Hello guys. I recently acquired a Pixel 8A and it was Google stock os I bought it from a man locally all with cash I brought It home and I flashed grapheneos onto this phone.
What else needs to be done to anonymous this phone and make it a privacy phone and a spy free phone no tracking phone no interception phone and no monitored phone.
Any advice welcome!
Thanks.
I’m going to pivot this answer, to the more general: what’s good data hygiene for my phone?
No specific threats, but what’s the easiest things I can do to regain as much privacy and autonomy as possible.
Using graphene OS is great, good job.
Using always on VPN, like mullvad.
Set up a work profile, and install Google services inside the work profile, you can use shelter to do this. Then anything you need that requires Google, like Google maps, Uber, Lyft you can use it from that profile.
Use a secure messenger like signal, or simple x, with your friend group. To prevent metadata and unencrypted cell phone calls from leaking
I highly, highly, highly recommend you read privacy guides https://www.privacyguides.org/en/
People keep talking about threat models, that’s an important exercise for everyone to do eventually. Figure out who your adversaries are what the downsides of them discovering information is and how much effort you’re willing to put into prevent that.
For instance, keeping your phone private from snooping roommates fairly easy. Little bit of effort has good dividends
Being a whistleblower, much more difficult, depending on who your adversary is they could use a lot of asymmetric resources. Boeing has a tendency for their whistleblowers to become suicidal, through some means. And if that was your scenario, you’d have to be very careful.
But the biggest threat of all, the absolute worst threat you could ever face with technology, is a bored battle buddy working in signals intelligence… There is no law, there is no restraint, there is no safety… They will find your s***, and they will embarrass you.