No Stupid Questions

It is absolutely simple to install. Change a few settings, plug into a laptop and press install

Yes there is a possibility the seller has tampered with the phone, but it is small. I would just reflash it though just to be sure. It's absolutely fine buying a used device!

If you buy a phone that doesn't come with the stock OS with a locked bootloader, just reflash as a precaution.

Identity theft is not worth saving yourself a half hour of messing about

Alternatively, grab any pixel off eBay and flash grapheneos yourself. They make it very very simple, all through your browser. I was genuinely surprised how simple they made it having never put custom ROMs on any device before.

Short answer: yes.

Long answer: You can use the attestation app bundled with graphene to check the integrity of the system. The catch is, you need another phone with graphene os to do it properly. There is also an online attestation check, but IF the OS is purpusfully infected, you can't rely on what the app itself says.

If I were you, I'd try to reinstall it. The whole procedure can be done by following the instructions in any chromium based web browser. https://grapheneos.org/install/web

I would opt to install myself but "dangerous" is a relative term. Its definitely more dangerous than installing yourself since you can't verify their install source or process. You can factory reset when you get it but again can't validate the Rom used as the reset image.

If risk is a concern of yours, I'd buy used and install yourself. Not only will you save money, you'll know you installed from a legitimate source.

The install is so easy for graphene, Theres so little risk of messing up. It takes less than 10 minutes.

Probably fine, just reflash it first to be safe(r).

You don't need to reinstall as many people have suggested. There are instructions on the website for this https://grapheneos.org/faq#preinstalled-devices. Basically, verify the installation and do a factory reset from Recovery.

Technically, possible, but realistically, not much of a concern. You probably know better than anyone else as to whether you are that much of a person of interest that it warrants an attacker who is motivated enough to:

• Figure out that you are interested in a GrapheneOS phone
• Put up an offer and somehow ensure you buy that
• Rebuild GrapheneOS and load a malicious one into it and hope you don't reinstall one, or use a really fancy trick that it persists across wipes

If it still bothers you, you can install it yourself. GrapheneOS has a web installer through which you can install GrapheneOS. It's really weird how your browser can access all that, but yeah, you can install it within a website and a phone plugged into that computer. Once you do it yourself, I really doubt there's anything malicious left.

I moved from an iPhone to Graphene about a year ago. I miss the quality hardware that Apple makes, metal and glass feel nicer than plastic. The pictures the Pixel 8 Pro takes are crap compared to my old iPhone too. However.. I bought the Pixel used to test the software primarily and will stick with Graphene for the forseable future. It runs great and instead of buying a better quality Pixel, I am waiting for what Motorola will offer next year.

Some advice regarding the switch. Apple will make it annoying to leave their ecosystem. I recommend to move gradually, get your Graphene set up and keep your iPhone as a daily driver until you're confident everything works on Graphene. I did this for about a week. I moved my pictures off of iCloud with Proton Drive and for NFC payments I switched to a bank that supports it from their own App. (Although I also switched to using 95% cash, it's good to have a backup on the phone.) Using a Mac or going to icloud.com will make exporting your contacts and calendar a lot easier than trying it on iOS.

Two profiles is my setup. The main without Google for Threema, Signal, OrganicMaps, Voyager for Lemmy and all the other dailies. The secondary profile has the GooglePlay services running for my two banks. I use OLauncher for a clean home screen and HeliBoard as a keyboard, neither of these two have network access.

Chat me if you have specific questions, I enjoy tinkering with this stuff and chatting about it :)

Buying a pixel is by itself risky because the hardware is mediocre from both an engineering and quality pov: cases of screens with stripes or green tinted, the usb is soldered on the motherboard so if it's busted you are f***d (samsung and apple are much much more modular), on top of that to remove the battery you have to remove the screen and a wierd carbon insulator that looks like a last minute patch. oh and of course battery is shit, guess you cannot expect anything good from an exynos right? Yes I, have one, yes it has graphene and yes I am waiting for Motorola to put out something decent. If i were you i would wait.