This is exactly my setup with GrapheneOS. The default / main profile is patriotic, with a sterilized Telegram account, state-adjacent banks and apps, etc. The second profile (that uses a separate PIN) is not so patriotic: it has foreign bank apps, crypto apps, password manager, 2FA app, personal records, and an alternate Telegram account that I use to discuss any potentially unpatriotic topics with potentially unpatriotic people.
It would be cool if there's a third PIN that can wipe the unpatriotic profile whilst showing the patriotic one.
So you use 1st pin for normal use, 2nd for downloading your flight details on patriot mode, and 3rd for unlocking to patriot mode whilst silently nuking unpatriotic data.
Or a PIN that just nukes the data for certain apps (Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp, E-mail) etc. Feds can read my Slack messages all day.
1. Never ever have Signal installed on the phone during border crossing. The presence of the app itself may trigger them (speaking from first-hand experience).
2. Having an empty Telegram account may look suspicious. My recommendation is to have two separate Telegram accounts, with the "unpatriotic" one in the separate profile only.
3. Never ever use WhatsApp for anything "unpatriotic". It's way of deleting messages leaves traces ("This message has been deleted") which may rise suspicions.
As for email, I just don't have any email clients installed on my "patriotic" profile. They all go to the "unpatriotic" one.
There's no PIN for deleting a particular profile, but you can quickly delete it manually, assuming that you have some private time available – for example, when you are stopped at passport control and told to wait in the waiting area.
They would like to but it's not possible to make a robust feature like that because of low-level architecture of SSDs. Implementing a detectable solution would give people a false sense of security.
Also they can plant evidence if you unlock the phone.
It would be cool if there's a third PIN that can wipe the unpatriotic profile whilst showing the patriotic one.
So you use 1st pin for normal use, 2nd for downloading your flight details on patriot mode, and 3rd for unlocking to patriot mode whilst silently nuking unpatriotic data in case of seizure.
Yep, full agreement here. The amount of hoop-jumping is ridiculous. However, I live in Russia so I have to do all that, plus some more (e.g. the work to protect my own self-hosted VPN after Roskomnadzor issued the recommendation for big Russian online services to sniff out and report user's VPN settings).
I spent two weeks thinking about my new setup on Graphene OS and Windows, but it was time well spent. Before that, my checklist for pre-border-crossing cleanup required about 8 hours of work. With the new setup, I can complete the cleanup in about an hour, and restoring takes even less.
> the things people are willing to do in order to fit into a group
Given our evolutionary history as social animals, this is expected. The genes (and memes, in the Dawkinsian sense of the word) for alienating oneself from the tribe and going solo were less successful than the those for remaining in the tribe. We can reasonably expect such adaptations to include sucking up to alphas to avoid being banished from the tribe, being distressed when outside a group, and feeling good when in a group.
Russian here, a former Android and iPhone user. I had to switch to Graphene OS in full paranoid more due to our worsening situation regarding VPNs and phone searches.
After about a month of using Graphene OS, I'm not looking back – it's great. I'm not recommending it as a 100% solution for everyone, but it's definitely a very solid practical step towards keeping the phone yours:
1. Your phone will be able to operate as a basic phone (calls, SMS, web, photos / videos, location, Bluetooth, eSIM) without a Google account.
2. You will always be able to install an APK. This helps you install apps that are banned from Google Play Store in your country.
3. There's a duress PIN that lets you wipe the phone completely from any 'Enter PIN' screen. (I tried it, it's a bit messy, but it does wipe the phone and in the end you return to a blank Graphene OS installation – no need to reinstall.)
4. There's a setting that lets you disable any USB port functionality other than charging.
5. The permission system is amazing. If you are forced to install a state-mandated spy app (like the Max messenger in Russia), you can put it into a "permission jail" where the app assumes that it has access to the requested data but actually receives what you explicitly give it. For example, you can select individual photos and contacts to make available to the app – while the app will think that it has access to all contacts and photos. Bonus: the new Internet permission, which lets apps think that they are connected to the Internet while they are actually blocked from it.
6. You can have a separate profile for data and apps you don't want to expose. (There's also a Private Space for that, it's very convenient but it exposes installed apps via app search from the main space.)
7. There's an End Session function for a logged-in profile that stops it from running, wipes it from memory, and puts the data at rest.
8. You can have a separate VPN in each profile. This should help against situations where your local equivalent of Roskomnadzor sniffs out your VPN connection settings via state-mandated changes in apps operating in your jurisdiction, and bans that particular VPN later. Just make sure you install all spy apps under a profile with a disposable VPN that you aren't afraid to lose.
9. Each profile (and the Private Space too, because technically it is a special kind of Profile) can have a separate Google account. For example, one profile can have a Russian Google account (for banking and state apps), while another profile can have an Armeninan Google account (for things that are banned in Russia, like Spotify and Kindle.) However, to arrange this, you have to physically be in the desired country – Google doesn't let you change the account country without being there.
To sum up – if you are concerned about this situation, buy Pixel 10 (excellent hardware btw.), install Graphene OS (very easy, their web installer is great), and try using it for a while.
> I have yet to see a use case that doesn’t amount to buying drugs or defrauding rubes
Russian here. My forgotten Bitcoin stash saved my ass multiple times by providing a way to transfer money to a friend abroad who then paid for my western expenses (hosting, VPNs etc.) using his Visa / MC cards.
Also, a lot of programmers who emigrated from Russia to countries such as Georgia in 2022 were using USDT as a way to receive their salaries.
And also it helps your government to transact with Iran, India, and China in convenient currencies, bypassing US-imposed sanctions and prolonging current war and planning for the future ones.
Apples and oranges. Syncthing is a selfhosted p2p syncing network and it's miles better for this. Nextcloud is a selfhosted "cloud platform" like Google Apps. How good it is for each use case varies greatly. Most often it is used for easy web/mobile access for files and photos.
I don't know which one is better, but considering file hosting, sync and web access, Nextcloud works very well. Regarding usability, as NC doesn't works like Dropbox it is a matter of taste, I prefer NC over Dropbox.
+1 for FolderSync, it works great. I haven't had a single synchronization issue or missing files whatsoever after using it for 2-3 years already. Note that I never had the need to handle conflicts (I don't modify files from two different devices at the same time).
