GrapheneOSJul 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
Show threadGrapheneOSJul 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.
Show threadGrapheneOSJul 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
Show threadGrapheneOSJul 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.
Show threadGrapheneOSJul 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.
Show threadGrapheneOSJul 19, 2025
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.
Show threads94Jul 19, 2025
@GrapheneOS false !
Show threadGrapheneOSJul 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?
Show threads94Jul 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.
Show threadGrapheneOSJul 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.

Show threadGrapheneOSJul 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...

Show threadricharddebruinJul 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.
Show threadGrapheneOSJul 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.
Show threadricharddebruin
@GrapheneOS but still then. Be wiser. Be smarter. This is led to nowhere.
Jul 19, 2025 at 6:13pmtrunks.social
Show threadGrapheneOSJul 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?

Show threadGaunter de MeuréJul 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.
Show threadGaunter de MeuréJul 21, 2025
@GrapheneOS @richarddebruin I opted for Graphene instead which is a reliable os.
Show threadGrapheneOSJul 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.
Show threadGrapheneOSJul 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.