[Security Discussion] unclefab:
[MENTION=5942520]sancho_panzer[/MENTION] That's quite an unusual request, and I don't see how showing off my background and my pedigree could improve this thread.

I'm curious too, maybe you could tell me why it matters to you?

Nope, I don't own a Nexus 5 running KK, the Nexus mentionned in OP belongs to Primokorn, he gave us an info about 4.4.4 and that's why I added it to OP.

As for me I own a Samsung running 4.2.2, and I have no intention to "upgrade" to later versions.

I gave KK a go, and I came back to JB after a few days. Too much spying stuff in this KK "upgrade", and too many unremovable/uninstallable apps and files.

It's possible to go over this, but it would imply a lot of reverse engineering to mod and patch apps and jars.

I can do that, but why should I?

What improvement did KK bring?

1-2 gimmicks, completely unuseful for my taste, and then?

Actually on Samsung it's even worse.

First, they screwed up the floating multi windows feature, which is the sole reason why I own a Samsung (cuz having a minimizing icon on all full screen windows that enables you to shrink them in computer style floating and resizable mode is definitely not a gimmick, and something really useful. There are alternatives like the omnia split view feature and they did a great job but still, Samsung's is way ahead). I found out recently that the fonctionality can probably be restored on KK but I didn't bother, cuz as I said KK didn't bring any improvement worth the hassle.

Second, the knox diktat that locks Samsung phones' bootloaders (not present on my 4.2.2 version but present on the KK "update"). It has not been defeated yet and may never be, one more reason.

Last but not least, I despise nestle and I have been boycotting them for years, don't forget that the compagny is responsible for thousand of children's deaths in third world countries..

So thanks, no KK for me.

Lollipop I can't tell since I didn't try it, but I saw that an unofficial version has been released for my gf's phone and I'll give it a shot one of these days.

But don't keep your hopes too high, chances are that it's worse than KK and anyway, as long as Xposed isn't Lollipop compatible there's no point for me.

At the moment I'm learning how to port lower Android versions cuz for me the solution for now is to manage to have 4.1 or 4.2 roms running on phones that have KK or Lollipop out of the box.

Porting is easy if one ports a ROM to a phone running the same Android version, but difficulties arise if the version and the cpu are different because of the boot.img/kernel/ramdisk porting part.

It's doable, but I don't have much free time at the moment...

Regarding VPN, I'm a bit doubtful since as [MENTION=3661403]Tjee[/MENTION] pointed one has to trust the VPN provider cuz one's browsing goes through it.

Then [MENTION=2595499]iunlock[/MENTION] told us about serious VPN providers, maintened by serious activists, that sounds cool but I can't comment since I don't know about those providers.

What I have been doing so far is that I use my regular internet connection to read the newspapers, check wikipedia and some android stuff, but with different browsers (I explain about it in OP), and Tor if I want to be completely anonymous (which doesn't happen very often to be honest).

BTW, [MENTION=2595499]iunlock[/MENTION], a tuto about VPN would be very welcomed!;)