Ah, that is unfortunate. I put the wrong link. Thank you!

Hi, lovely app. Good job attaching apk files to your releases. However, this is neither OTP encryption nor secure in a cryptographic context. The One Time Pad creates a randomly generated pad on its own and uses the XOR function to combine the pad and plaintext together.

Instead, this app forces you to create the pad yourself, and only allows the pad to contain the ASCII characters 0-9. This means you cannot get the full 8 bit entropy for each byte. Because of this, if the character in the ciphertext is “q”, for example, you have only 10 options for the plaintext:

q xor 0 = A

q xor 1 = @

q xor 2 = C

q xor 3 = B

q xor 4 = E

q xor 5 = D

q xor 6 = G

q xor 7 = F

q xor 8 = I

q xor 9 = H

I was gonna make this exact same post

You still should! I, and many others, would love to hear about your experiences

2 months is a long time, unfortunately.

I considered a privacy screen protector such as the one I had on my iPhone, but I found that biometrics would become an issue with having one on. I don’t plan to disable biometrics, since it’s easy enough to simply hold the power button and select “Power off” if I am ever compelled to unlock my phone.

As I mentioned in the post and in another comment, the Play Store version of ProtonVPN is the only one with the ability to sign in as a guest.

I am quick to admit when I am wrong, VLC is actually exactly what I am looking for. It has support for playlists, sleep timers, and everything else. I may make a writeup about this. I genuinely thank you.

The hardest part is the price and adapting to an Android-like system, but I agree.

Hi! Glad you’re deciding to switch. Carrier locked devices tend to disable OEM Unlocking, which is a feature that allows you to unlock the phone’s bootloader and install a custom ROM such as GrapheneOS. There is no way to determine this for sure unless it is mentioned as “OEM unlocked” or “bootloader unlockable” in the listing, or by asking the seller to check in Developer Options. Good luck!

The ProtonVPN app itself does unless you install via the Play Store.

No. I don’t see how this is relevant. I use Linux on all my devices.

I’d also like to know this, considering many people swear that Accrescent is more secure than any other option.

As I mentioned, other installation methods don’t support signing in as a guest. Only the Play Store version, for some reason.

It took me months, I got mine from ebay. The only advice I have is MAKE SURE the listing EXPLICITLY says it is OEM Unlocked. I found many listings that claimed to be factory unlocked that were not, and network (carrier) unlocked devices rarely allow OEM Unlocking. I made a post about my hassles with T-Mobile. Listings that say OEM Unlocked are not uncommon, and some of them bury it somewhere in the footnotes. The Pixel 8 series provides MTE support compared to the 7 series and lower, and the 9 series provides better biometrics than the 8. A used 8 will run you about $350 or more. Most go for $400+ now, but occasionally the prices dip down. Good luck!

Edit: Here is an ebay link with useful filters: https://www.ebay.com/b/Cell-Phones-Smartphones/9355?LH_BIN=1&LH_ItemCondition=3000|2030|2020|2010|1500|1000&Lock%2520Status=Factory%2520Unlocked&Model=Google%2520Pixel%25208%2520Pro|Google%2520Pixel%25208&mag=1&rt=nc&_fsrp=0&_sacat=9355&_sop=15

I’m not saying GrapheneOS is for everyone, but the privacy and security they offer should be the baseline for every phone (restricting network access, etc.). I do see your point though!

I will say this: I have used iOS my entire life up until now. Before I used GrapheneOS I made sure to make a list of every app I would be using (although my list did change after trying, which is ok). I also learned as much as I could about the Android and GrapheneOS ecosystem as I could before switching, since there are a few quirks. I was lucky to be able to try out a few cheap Android devices to familiarize myself.

I’m not saying any of this is required, you really will see that it’s just an OS and the usability is pretty much the same, but I did my preparation for about a year and was on my feet in a few days (keep in mind I am a niche user). For a normal iOS user who has never used Android, I’m certain they’ll be able to use it just fine as long as they have some basic privacy knowledge.

Part of why I made this post is to ease the worries of any iOS users who are hesitant. It really is a smooth transition, but it can be hard if you make it hard. I am a tinkerer and power user with a higher threat model, so of course I had lots more bumps than an average user. Try it out and see what you think!

P.S. If you do ever decide to switch, DM me if you want some help :)

I am a believer that everyone deserves privacy. Politicians and governments just as much as all citizens and students. I understand that isn’t the current state of things, but having worked directly for the head of technology in a school district, it’s way more invasive than it should be.

People have recommended me VLC in the past. If it’s anything like the usability of the desktop version, I’m going to say it’s a hard pass. The nice thing about playlists compared to folders is the same song can be in multiple playlists without duplication. My files have all the necessary metadata for albums and whatnot, but it’s really playlists that are the issue.

Plenty, as well as the upcoming release of Toy Story 5.

Hi! Back in high school, me and a few close friends formed a small hacking group aimed at hacking the school WiFi. We succeeded, and reported the vulnerabilities we found along the way to the school. Our school had a policy where students who managed to hack something would be let off the hook if they reported exactly how they did it. I managed to land a job for the school district as a result of our fiasco. I don’t recommend anyone do that, but I managed to get lucky.

Anyways, once we had access to the WiFi we wanted to get around the network wide filter. Proton VPN worked for a while, but quickly got blocked. Dual booting into Tails on school computers didn’t work until the 6.0 update. To my knowledge, it still works.

However, for our phones, the thing that worked was changing the DNS. We found out the network wide filter the school boasted so highly about was only a DNS filter that resolved hostnames to a “blocked” page. Find a good PRNS and change your device’s DNS to match. If you want a search engine, try to find an unblocked SearXNG instance.

Good luck!

P.S. Don’t forget: Tor is portable on Windows devices :)