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Comment by lilboiluvr69 | Hacker News Reader

I am very happy with my current setup after flashing my new One Plus 9 Pro with LineageOS for microG (https://lineage.microg.org/). It's LineageOS with application spoofing and comes pre-baked with microG.

I'm able to use all the standard apps (Uber, games, etc) without a Google account. I use Aurora instead of the Google Play Store, local maps as my GPS back-end, and my phone only contains the apps I actually used instead of pre-baked vendor bullshit. It's all super smooth and completely stable. I really can't say enough nice things about it.

If you're looking for the third option, I would really give aftermarket android roms a try.

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It has to be rooted though right?

Pretty sure that's a non-starter for anyone who needs to use their phone for work, which is more people than you would think now that so many office workers are remote.

You should be able to install custom rom like lineageos without rooting as long as you got the bootloader unlocked.

Great, if a work phone is required by a company, let the company provide it and leave that one alone. Do you have to supply your own work computers or other equipment "required" to do the job as well, outside of contract work?

You still give up a ton of privacy, even if you "leave it alone".

Unfortunately that assumes the employer will provide the phone rather than going "this guy can't do his job because his phone is rooted?" and hiring someone else. Or that the employer knows what rooting even is.

Most companies ask you to install work profiles and such only after your sign on. It would be exceedingly petty of them to fire you for something like that, especially at a tech company that will definitely have the money to provide ~$300 work phones

So the absolute worst case scenario then is you buy your own second phone for $50-150 and use that for work purposes only.

Still sucks of course, but a far cry from the false dichotomy of "submit to Apple/Google rule or lose your job."

That's one of those ideas that's great in theory and not in practice. Not everybody is as confident in their positions to demand that.

Many people have to supply their own equipment to work, it's not unusual.

I mean I could do that. I could also just not associate my phone with a real Google account and then only use it for phone calls and signal messages.

The point is that you shouldn't need to jump through flaming hoops to avoid Google's spying

If you're a tinkerer it's pretty easy to bypass - the main method of rooting currently is Magisk, which also includes a very powerful self-hiding mechanism, able to bypass SafetyNet and most other root detection methods.

I run GrapheneOS on my Pixel 4a, unrooted, bootloader locked. However this avenue prevents the use of Google Play Services (which partially or completely eliminates functionality from many proprietary apps on the Play Store) or MicroG. This isn't a problem for me personally.

I’ve tried that path before but SafetyNet makes it hard. I can’t use my banking app for example, and for better or for worse, I wouldn’t be able to access my work email either.

I haven't looked in a while, but last time I checked, Magisk had a SafetyNet bypass. It's a cat and mouse game of course, but when I was using it, Magisk stayed ahead of Google 90%+ of the time.

So about that... the developer of Magisk has been employed by Google since about 2 months ago: https://www.xda-developers.com/magisk-developer-topjohnwu-le...

Did you try skipping the root step when flashing your custom rom? I never had any problem with safetynet as long as I don't root the phone.

I remember being able to do mobile banking on a website on my BlackBerry. It must have been 2010 or '11, before banks began rolling out native apps.

I don't understand why that's not possible now. Responsive websites are basically 1:1 in functionality w/ desktop, there is no need to have separate, gimped "m.bank.com" sites anymore.

End result of this is that I stopped doing banking on my phone, and 90% of my use cases are now served by F-Droid or by apps not on the Play store.

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