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Activist charged with felony after giving border agent "duress code" that wiped his phone (arstechnica.com)
submitted 1 month ago by leo@lemmy.linuxuserspace.show to c/news@lemmy.linuxuserspace.show
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[-] Confused_Emus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 1 month ago

Does the GrapheneOS data-wipe actually wipe ALL data including the OS (presumably bricking the phone), or does it just delete personal data (thus just boots back up and appears like any brand new phone awaiting setup)? If the latter, seems like they could still identify the OS fairly easily. At which point it just kinda follows that, yeah, the entered PIN was a duress code, which is a known feature of the OS. Of course, I’m no lawyer, so I’m not sure how hard the rest would be to prove after identifying the OS.

[-] guillem@aussie.zone 15 points 1 month ago

I was a bit talking out of my ass there. Also at this point not even being judicially right protects you I guess.

[-] hash@slrpnk.net 6 points 1 month ago

Looks like GrapheneOS remains clearly "installed" but requires you to use recovery to factory reset before it can boot.

[-] Confused_Emus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 month ago

Ah, fair enough.

[-] r3tr0_97@ani.social 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Duress PIN/Password GrapheneOS provides users with the ability to set a duress PIN/Password that will irreversibly wipe the device (along with any installed eSIMs) once entered anywhere where the device credentials are requested (on the lockscreen, along with any such prompt in the OS).

The wipe does not require a reboot and cannot be interrupted. It can be set up at Settings > Security & privacy > Device unlock > Duress Password in the owner profile. Duress PIN is solely used for PIN entry and duress password is solely used for password entry. Both a duress PIN and password are mandatory to enable the feature to account for different profiles that may have different unlock methods. Duress PIN will also wipe the device when entered as the two-factor fingerprint unlock PIN but not currently when entered as the SIM PIN.

Note that if the duress PIN/Password is the same as the actual unlock method, the actual unlock method always takes precedence, and therefore no wipe will occur.

Copy-pasted from GOS wiki

this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2026
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