading, banning, and blocking. Naturally, they accuse anyone who dares disagree with them of using the same tactics, and worse. Respectful exchange of differing opinions seems to be one of the lesser used tools in their toolkits.
• History of brigading and abusing Wikipedia. Read CopperheadOS and GrapheneOS Edit Histories and Talk Histories, if you have more time to waste or difficulty sleeping.
• Too frequent updates and checks for updates - more than a few checks per day; more than one major operating system update per month, all contacting GrapheneOS systems, subject to their privacy policy, if you can trust them.
• Too much usage of GrapheneOS services as substitutes for usual services used by billions of other Android devices; however, users may be able to change these in Settings. But, why would I trust Micay with this?
• Only supports newer Google Pixel phones.
• Uses Microsoft's proprietary GitHub for development and bug tracking.

Notes

Note 1: The page-top quote statement was referring to a different alternative Android operating system, leader, and "community"; however, it applies equally well to GrapheneOS and associates, based on the experiences documented here at Opinion Platform.

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