p338k GrapheneOS limits Google Play from accessing your hardware identifiers, but it cannot do anything about your carrier. By "downgrade" I simply mean that you won't lose additional privacy compared to iOS.
I get what you mean now thanks for explaining. I'll probably just turn on airplane mode if i feel like im going somewhere where i don't want people knowing where im going.
p338k Aliases also make credential stuffing attempts more difficult since each account can use a unique alias, so you will get fewer annoying notifications of people attempting to access your accounts.
Luckily i don't get these notifications i've been pretty careful where i use my email for a long time now, and is as far as i know not been in any data breaches so lucky me!
Also new question popped into my head when writing this. If i insert my old sim into my GOS phone should i view it as infected or compromised?
What i mean by that is even though when you don't have a sim card inside you're phone (To my knowledge) cell towers are still pinging you're phone so it can know for instance the current time.
So lets say i plug in my old sim, connect to a tower and then remove the sim do the cell towers now know that that phone is mine even if there is no sim card inside it anymore?
Because like you said the phone has "hardware identifiers" which can then (In theory) be used to associate the sim card and the personal information tied to it with my GOS phone (Even though the sim isn't in my GOS phone at that moment) because it once was in my GOS phone at one point in time linking the two together.
Let me know if this doesn't make any sense btw just thought of it in the moment.