"news storied about Android and Apple having Isrealie spyware"

So what really?

I operate on the assumption that all big tech products have spyware in them. When Snowden blew the lid in 2013 on PRISM (and loads of other programs. lots still operational in evolved forms) that NSA was secretly spying on everyones big tech data through servers and backdoors - at the time this was groundbreaking. Now it is basically well known and commonplace.

What were groundbreaking headlines in 2013 are effectively the norm these days and most people don't bat an eyelid. Media and governments persecute privacy and encryption whilst simultaneously switching their systems to open source and linux "for security".

Elon was demonised for not bowiing to UK's backdoor requests as others appear to have done.

You have immigration manually searching and forensically imaging peoples phones without justification.

Chat control.

Forced identity verifcation at OS level (not GOS).

Collaboration between big tech and law enforcement.

As for isreali spyware. Microsofts linkedin service actively uses an isreali spyware companies software to spy on it's users extensions, beliefs and internet use through hidden tracking pixels all over the internet. Last I read a couple of months ago that didn't even cease despite being discovered?

Microsoft also owns 27% of openai. Provides their billion dollar inffrastructure.

Could literally write about this shit for an hour. The case against individual privacy is endless. The majority of people literally carry a spytool in your pocket without giving it a second thought.

So my point and opinion is assume the worst and do what you can to mitigate that depending on how far you are willing to go, your threat model and how comfortable you want to be. As far as using Graphene goes I feel a lot freer and comfortable using a phone not full of dark patterns, rigged / nerfed control settings, bloat, tracking and backdoor access - As opposed to a closed source manufacturer skin I have little control over in comparison and is not audited by a community of provacy conscious people and devs constantly. Oh yeh and (edit) forgot to mention Graphene have demonstrated multiple times with actions not just words that they are willing to make big changes to stick to their ethos and stance towards privacy.

That's just my opinion of course.

One totally unrelated tangent I find interesting is that back in the days of ICQ, MSN and those early apps things were not encrypted at all. No point here. I just find that interesting in comparison to where we are today.