Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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GrapheneOS questions/help (slrpnk.net)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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As per my previous post regarding Instagram, it was suggested to me to add it to a separate profile on grapheneOS. I have a couple of questions about it:

1.) Does the VPN on my main profile apply to my secondary profile

2.) Do I even need a VPN on my second profile if the only thing on it is Instagram and most permissions are off

3.) Is there a way to transfer selected images/files to the secondary profile

Any other tips for limiting Instagram's tracking are welcome as well. EXCEPT for "Instagram bad get rid of it." I am already aware of that.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

1. Every profile is its own unique sandboxed area supposedly. So if you decide to use a VPN each profile links to your VPN provider as its own new device. Thus having two connections with mullvad creates two separate devices for each profile. Running a VPN is always a better method to browse besides the security and privacy aspect. That being said. I would switch servers once your done with your own personal accounts for whatever apps you use which are each sandboxed BTW by default. Side profiles do not unless you select the setting run in the background. Consumes a lot of battery. But the main profile does. So switching back to owner from secondary profile your still connected to VPN inside owner. It doesn't drop the owner profile connection because owner is always running. Its the anchor for the OS IME.
I haven't found a reliable way to transfer photos other than flash drive with adapter or Bluetooth to PC then Bluetooth back. I'm all ears on this one. I've even text them to myself which for privacy is not a good option.

Edit account to profile. Doing to done.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

Super helpful community. Tons of info available. Lots and lots of questions all ready answered and searchable.

https://grapheneos.org/

https://discuss.grapheneos.org/

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

If you mean the work profile:

The VPN does not apply to the work profile, i think the app that creates it needs to define a proxy or VPN, otherwise it's a direct connection.
I think you can't easily set up a VPN in the work profile, but I never tried it. If you used Instagram with a VPN up until this point, it might be good to continue using it. If you didn't, don't start now if you will stop using Instagram soon anyway.
You can "mount"/give permission to read specific folders of the main or work profile on the other one. It's read-only. For example WhatsApp has an option to switch the image selection to the main profile when sending an image.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

Interestingly enough I tried whatismyip on both my main and secondary profile and they both showed the same IP and location

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago

You are correct, a VPN connection does not bridge to another profile. You can install a VPN in said work profile. The always-on VPN settings in grapheneos have the work icon to indicate what VPN is in your work profile.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Instagram bad. Get rid of it. Lol. My thought would be use it from a web browser.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I've only got about a month left that I have to use it. Would prefer to use a separate profile as opposed to a web browser so I wouldn't have to sign in all of the time + get flagged as a bot because of my VPN. I have tried webapp sandboxing but it hardly worked and broke most things.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Can I ask if you specifically need Instagram on your phone? When I was a social media person for an organisation I did it with a Firefox container on desktop exclusively.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Use Instander instead. It's a clone that removes quite a few of the data harvesting and shows no ads either.