From Newsgroup: misc.phone.mobile.iphone
On Sun, 7/12/2026 2:55 PM, Mr Anderson wrote:
Do you own your phone?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViWVlXg2NTU
It's unrelated to Windows 11.
Here is the text, so you don't buy any TShirts by accident.
00:00:00 - 00:00:57 So, in this video, I'm going to show you what Graphene actually does, why people are moving to it, and how to install it on a
Pixel phone before your phone becomes the checkpoint. And there you go,
we've now got Graphene installed on this phone. When you buy a new phone,
do you own it, or does the government own it? Your phone, unfortunately, is becoming the checkpoint. Notice what this phone is displaying. We have age verification on this phone. This phone is registered in the UK, and I'm told
00:00:28 - 00:01:34 that I have to confirm that I'm 18-plus. UK law requires you to confirm you are an adult to change content restrictions. I try and click that now, and it doesn't work because I'm not connected to the internet. So, I'll connect to the internet, and I'll try that again. By continuing,
your ID or credit card may be used to confirm that you are an adult. So,
Apple are restricting what I can do on the phone that I have purchased,
and they say it's the UK law. However, I don't think they're being totally
00:01:01 - 00:02:10 honest. This is from Big Brother Watch. Apple's new
iPhone update is restricting internet freedom in the UK. They talk about multiple issues, including the fact that this isn't required by UK law. Now, think about this. I have an iPhone that I've paid for, but Apple are now restricting what I can do on this phone. They are a US company. I'm based
in the UK. They are telling me what I can and cannot do on my phone. Despite what the update suggests, the system is not required by UK law. Laws
00:01:35 - 00:02:38 like the Online Safety Act 2023 apply to websites and online services, not to entire phone operating systems. In a similar way,
other acts set standards for protecting children online, but do not mandate
ID checks for all device users. This is a voluntary decision by Apple, not
a legal obligation. So, this is a phone that I purchased with my own money,
but Apple are going to restrict what I can and cannot do on this phone. Now, you might say, "Well, this doesn't apply to me because I'm not based in the
00:02:07 - 00:03:05 UK. I don't care what the UK is doing." But, this stuff
is coming everywhere. In California in the US, they want to implement a law that all operating systems have to verify your age. Now, there's been huge pushback about this, so Linux may be excluded, but we shall see what happens there. We've got Australia banning under 16s accessing social media. The
same thing is happening in the UK. They are talking about forcing social
media companies to promote certain official news sources,
00:02:36 - 00:03:38 such as the BBC, etc. This has been rolled out in the states. It's affecting many of us around the world. Now, love what the Graphene team have said. Graphene will remain usable by anyone around the world without requiring personal information, identification, or an account. GraphenOS
and our services will remain available internationally. If Graphene devices cannot be sold in a region due to its regulations, so be it. And I think
that's the right stance about this from a privacy point of view.
00:03:07 - 00:04:07 Do you really want to submit your iden- -tification information and your facial scans to some unknown third-party website where your data can be leaked, as has already happened with say Discord and other websites? So, if you're laughing because you don't have an iPhone, laws are coming around the world forcing age verification on operating systems, iOS
as well as Android. So, you can be part of that world where you're monitored, tracked, and age verified, or you can have the freedom and privacy and
00:03:37 - 00:04:38 security of an operating system like Graphene OS. What
are you going to choose to use today? I want to thank DeleteMe for sponsoring this video. You are the product and your data is being sold. This is big business. It's very sad to see that in today's world, car companies are collecting and selling your data. Websites are collecting your data and
selling it and this list just goes on and on and on. Your data is being collected on mass and sold. In the good old days we used to say that if
00:04:16 - 00:05:26 it's free, you are the product. Unfortunately, in today's world it looks like you will buy something and they'll still collect and sell your data. Now in a perfect world, we wouldn't need someone like DeleteMe
to delete our personal data or PII from the internet. Unfortunately,
that's not the world that we live in. There are an estimated 5,000 data
broker companies which operate worldwide in what has become a 270 to 290 billion-dollar business in 2025 and some experts expect it to reach 473
00:04:50 - 00:05:55 billion by 2032. It just seems crazy to me that data brokers can legally collect your data and sell it on. Your very personal information such as your home address, your phone number, details of your relatives and way, way more. This can lead to stuff like scams, phishing, harassment and doxxing. I've experienced this myself where people have
used my personal data to try and doxx me or to try and scam me. This kind
of stuff happens all the time. Unfortunately. Now you can manually go and remove your data
00:05:23 - 00:06:23 if you want to, but I just don't have the time to do
that continuously. That's why I use DeleteMe. It's a hands-free subscription service that removes your personal information from hundreds of data broker
and people search websites. Now DeleteMe doesn't promise to solve all your privacy concerns, but by removing this kind of exposed PII information from
the public internet, you are making one of the most direct concrete steps
to reduce your attack surface. That's the core value of what DeleteMe
00:05:53 - 00:06:51 provides. And it's not like it's just, "Trust me,
bro." They verify that your information is actually on a data broker site before they submit removals, and you get reporting that shows what was found and what was removed. Here's an example of the kind of report that you'll receive from DeleteMe. Now, to get 20% off DeleteMe's consumer plans, you
can go to joindeleteme.com/bumble and use promo code bumble at checkout or
use a QR code on screen. That's joindeleteme.com/bumble,
00:06:22 - 00:07:25 code bumble. Age verification may sound harmless,
but once your phone has to prove who you are before you can use an app or
visit a website or send a message, the question changes. It's no longer just, "Are we protecting children?" It becomes, "Who makes sure the people in power don't abuse this power that they have?" And yes, Spider-Man was right. >>
With great powers comes great responsibility. >> But governments are not superheroes. Power needs limits. Power needs
00:06:53 - 00:07:53 oversight, and power needs technology that does not automatically trust the people asking for more of it. Now, just to be clear, this is not about breaking the law. It's not about trying to hide. This is about owning the device that you have purchased and making decisions about
what you can and can't view online yourself. In the UK, they already restrict websites that you are allowed to visit. So, as an example, these websites
are sanctioned in the UK. ISPs are currently required to take
00:07:23 - 00:08:23 reasonable steps to prevent people in the UK from visiting these websites. As well as these websites, there's a whole range of websites that are blocked in the United Kingdom. The government can decide which websites you're allowed to visit and which websites you're not allowed to visit. Graphene doesn't claim to make you totally invisible, but it gives
you a phone that trusts Google much, much less than stock Android. It shares
uh less information by default and puts more control back in your
00:07:53 - 00:08:45 hands. So, in this video, I'm going to show you what Graphene actually does, why people are moving to it, and how to install it
on a Pixel phone before your phone becomes the checkpoint that stops you
from accessing certain websites on the internet where governments could
decide what you can and can't read online which websites you're allowed to visit. So, what do you need to get started? You need a computer running a supported operating system. That could be Windows, macOS, or various
00:08:19 - 00:09:20 distributions of Linux. In this example, I'm going
to use a Windows computer to install GrapheneOS. A lot of people shout at
me when I use Windows. The only reason for doing that is because a lot of people use Windows rather than macOS or Linux, but those operating systems
are once again also supported. You need a modern web browser that supports WebUSB. That would be Chrome, Edge, Brave, or and others. A good quality USB
to USB-C cable. In our tests, dodgy cables will result in things not working, so make sure that you use a
00:08:49 - 00:09:49 good cable. And it takes about 30 to 45 minutes to install the operating system. Currently, GrapheneOS only runs on Pixel phones because Pixels are the phones that meet its hardware security requirements. In other words, it has an unlockable bootloader, full verified boot, and long-term security updates. Always make sure that you go to grapheneos.org /faq for the live list before buying, but here's a list at the time of this recording. Now, if you're not sure which one to buy, the best phone to get is
00:09:19 - 00:10:22 Pixel 10 Pro. It has the newest hardware and the longest update window. Best value is the Pixel 8 series. The best cost-to-support
ratio for most people. And a budget phone would be a Pixel 7a or 8a. This is cheaper, well supported, and you can get great second-hand versions of this phone. Now, the big tip here is to buy the longest supported phone that you
can afford. GrapheneOS support ends when Google ends firmware support for
that device. So, look at your budget and try and get the phone that will be supported the longest.
00:09:51 - 00:10:50 Don't just necessarily get the cheapest phone. So, I'll
go to grapheneos.org and I'm going to click on install GrapheneOS. We're told here that there are two officially supported installation methods. You can
use the web USB based installer, which is recommended for most users, or the command line installation guide, which is aimed at more technical users. So, I'm going to select the USB based installer. Prerequisites are shown here, including the operating systems that are supported. I'm using Windows 11, but
00:10:20 - 00:11:36 again, you could use macOS or you could use various versions of Linux. Here are the officially supported browsers. So, I'm using Brave in my example, and I've disabled shields, as they say here, we need
to make sure that the shields are disabled. Now, scrolling down, we need
to enable OEM unlocking. So, what we're going to do is go to settings. I'm going to scroll all the way down, go to about my phone, scroll all the way down, and now on the build number, we need to press that repeatedly until developer mode is
00:10:58 - 00:12:07 enabled. So, I'll keep pressing that, and you can see we are now a developer. So, we then need to go to settings, system, developer,
and toggle the OEM unlocking setting. So, I'm going to go back. System is just above about phone in my example. I'm going to go down to developer options,
and we should see OEM unlocking, which we do, so I'll select that option and allow the bootloader to be unlocked. We have now enabled that option. So,
the next step is to boot into the bootloader
00:11:33 - 00:12:23 interface. So, the easiest approach is to reboot the
device and begin holding the volume down button until it boots up into the bootloader interface. Okay, so now we need to reboot the phone, but while
I'm doing that, I'm going to press the power button down and then press restart. So, I'm going to keep holding the volume down button. We are now in the bootloader interface. Now, per the documentation, they say that that's the easiest way to do this. Otherwise, you can turn off the device and then turn it
00:11:58 - 00:12:57 on while holding the volume down button. We told that
the step is not complete until we see the red triangle and we see the words fastboot. So, now we need to connect the device to a computer. So, I'll
connect that to my Windows computer. That's now connected and we can press
the button here to unlock the bootloader. So, we can see that the Pixel 10A
has been discovered. So, I'm going to click connect and there you go. At
the moment, it says do not unlock the bootloader. We want to change that to
00:12:28 - 00:13:29 unlock the bootloader. So, we're going to select that option and then accept it. So, as you can see here, the bootloader has
been unlocked. We now need to download the Graphene OS factory image. So,
I'm going to click download release to start the download. You can see the software is now downloading. This process, once again, is really simple
because I'm basically just connecting the device to my computer, doing a
few changes to it, and then Graphene is doing all the work to download the
00:12:58 - 00:13:55 correct release of software for my phone. Okay, so the download has completed, so we can now flash the image. This will replace
the existing OS installation and wipe all existing data. So, make sure that that's what you want to do. I'm happy to do that, so I'm going to click
flash release to flash the phone. Now, what's great about this is, again, Graphene have made this really easy. We just need to wait for the flashing process to complete. It will automatically handle flashing the
00:13:27 - 00:14:26 firmware, rebooting into bootloader interface, and flashing the OS. So, as you can see here, we get an update of what's happening, but
we are told to avoid interacting with the device until the flashing script
is finished. Then, we can proceed to locking the bootloader before using the device as locking wipes the data again. Okay, so I'll speed up the video at this point because all we're going to see is the writing of the software. Okay, so the image is now being flashed to the device. Now, we need to lock the
00:14:00 - 00:15:09 bootloader. This is important as it enables full verified boot. Verified boot will detect modifications to any of the OS partitions,
and it will prevent reading any modified or corrupted data. Okay, so I'll
click lock bootloader. I'm going to press the volume button to select lock
the bootloader, and then I'm going to choose that option. Now, if you don't
do that, and you simply boot with an unlocked bootloader, Graphene will
warn you. You can see the bootloader here is locked, so we can start the device. So, device
00:14:34 - 00:15:51 is now booting up. We can see a Google icon, and there
you go. We've now got Graphene on screen. So, we are now booting into
Graphene OS. Okay, welcome to Graphene OS. I'll choose start. I'll select Wi-Fi. I'll select next. I'll choose the default date and time. I'm not
going to enable location. Notice we can enable various options here like geolocation, Wi-Fi scanning, network location, etc. to harden the device or make it less hardened. I'm going to turn off all of those options and press
00:15:12 - 00:16:17 start. I'll select a PIN and press next. I'll confirm
my PIN. I'm not going to use biometric. Remember, in certain countries
like the US as an example, they are allowed to unlock your phone by using biometric information about you, but they're not allowed to do that with
a PIN code. So, I'd rather just use a PIN code. Now, you can get security preview releases. I'm going to do that. You might not want that. I'm not
going to restore data. And I'm going to skip this introduction.
00:15:45 - 00:16:39 Make sure that you leave this option checked. So, don't change that. We want to disable OEM unlocking and press start. And there you go. We've now got Graphene installed on this phone. So, congratulations. You're now running GrapheneOS. A phone that starts from less trust, shares less by default, and answers to you instead of an ecosystem. Now, if you found this video useful, please consider subscribing to my channel. I'll cover setting
up sandboxed Google Play app recommendations and
00:16:12 - 00:17:05 hardening tips in another video. Links to everything, including the official Graphene install guide, are in the video
description. So, hopefully you enjoyed this video. Hopefully you learned something. Graphene is my recommended operating system if you want a secure, privacy-focused operating system where you get control of your device rather than a company in the US, like Google or Apple, or a government controlling your device. But, let me know your thoughts. Do you use GrapheneOS? Do
you recommend
00:16:39 - 00:16:56 something else? What do you use to make sure that you
have a privacy-respecting and security-focused operating system on your phone?
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