Google Pixel 8 - ProxyStore

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1

Just wondering if anyone have bought anything from the store: https://shop.proxysto.re/

Any experiences? I’m thinking about purchasing multiple things from there and also the Google Pixel 8. You can choose it with pre-installed GrapheneOS and stock.

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I can’t speak to the legitimacy of this store in particular, but absolutely do not buy a pixel with GOS preinstalled. At best you’re paying a premium for something you can do for free in less than 30 minutes and at worst you’re trusting a random store to install GOS properly without any funny business.

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3

Yes, I won’t buy it with pre installed GOS but the price with stock android is even good in this store comparing to other shops in my country.
And i have talked with the guy that owns the shop and he can asure its completely unlocked OEM/Carriers which is the most important thing for me.

Because I do not wanna buy a locked phone and most shops I have asked do not answer this question

4

Ill push back on this. This response assumes everyone is comfortable installing a custom ROM or even making sure the phone they get will have an unlockable bootloader. This is exactly the reason why the GOS team has no issue with people profitting off of selling phones with the OS pre-installed.

This is the point of having the verified boot key hash (something the store page even mentions) and remote attestitation. As soon as you boot up the phone your going to see the hash and be able to tell if something is off. It then takes less then 10 minutes to setup remote attestation using the official guide.

At that point the user can assume they have verified the hardware, firmware and operating system.

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5

It’s as easy as

  1. Have a chromium browser with WebUSB
  2. Navigate to GOS website
  3. Click the install link
  4. Plug phone in
  5. Wait

I think the GOS devs are clearly intelligent and know what they’re doing but it’s also very easy to just not trust a store and do as much as possible yourself – the GOS devs themselves made it easy to install!

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6

Ok so lets say that the phone themselves are properly set up with no shenanigans.

How sure are that these phones for sale were not used quickly/temporarily to commit some sort of felony? You could be in some sort of watch list if these were used for illicit activities and thr authorities are monitoring your now new phone.

These phones dont have the usual in-store seals that shows a known new and good product. They could reseal it but its going to take extra effort/resources/manpower to do it.

There is also the warranty issue: You can avail them from either the store or from Google themselves (should the store refure to honor the warranty). On these stores, the warrant is void from the start and you’re SOL if the store wont honor the warranty.

7

This feels more like fear mongering of 2nd hand retailers then anything else.

Of course, nobody should be buying products from stores / shops / people they don’t trust.

I think creating highly unlikely scenarios as reasons to not trust a store is disingenuous. How many verified stories of places that sell GOS pre-installed have ever done this?

I am pretty sure the most common issues with these stores is selling GOS on phones near their EOL (which, this store does not seem to do as Pixel 6 is still recommended by the GOS team).

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8

I don’t want to influence your decision, I just want to share my impression of this project.

The first mirroring at archive[.]org(web.archiveorg/web/20210415095921/https://proxysto.re/) is from April 15, 2021

The project is an official reseller of Mullvad VPN(mullvad[.]net/en/help/partnerships-and-resellers), IVPN(ivpn[.]net/knowledgebase/billing/voucher-cards-faq/), Tuta(tuta[.]com/support/#cryptocurrency), SimpleLogin, AnonAddy and several well-known companies.

Apparently they not only have a domain, but also write about their store(proxysto[.]re/en/) where you can also buy the articles offline and where there is a shredder, a PC with Tails and more.

An experience from someone at techlore can be found here.

They were in Lisbon in 2022 at the Monerkon with a talk “Risks and Problems When Shopping on the Internet”(youtube[.]com/watch?v=cMZz2JGdXsU)

In my opinion, they wrote quite interesting texts, for example:

  • Random Mosaic - Detecting unauthorized physical access with beans, lentils and colored rice(dys2p[.]com/en/2021-12-tamper-evident-protection.html)
  • Revealing Traces in printouts and scans(dys2p[.]com/en/2022-09-print-scan-traces.html)
  • On the security of the Linux disk encryption LUKS(dys2p[.]com/en/2023-05-luks-security.html)
  • Risks and problems when shopping on the Internet(proxysto[.]re/en/warum.html)
  • concept: privacy support space(dys2p[.]com/en/konzept.html)

They run a translation to German(dys2p[.]com/en/grapheneos-preface.html) to help spread GrapheneOS and make it easier for people to install it themself and donate to GOS for phones with GOS preinstalled. Compared to Nitrokey or others, for example, I find this approach much more transparent and sympathetic.

Their work makes a good and sympathetic impression on me.

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