Chromium has vastly superior security compared to Firefox. https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/firefox-chromium.ht...
> It tries to copy Google paternalism > > It swaps a Google mothership for a Graphene mothership
Nonsense claims. All network connections made by the OS are well documented on the official website: https://grapheneos.org/faq#default-connections
There are only a few services GrapheneOS devices connect to:
- a time server (securely, over HTTPS, not insecure NTP)
- the OS update server (obvious; it's just plain HTTP requests, no user identifiers other than the IP address, which can easily be masked by using Tor or a VPN)
- the GrapheneOS App repository, which provides updates for preinstalled apps like Auditor, as well as the Vanadium browser and WebView (it's critical to get security patches for your browser in a timely manner)
- network connectivity checks (required to sign in to public wifis that use captive portals; can be entirely disabled in the settings)
- SUPL and PSDS through GrapheneOS proxies for A-GNSS because there is no network location service enabled by default
> Can connections to Graphene servers be blocked, i.e., are these connections optional or mandatory
You can block all the connections. You don't even need to, since they can all be disabled in the settings. If you disable the System Updater app, you're gonna have to adb sideload your system updates https://grapheneos.org/usage#updates-sideloading.
> If the concern is apps that only require internet connection for ads, Netguard solves that problem without root
You don't need Netguard, GrapheneOS has a built in network permission toggle, which offers even better protection than a firewall, since it completely blocks access to the underlying network socket (https://grapheneos.org/features#network-permission-toggle)
> The user-hostile design of Android is that apps keep running in the background after they are "closed"
You can deny apps running in the background, even on stock Android. This isn't unique to Android btw, I'm sure you've come across the system tray in Windows before. Those are all apps running in the background. Android basically has the same thing, it's in the notification center, and you can also stop background apps from there.