Mastodawn

GrapheneOS Jul 19, 2025

Apple and Google both provide support for offline speech-to-text using local models. Users can configure it to be fully offline.

The Murena Voice to Text service in /e/OS sends the user's audio to OpenAI which is hidden away in their terms of service:

https://community.e.foundation/t/voice-to-text-feature-using-open-ai/70509

Voice to Text feature using Open AI

Thank you a lot for your positive and supporting comments about our new /e/OS Voice-to-text! Regarding its implementation in /e/OS, I’d like to explain a few things to explain why we have chosen an OpenAI STT API to implement it and how it’s going to evolve in the future: What we have learned from our experimentations with STT models that run locally on the smartphone for speech recognition: they work quite poorly, they make a lot of mistakes in voice recognition they are not able to mix la...

/e/OS community

GrapheneOS Jul 19, 2025

/e/OS is heavily marketed as private but in reality it has enormous privacy issues like this with their default apps and services. It's also heavily marketed as avoiding Google services but yet has privileged integration for Google services and connects to multiple by default.

GrapheneOS Jul 19, 2025

/e/OS doesn't keep up with basic privacy or security patches for the OS or browser engine used not only for the default browser but also the WebView used by many apps including email clients and far more for rendering web-based content. For more info see https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/24134-devices-lacking-standard-privacysecurity-patches-and-protections-arent-private.

Devices lacking standard privacy/security patches and protections aren't private - GrapheneOS Discussion Forum

GrapheneOS discussion forum

GrapheneOS Discussion Forum

GrapheneOS Jul 19, 2025

/e/OS is not a threat to mass surveillance but rather significantly helps with it by making exploiting devices to extract data or take remote control over them far easier. They do not keep up with basic High and Critical severity patches. All devices sold by Murena are insecure.

GrapheneOS Jul 19, 2025

Even on Pixels, /e/OS is extremely far behind on providing the current High and Critical severity privacy and security patches due to being so far behind on OS updates. They mislead users by setting a fake security patch level and changing the UI to mask what's happening.

Murena is a for-profit company and /e/OS is very clearly built and managed for the benefit of Murena. Despite this, /e/OS receives a huge amount of EU government funding. If you're an EU taxpayer, your money is being used to build this extraordinarily insecure and non-private OS.

s94 Jul 19, 2025

@GrapheneOS false !

s94 Jul 19, 2025

@GrapheneOS please consider murena with respect. But your rom is interesting too. /e/OS has Advanced Privacy, a unique app to manage app tracking.

GrapheneOS Jul 19, 2025

@s94 /e/OS is an extraordinarily insecure and non-private OS. The feature you're talking about heavily misrepresents what it does and doesn't prevent app tracking as it claims. What they provide is a poor implementation of DNS-based filtering to block connections not required for apps to function. The vast majority of privacy invasive behavior is left intact. It's also trivial for apps to fully bypass it for anything they want to do, and many apps do bypass it already.

GrapheneOS Jul 19, 2025

@s94 /e/OS is receiving millions of dollars in EU government funding. /e/OS is built and managed for the benefit of Murena, a for-profit company. /e/OS has the same leadership as Murena. What about this do you think is false?

s94 Jul 19, 2025

@GrapheneOS Murena allows Ungoogled Android and open source to be democratized and accessible for everyone. It's maybe not perfect, but they have good intention and you can't disrespect them like that.

GrapheneOS Jul 19, 2025

@s94 No, Murena is scamming people at a large scale for profit. They're pretending to provide a private OS which is in reality not at all private. We've explained how it lacks the most basic privacy and security. It even sends sensitive user data to OpenAI without informing users, which is far worse than how Apple and Google are handling speech-to-text from a privacy perspective.

Contrary to their marketing, it gives extensive privileged access to Google services and always connects to them.

GrapheneOS Jul 19, 2025

@s94 Murena do not have good intentions. They're a for-profit company selling people fake privacy products and services. What they care about is money. They've set things up in a way that they can get a bunch of government funding to build the product as if it's a non-profit in order to sell that from their for-profit company.

What they're providing is much worse than people simply using an iPhone. It's worse than using stock Android on a device receiving monthly backports or OS updates...

richarddebruin Jul 19, 2025

@GrapheneOS Euh ... Grapheneos you put put a shame on yourself reaction like this. There is /e/Os, calyxos, lineageos, etc. Everybody can choose for themself. Thuis looks a bit like the Linux distro war. Thatcher distro better, that distro gets money. Focus on yourself and stop creating posts like this. It will not bring you a step further and it is just negative energy.

GrapheneOS Jul 19, 2025

@richarddebruin We're providing accurate information in response to /e/OS spending years spreading misinformation to mislead people about GrapheneOS. Other groups have done that too. This has caused substantial harm to our project and our team. In particular, the fabricated stories about our team and personal attacks such as baselessly claiming our founder is crazy and delusional have heavily contributed to harassment. The founder of /e/OS and Murena has directly participated in that too.

GrapheneOS Jul 19, 2025

@richarddebruin We've responded to GrapheneOS and our team being heavily lied about with accurate and verifiable information. Many people have been helped and steered away from using highly insecure and non-private products because of what we've posted. There are many responses saying so. What we posted improved privacy and security for people who are now going to make a better choice. Not everyone realizes that those operating systems reduce rather than improving privacy and security.

deFraid Jul 19, 2025

@GrapheneOS @richarddebruin motherfucker your OS only run on google pixel devices and you're punching down those who supports fairphone and many others ? REALLY ? You élitist bitch, did you audit the SOCs on pixel devices? You'd better

GrapheneOS Jul 19, 2025

@defred @richarddebruin /e/OS and Murena are scammers causing substantial harm to people through selling them extraordinarily insecure and non-private devices. It's a blatant grift for profit, not a serious attempt to provide people with better privacy or security. They do the opposite of that.

We currently support every device meeting the very reasonable requirements listed at https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices. The purpose of GrapheneOS is providing people with privacy, not scamming them like /e/OS.

GrapheneOS Frequently Asked Questions

Answers to frequently asked questions about GrapheneOS.

GrapheneOS

GrapheneOS Jul 19, 2025

@defred @richarddebruin We're not willing to have insecure devices unable to protect people's privacy and security in order to expand usage share of GrapheneOS and get more donations. Instead, we're working with an OEM to have their devices meeting our requirements. Broad device support is directly counter to providing privacy and security. Selling devices not being provided with basic privacy and security patches including end-of-life devices as a privacy product is blatantly scamming them.

deFraid Jul 19, 2025

@GrapheneOS @richarddebruin yet you can't guarantee that either.

GrapheneOS Jul 19, 2025

@defred @richarddebruin /e/OS does not provide basic Android and Chromium privacy/security patches without huge delays while misleading users about it. They outright fail to ship huge portions of the patches for many months or even years. They substantially roll back the standard privacy/security model and features too. They aren't doing the bare minimum to protect user privacy and security. They're streaming's people microphone audio to OpenAI without telling them beyond a Terms of Use...

imnobody Jul 19, 2025

@defred @GrapheneOS @richarddebruin “lets be afraid about a backdoor in the Hardware of Pixels with no evidence supporting that claim other than FUD and prefer the phone with an open frontdoor, no roof and smashed windows”🙄😭

deFraid Jul 19, 2025

@imnobody @GrapheneOS @richarddebruin FUD ? google, just sayin', wait and see...

GrapheneOS Jul 19, 2025

@defred @imnobody @richarddebruin /e/OS is streaming user's microphone audio to OpenAI without telling them when they use speech-to-text. Meanwhile, Apple and Google at least support doing it locally.

/e/OS is misleading users about the many missing privacy and security patches including setting a false Android security patch level and changing the user interface to downplay it. What's that if not having backdoors?

/e/OS has repeatedly covered up their security weaknesses and vulnerabilities.

User Jul 19, 2025

@imnobody @GrapheneOS @richarddebruin @defred exactly

richarddebruin Jul 19, 2025

@GrapheneOS but still then. Be wiser. Be smarter. This is led to nowhere.

GrapheneOS Jul 19, 2025

@richarddebruin It leads to /e/OS and Murena having less ability to mislead people since a far greater number of people will realize they're scammers. It protects us against their attacks. A few people getting annoyed with us on Mastodon (no one on Bluesky or X) compared to most people reading it supporting it doesn't really mean much.

How many people knew /e/OS sends user voice data to OpenAI for speech-to-text and that both Apple and Google have offline support for it available?

Gaunter de Meuré Jul 21, 2025

@GrapheneOS @richarddebruin I didn't. I'm just discovering it now.
I was on the verge to buy a murena phone, studied the subject and learned that e/os is not at all a secure os.

Gaunter de Meuré Jul 21, 2025

@GrapheneOS @richarddebruin I opted for Graphene instead which is a reliable os.

GrapheneOS Jul 21, 2025

@LordPatraxX @richarddebruin The major issue we have with those products is that people would have dramatically better privacy and security getting an iPhone than an /e/OS device. iPhones provide strong security and privacy from apps/services. They aren't fantastic at privacy from Apple, but Apple services are more private than the /e/OS ones. We gave a clear example of Apple doing local processing for speech-to-text as the norm while /e/OS quietly sends it to OpenAI without telling users.

GrapheneOS Jul 21, 2025

@LordPatraxX @richarddebruin Apple has an Advanced Data Protection mode for iCloud where it uses end-to-end encryption for nearly everything. Users can handle syncing contacts and calendars with another service like Proton. Apple is a whole lot closer to providing full E2EE for those services than Murena, and Murena's services are very lacking in many aspects of basic privacy / security.

iPhones are mainstream, so devices with atrocious privacy and security compared to them are hardly progress.

Monew Jul 21, 2025

@richarddebruin @GrapheneOS it is not a distro war e/os is a downgrade in both privacy and security from most stock android experiences. They have thrown sponsorship money for years at YouTubers to shill their product and fool the masses. If you were a privacy and security advocate you would never promote their products and would call out their BS marketing

s94 Jul 19, 2025

@GrapheneOS OK so explain me how /e/OS is always connected to Google? (I am ready to change my ROM if you arrive to change my mind)

GrapheneOS Jul 19, 2025

@s94 See the third party comparison at https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm. It has a section covering the default Android Open Source Project connections. /e/OS leaves several still connecting to Google services. In addition to that, /e/OS has microG enabled by default and making additional Google connections beyond the ones in AOSP. /e/OS also adds an additional Google connection for carrier configuration not performed by AOSP which is covered at https://www.kuketz-blog.de/e-datenschutzfreundlich-bedeutet-nicht-zwangslaeufig-sicher-custom-roms-teil6/.

Comparison of Android-based Operating Systems

Comparison of Android-based Operating Systems

s94 Jul 19, 2025

@GrapheneOS so which OS should I choose for a Fairphone 4 ?

User Jul 19, 2025

@s94 @GrapheneOS freak

GrapheneOS Jul 19, 2025

@s94 Most of the options including Fairphone's stock OS or LineageOS are at least less bad than /e/OS... but we can't recommend using any of them or using the Fairphone 4 in the first place.

s94 Jul 20, 2025

@GrapheneOS so what should I do ? In /e/OS, my bank app works because of microG Services and this service is essential for me.

GrapheneOS Jul 20, 2025

@s94 Compare the relevant row at https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm. You are not limited to /e/OS at all.

Comparison of Android-based Operating Systems

Comparison of Android-based Operating Systems

s94 Jul 20, 2025

@GrapheneOS I bow to GrapheneOS

Xtreix Jul 19, 2025

@s94 @GrapheneOS

In addition to the response from the GrapheneOS project account, I'd just like to inform you that the real term is operating system and not ROM (which stands for Read Only Memory). I know that term is widely used, especially in the world of “customized” operating systems, neither GrapheneOS nor /e/OS are ROMS, they're operating systems, this term is fair, simple and everyone understands, there you go, now you know.

s94 Jul 19, 2025

@Xtreix @GrapheneOS thanks a lot

Xtreix Jul 19, 2025

@s94 @GrapheneOS

you're welcome.

Djoerd Hiemstra 🍉Jul 19, 2025

@GrapheneOS Seriously, jealous of EU funding? Please. Stop kicking down to your colleagues and start kicking up to the real competitors

Xtreix Jul 19, 2025

@djoerd @GrapheneOS

Evoking “jealousy” is a common response when one lacks relevant arguments whereas GrapheneOS does an excellent job of communicating to inform the public about ongoing scams, they are extremely dedicated, and very often respond with answers of several detailed paragraphs, they often respond with more answers than the person asking the question expects in the first place, but I'm sure you do better.

/e/OS are not colleagues of GrapheneOS, and the competitor is iOS that GrapheneOS respects.

Djoerd Hiemstra 🍉Jul 20, 2025

@Xtreix @GrapheneOS welcome to Mastodon! Yeah, there seems to be a lot of jealousy and little respect.

GrapheneOS Jul 20, 2025

@djoerd @Xtreix Governments shouldn't fund building products for companies to sell for profit. We wouldn't want to be beholden to governments, particularly ones moving towards making end-to-end encryption and secure devices illegal.

/e/OS and Murena are not colleagues or competitors. /e/OS massively rolls back privacy and security rather than improving them. They heavily misrepresent what they're providing and through that are scamming people. /e/OS is nearly the direct opposite of GrapheneOS.

GrapheneOS Jul 20, 2025

@djoerd Governments shouldn't fund building products for companies to sell for profit. We wouldn't want to be beholden to governments, particularly ones moving towards making end-to-end encryption and secure devices illegal.

/e/OS and Murena are not colleagues or competitors. /e/OS massively rolls back privacy and security rather than improving them. They heavily misrepresent what they're providing and through that are scamming people. /e/OS is nearly the direct opposite of GrapheneOS.

CyberFrog Jul 20, 2025

@GrapheneOS @djoerd this, it's not even a competition, graphene wins in basically any metric you could imagine almost without effort, just because the practices of /e/OS are laughable

GrapheneOS Jul 20, 2025

@froge @djoerd iPhones provide dramatically higher privacy and security than /e/OS. /e/OS is not remotely in the same space as GrapheneOS.

/e/OS handling speech-to-text by sending the audio to OpenAI without telling users vs. Apple doing the processing locally is representative of an overall comparison between them.

/e/OS fails to keep up with basic privacy/security patches for drivers, firmware, AOSP and the browser engine.

/e/OS thinks privacy only means avoiding Google services...

Djoerd Hiemstra 🍉Jul 22, 2025

@GrapheneOS @froge My Fairphone 3 with e/OS does not even have speech to text(!) It does block trackers that are inside Android apps; allows you to use a fake location; you can hide your IP address using the tor network, and if you insist on using cloud storage it seamlessly intgrates with nextcloud. Pretty neat if you ask me

Djoerd Hiemstra 🍉Jul 22, 2025

About iPhones: I see what you did here, @GrapheneOS 🤣

GrapheneOS Jul 22, 2025

@djoerd iPhones have far more substance behind their privacy and security marketing than /e/OS where users don't get basic privacy/security patches without huge delays or at all.

You've brought up 3 features in /e/OS which aren't in any way exclusive to /e/OS and which are poorly implemented in it. Not clear how that's meant to address the huge privacy and security flaws. Enumerating badness for DNS filtering also doesn't work nearly as well as they portray it, especially their take on it.

Djoerd Hiemstra 🍉Jul 23, 2025

@GrapheneOS https://idf.social/@djoerd/114898541964014326

Djoerd Hiemstra 🍉 (@[email protected])

@[email protected] @[email protected] Take it easy, I know all this. That's no reason to call e/OS fake, misleading and misusing EU funding. I still think e/OS is a great alternative to the Apple/Google duopoly for the average person. They're on your side. Happy to try Graphene once it runs on ethical hardware like the Fairphone.

Mastodon

GrapheneOS Jul 23, 2025

@djoerd Your claims are objectively false. /e/OS is absolutely engaging in extremely false marketing about privacy, security, updates, usability and compatibility. They've repeatedly spread misinformation about GrapheneOS and it's why we started posting about it.

/e/OS is not a safe option for anyone to use and does not offer a reasonable alternative to Apple or Google products. It is not more focused on regular people than GrapheneOS, contrary to their misleading claims about us.

GrapheneOS Jul 23, 2025

@djoerd /e/OS is certainly not on our side. They aren't in the same space as GrapheneOS in the first place but rather only pretend to be as part of their marketing. They've repeatedly engaged in attacks on GrapheneOS through spreading misinformation about it and making personal attacks on our team.

> Happy to try Graphene once it runs on ethical hardware like the Fairphone.

Fairphone devices do not meet our basic hardware security and update requirements. False marketing is not ethical.

Djoerd Hiemstra 🍉Jul 23, 2025

@GrapheneOS https://idf.social/@djoerd/114903638819678944

Djoerd Hiemstra 🍉 (@[email protected])

@[email protected] @[email protected] Really? Now Fairphone is ALSO using false marketing? You're paranoid, mate! I used to be a happy FirefoxOS user. You cannot scare me with less-than-state-of-the-art hardware.

Mastodon

GrapheneOS Jul 23, 2025

@djoerd Fairphone has always misrepresented the level of updates and long term support provided for their hardware. They present providing an update released in 2022 in 2025 as providing 3 more years of support than OEMs which shipped it on release day. That has never made sense. Fairphone's lags far behind on providing current OS updates with full privacy/security patches, typically a year or more. They lag 1-2 months behind on providing the partial backports to older Android releases.

GrapheneOS Jul 23, 2025

@djoerd Fairphone is directly participating in the false marketing by Murena for /e/OS. They present it as being far more private than it is and lead people to believe it isn't going to be using Google services and giving highly privileged access to them when it does.

Making baseless personal attacks on our team claiming we're delusional, paranoid, etc. has been repeatedly done by the founder of /e/OS and Murena. You're demonstrating how their community follows this lead.

richarddebruin Jul 22, 2025

@djoerd @GrapheneOS @froge grapheneos manier van communiceren kan soms wel beter 😅, maar wat ze proberen te zeggen is wat hen je eraam als de beveiliging vrij 'lek' is? Dus met alles wat je nu opnoemt lijk je veilig te zitten, maar dat is dus een soort van schijnveiligheid.

Djoerd Hiemstra 🍉Jul 22, 2025

@richarddebruin manier van communiceren kan zeker beter, wat een bangmakerij en verdachtmakerij: "mislead", " fake", "receive EU funding". Nou ja!!
Misschien is het iets makkelijker voor overheden om op mijn telefoon in te breken, maar dat doet niks af aan het blokkeren van trackers en advertentienetwerken door e/OS.

GrapheneOS Jul 22, 2025

@richarddebruin Our communication about this has been quite easy to understand. Information we've provided is accurate and verifiable.

Here's information from the founder of DivestOS:

Issues with /e/OS: https://codeberg.org/divested-mobile/divestos-website/raw/commit/c7447de50bc8fadd20a30d4cbf1dcd8cf14805a0/static/misc/e.txt

ASB update history: https://web.archive.org/web/20241231003546/https://divestos.org/pages/patch_history

Chromium update history: https://web.archive.org/web/20250119212018/https://divestos.org/misc/ch-dates.txt

Chromium update summary: https://infosec.exchange/@divested/112815308307602739

Here's an article from a privacy and security expert (Mike Kuketz) which touches on various issues:

https://kuketz-blog.de/e-datenschutzfr

GrapheneOS Jul 22, 2025

@richarddebruin

> It does block trackers that are inside Android apps

All it provides is a terrible implementation of DNS-based filtering. Contrary to the false marketing, it cannot stop privacy invasive behavior by apps It blocks a small portion of client side connections to domains not used for actual functionality. Vast majority of privacy invasive behavior remains and it's trivially bypassed. RethinkDNS is a better implementation usable everywhere, but DNS-based filtering is very limited.

GrapheneOS Jul 22, 2025

@richarddebruin

> allows you to use a fake location

This is a standard Android feature called Mock Location.

> you can hide your IP address using the tor network

Nothing about using a VPN or Tor is specific to /e/OS.

> and if you insist on using cloud storage it seamlessly intgrates with nextcloud.

Not in any way specific to /e/OS.

> My Fairphone 3 with e/OS

You're using a device vulnerable to serious known remote exploits including in the cellular radio, GPS, GPU and much more.

GrapheneOS Jul 22, 2025

@richarddebruin Meanwhile, their device is not receiving basic privacy and security updates to the OS and browser without many weeks or months or delays. They're currently missing remote execution patches for cellular, GPS, GPU and more. The device has no secure element, meaning disk encryption isn't actually working unless they're using something like a 6-8 diceware word passphrase which is highly unlikely. If they just use a typical random 6-8 digit PIN, it's trivial to bypass the encryption.

richarddebruin Jul 22, 2025

@GrapheneOS I am running Grapheneos on my pixel device, so don't worry 🤗.