I want to give my parents GrapheneOS.

miyakore

Hello. I'm not very knowledgeable about IT myself, but please allow me to ask a question. I'm using a translation function.

My smartphone runs GrapheneOS, but it seems that either my mother's or father's smartphone has been hacked, and my communications are being intercepted.

I'd like to give them a GrapheneOS smartphone, but since my parents rely heavily on Google for their smartphone usage, GMS (Google Mobile Services) will likely be essential for GrapheneOS.

Ultimately, if I install GMS, will it be no different from a regular smartphone?

MyIdentityIsntImportant

miyakore Ultimately, if I install GMS, will it be no different from a regular smartphone?

If you install GMS on GrapheneOS (GOS) through the native & pre-bundled GOS App Store, they will be fully sandboxed as described by the GOS documentation. https://grapheneos.org/features#sandboxed-google-play. In short, when installed on GOS, GMS have much less access by default to the data that's on the phone, compared to when GMS is installed on a common "stock" Android distribution.

miyakore rely heavily on Google

After installing GMS, you can then log in to the Google Play Store (GPS) and install all the needed Google apps from there. If you end up coming across specific problems with specific Google apps, you can ask questions about them here or start new threads on the forum.

miyakore my communications are being intercepted.

While I cannot directly comment on the specific cause of these concerns, I must comment on this generally. If you & your parents are using an insecure communication method, such as regular carrier-based phone calls & text messges (SMS), switching to GOS won't solve the issue. Even if you have a secure GOS device, if you use insecure communication methods, your messages can be intercepted by the network the moment they leave your device. You must ensure that you & your parents use an encrypted communication medium for calls & text messages, such as Signal, to avoid your communications being intercepted (WhatsApp works too, but it isn't quite as private as Signal).

Whatever messenger you end up using (if you happen to have some local ones), you must ensure that it's a secure one. Do note that all messengers love to advertise themselves as "secure" even if they aren't. You might have to do a bit of work to determine whether any given messenger is actually secure & not just advertising itself as such. I'd recommend going with Signal if at all possible.

Good luck & don't be afraid to ask more questions if you encounter issues. The forum & the community is here to help.

horde

miyakore yes, using google play services will work 99% of time with all apps except very few that intentionally block GrapheneOS, you can look up what apps they will need to use and check if it is working on GrapheneOS, most notably very few bank apps block.

Johnnyloans

miyakore

A physical sim card is more straight forward than an esim. If you have an esim, activate the esim in stockOS first then flash grapheneos

Check to see if the banking apps will work.
https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compatibility-with-grapheneos/#japan

W1zardK1ng

miyakore My parents use grapheneos, logged in with their real gmail, everything works. They don't even know that they are running different os. Enable the location services and require battery level above the warning level to install os updates. Only things they noticed is, they gets system updates and asking it to restart phone frequently that they never saw before!!!

Btw get pixel 8 series or higher if you are buying a new device for them.

raccoondad

miyakore it seems that either my mother's or father's smartphone has been hacked

Unlikely

However, if your parent suspect an account of theirs to be compromised (emails/chat apps like Facebook messenger/social media), have them change their password. GOS won't protect them if their passwords were compromised (admittedly can happen with weak passwords)