GrapheneOS recommended for domestic abuse victims

False

In fact I can't think of a single Government service or legal requirement that requires a smartphone in the UK.

In the past year I have applied for a passport, applied for benefits, opened a bank account, passed through border control, filed a company tax return, closed down a business, helped someone else claim for benefits, made police reports, filed a case with the small claims court, paid my council tax, received an incone tax refund, travelled on public transport extensively, hired a car.

All had alternatives as far as I can recall.

Quite a few were done online just with a computer and optionally a phone number

And based on prior discussions here I have to point out that "require" doesn't mean "ok but the alternative is kind of inconvenient"

The basic premise, that a secured and private phone, is useful for domestic abuse victims is of course okay. It is true that protecting your privacy from abusive family members can be useful and GrapheneOS' features, which are accurately described on their own website (contrary to the linked blog post), certainly help remove threats in that regard. See : https://grapheneos.org/features . This is dependent on the specific situation, of course, (e.g. huge difference between ex-partner stalking you and a current partner you live with abusing you), because if you are forced to give your phone password at the threat of being hurt, a secure phone won't really help you a lot.

While the licenses that GrapheneOS uses permit companies to establishes businesses using GrapheneOS software, it's not recommended by the project to buy pre-installed phones, certainly not pre-configured phones, like PrivacyPros offers. The install process of GrapheneOS is simple if you are using the WebInstaller, and there is a lot of free support available in the community chat rooms and fora if you bump into issues. This saves you a lot of money because you can buy a new, used or refurbished Pixel with the stock OS installed at a much lower price. If you install GrapheneOS itself the guide also mentions you have to verify the integrity of your installation. That also holds true for preinstalled phones, you should check the verified boot hash and set up Auditor app. Preconfigured phones should actually be completely factory reset, not only from the OS but preferably also from recovery mode and then set up again, with a check of the boot hash and a set up of Auditor app before you install any apps or start changing settings. You don't know what PrivacyPros has changed to the settings, what they loaded on the device and Auditor should be set up by yourself and straight from the beginning, before you start using the device, because pinning-based security is an important part of its security model and you would want to be pinned to a clean state from the post install.

The blog post and also the PrivacyPros website where they promote and sell their phones is riddled with unnecessary misguided advice and also falsehoods about what GrapheneOS offers and what the dangers of the stock Pixel OS and Android in general are. Pixel OS and Android in general are portrayed way too negatively. I'll just give a few examples because it will cost me way too much time too debunk and correct all of it. These ones are verified easily by yourself and I hope it just makes clear you can discard everything PrivacyPros has written and makes clear you should just consult the official GrapheneOS website. So, they pretend as if Android and Pixels themselves don't have a permission model, multiple users and verified boot. This is untrue. GrapheneOS hardens the app sandbox and permissions model more and offers stuff like storage scopes to work around to broad permissions, but the sandbox and permissions model itself exists for Android in general. Verified boot is also a standard Android feature, and also exists on iPhones and even on MacOS and ChromeOS. Multiple users are part of Android, GrapheneOS just increases the available number of users and increases their usability. Also note that users don't improve sandboxing. Sandboxing and access control exist within profiles as well, profiles are mainly meant for increased isolation via separate user data, user settings and VPN slots. They also offer separate encryption keys allowing you to selectively put data at rest etc. The whole idea of a "ghost" profile and user profiles being at the centre to security and privacy is misguided. They also call about kill switches, Pixels don't have hardware kill switches and the software kill switches are just part of Android.

Yes, you need to use F-Droid & Co. to get apps (just like on Graphene), but otherwise they're functional and many people are actually using them like that.