A few days ago, my colleague Calvin shared an interesting fact about GrapheneOS: The custom ROM allows him to set a duress PIN that completely erases the phone when he enters it, including encryption keys and the eSIM partition. It’s a very drastic privacy measure that lets anyone protect their data if they’re being forced to hand over or unlock their phone when they don’t want to do it.

I love that the feature exists for those who think they might need it, even if it’s through a custom ROM, but as many commenters pointed out on Calvin’s article, this is too drastic for most of us. Instead, what several commenters and I would like is more akin to a decoy PIN that opens a sandboxed version of my profile. And I’m not alone. Several of you want exactly that and would even pay for it.

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