Yes, I only use it via syncthing-fork so this is a distinction without a difference to me.

Not sure if I qualify as extra paranoid but this whole situation feels very sketchy and has me reconsidering my use of syncthing. Making significant changes like this without any explanation is extremely bad practice.

That is correct, it’s been quite awhile now since UEFI became standard but almost everyone still calls it the BIOS. Although I’ve noticed the word firmware is starting to be used more as well.

I was looking into Fairphone and got sketched out, they do not really seem particularly trustworthy or competent.

For example: https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/24134-devices-lacking-standard-privacysecurity-patches-and-protections-arent-private