On a related note, a recent article [2] also describes how GrapheneOS helped a journalist protect his work and his confidential sources citing the 18-hour auto-reboot feature that returns the device to Before First Unlock (BFU) mode, where keys cannot be extracted.

[1] A US man is being prosecuted after allegedly using a GrapheneOS duress PIN to wipe his Pixel during a border search – https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/23/cop-city-pro...

[2] A Journalist had his mobile phone seized. Did using GrapheneOS protect his data? – https://www.computerweekly.com/feature/Journalist-Richard-Me...

Sure that doesn't protect your data from any other attack vector but it allows you to travel with less risk of getting detained by law enforcement of a country you are visiting. You get asked your password, you can give it, and they see a phone that is used like a dumbphone. If you get questioned for that a simple "my phone died yesterday, a friend just gave me his old pixel". If you need more stuff/information during your travel you would basically only need to remember the passphrase to access a password manager or a remote ssh server but you can restore only the stuff you need when travelling and and wipe again at any moment.

Having said that maybe it is better to set this up some way but not have it builtin so that law enforcement doesn't expect that any grapheneos user would have his data on an sftp server somewhere by default. Otherwise we are back to point 0 where they would ask to connect to it and restore to a phone they own. Oh and have a dummy google account you only used to purchase a couple of silly stuff on amazon, aliexpress and shein and random subscription of various "non risky subjects" on youtube. The gmail address would quickly be filled with enough spam to look genuine.

I am travelling abroad in 3 weeks for a month and I am seriously considering wiping up my grapheneOS phone before flying. I am wary that I could be targeted at a border just for having a google pixel with grapheneOS. Or maybe I should just leave my main phone at home and only travel with a new empty 150€ phone with only my main family emergency contacts. I don't remember ever being asked to show my smartphone at a border but you never know when it will happen. Thanksfully until you reboot it there is nothing that shows from the lockscreen that it is not running the regular google pixel android.

Anyway. The pattern lock in Android provides Log2(389112) =~ 18.57 bits of entropy. This is less than 3 random characters, or 4 lowercase letters, or a decimal PIN digit password of 6 characters.

Granted, you could use mnemonics for long passwords, but how convenient is to input those long passwords?

I wonder why don't they just allow for longer passwords and just use a hash digest when it's too long, rather than just disallowing people from using strong passwords that they will remember. This pushes people to reuse passwords, send them to themselves, and other bad practices.

> > On Apr 11, 2015, at 5:45 PM, Jim Steyer Hey John, > > > > We know you're a true master of cuisine and we have appreciated that for > years ... > > > > But walnut sauce for the pasta? Mary, plz tell us the straight story, > was the sauce actually very tasty? > > > > > Jim

edit: this was a response to another comment opps.

Similar to how I use Veracrypt, but I leave my PC running, because I hate spending time booting up again. So LE could decrypt my stuff using RAM extraction stuff.

Or restores app data to a restore point of your choosing making it seem like everything is fine.

Make it untraceable you had it setup and it'll help deal with any potential legal issues.

I suspect that'll be the next step for malicious actors. I doubt very much the phone is fully resistant to having malicious data injected onto various busses.