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Burner Phone 101

rebeccawilliams.info

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Re: Burner Phone 101

#181

Post by raybb »

raybb wrote: post #180
tim333 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Silent link esims are quite good for getting your phone to work on any country or network. I have one, not for privacy but more for better phone coverage and it works pretty well. No ID and you pay in crypto - btc/monero etc. ( https://silent.link/ ) For me the main use is that I'm on o2 in the UK, but if in some dead spot with no signal I can flip the sim settings and connect via EE or whatever.

Are you able to select which mobile network you use? At least in the US the price for tmobile is about triple that of att so it would be pretty hard to predict your spend if it switches between them without warning.

Based on this podcast episode with them it seems that you can select which mobile network or "local provider" is used. Around the 12:30 mark https://optoutpod.com/episodes/s2e13-silentlink/

Re: Burner Phone 101

#182

Post by schoen »

Terr_ wrote: post #133
schoen wrote: post #39

When I was working at EFF, I started writing (but never finished) a couple of essays along the lines of "the degree of trackability of mobile phones is an unfortunate accident, and we should fix it". It basically comes from routing requirements (especially to receive incoming phone calls) combined with billing requirements (to make people pay for their connectivity) combined with the empirical requirement to see whic…

> combined with billing requirements There's a certain flavor of US libertarian that complains that they should only be taxed for exactly the road-surfaces they personally use in proportion to how much they use them. In response, I like to point out to them that their dream of "fair billing" can't occur without a nightmare of surveillance, making it easy for the government (or road-owners, and indirectly the governme…

There's a potential family of cryptographic methods where people prove that they paid for things without revealing who they are.

https://www.eff.org/files/eff-locational-privacy.pdf (2009)

The technical paper mentioned is now at

https://web.ma.utexas.edu/users/blumberg/vpriv.pdf

(I guess Andrew Blumberg moved from Stanford to the University of Texas.)

There might be an inherent tradeoff where you need at least one of {tamper-resistant trusted meters, at least slightly noisy measurements, potential deanonymization}. For example, the short paper mentions that "point tolls" are easy to make anonymous using any form of anonymous digital cash (or blinded tokens issued by the tolling authority!), but the exact usage billing you mention people wanting is much more detailed than a point toll like that. It might indeed be inherently impossible to get all the way there without detailed surveillance.

Re: Burner Phone 101

#183

Post by Terr_ »

teekert wrote: post #175
Terr_ wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Want to go electric? You'll pay tax on electricity in concordance with it's economic price and influence on the planet. The problem is that generic electrical consumption is not (unlike gasoline pumped at a gas-station) a decent proxy for how heavily the purchaser occupies and wears-down roads. In turn, it makes it harder to connect fair (proportional) amounts to fix the roads.

That is true. Idk how to tax that. Through the tires? Would also stimulate going for durable ones. Although electric cars produce much less breaking dust, contributing to clean air again. Okok, it's complicated. Just tax anything based on it's environmental impact, then add some percentage for the roads?

Given that odometers are already tamper-resistant for other economic reasons, a "mileage this year by vehicle weight class" might work.

Re: Burner Phone 101

#184

Post by m463 »

schoen wrote: post #182
Terr_ wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> combined with billing requirements There's a certain flavor of US libertarian that complains that they should only be taxed for exactly the road-surfaces they personally use in proportion to how much they use them. In response, I like to point out to them that their dream of "fair billing" can't occur without a nightmare of surveillance, making it easy for the government (or road-owners, and indirectly the governme…

There's a potential family of cryptographic methods where people prove that they paid for things without revealing who they are. https://www.eff.org/files/eff-locational-privacy.pdf (2009) The technical paper mentioned is now at https://web.ma.utexas.edu/users/blumberg/vpriv.pdf (I guess Andrew Blumberg moved from Stanford to the University of Texas.) There might be an inherent tradeoff where you need at least one of…

I though gnu taler sounded pretty interesting:

https://www.taler.net/en/features.html

don't know anyone who uses it though. (is it usable?)

Re: Burner Phone 101

#185

Post by bigiain »

jajko wrote: post #157
bigiain wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Normally, unless (as I mentioned in another reply) you buy your SIM at a going-away party for a foreign student or backpacker who's leaving the country and doesn't need a local mobile number any more. (Then you just need to worry about the CCTV recording of the place where you pay cash tor the pre paid Visa cards you use to top up the prepaid SIM...)

That would be properly dumb thing to do, giving trivial-to-track thing very much tied to your identity to some random folks... why on earth would anybody smart ever do that? Then you suddenly end up locked by ICE or worse when having layover stop at Miami for example.

> why on earth would anybody smart ever do that?

Because they're leaving the country tomorrow and don't plan on ever coming back. And you offered them a round of drinks or two for them and their other friends.

(Thinking about it, you're probably right - I still feel that's "safe" in Australia, I doubt I'd be prepared to do that in 2025 USA. But then I'm not intending to visit the USA in the near/medium term future, or possibly ever again.)

Re: Burner Phone 101

#186

Post by bigiain »

fuckaj wrote: post #164
jajko wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be properly dumb thing to do, giving trivial-to-track thing very much tied to your identity to some random folks... why on earth would anybody smart ever do that? Then you suddenly end up locked by ICE or worse when having layover stop at Miami for example.

Basic police work gets you. They know the sim owner. Know its a backpacker. Find their last location. Interview who was there at the party. Etc.

If you become of enough interest to the sort of people who will interview everybody who was any a party at a bar to try and identify who someone that's left the country gave their SIM to, you're probably well beyond fucked already.

Amateur opsec can help prevent you getting identified if you leave footprints in dragnet surveillance - like if you were at or near a protest. If you're planning on committing crimes serious enough to have "basic police work" set loose attempting to identify you individually? Good luck with that. I hope you're getting better advice than posts from randoms on internet forums.

Re: Burner Phone 101

#187

Post by bigiain »

dfc wrote: post #128
bigiain wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, never power up or down, or switch in or out of airplane mode on your burner while at home (or work). Cellular network disconnection and connection events are rare and hence notable.

I am not sure I agree with this. I don't think that running out of battery or rebooting a phone is that rare. But more importantly, if these events are noticeable and Alice does what you suggest she is probably going to highlight her location. Especially if she naively waits till she is 15 minutes from home to switch her burner on. Over time there will be a circle around her house of no burner phone network attach ev…

I'd be surprised if my daily driver phone ran out of battery more than once or twice a year. It probably only ever reboots in exactly the same 24 hour time window as every other iPhone during iOS updates.

If Alice's threat model doesn't include NSA/KGB/MSS/MOSSAD, just being slightly less naive and switching on the burner at (or within a set distance from) some location other than her home is likely fine. I describe in another comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45009042 how I used to automate turning on a phone (well, a 3G WiFi hotspot) at a set distance from a nearby library.

But don't follow my advice if you're running a global drug cartel, or criticising Saudi Royal Families, or defending the rights of Palestinian children to not be bombed.

(I just realised my phone goes into and out of airplane mode when I get on and off planes, which narrows it down to one in a couple of hundred people for one flight, and likely uniquely identifies me with only two or perhaps 3 flights. But this is my daily driver phone with proper KYC identification, not a burner.)

Re: Burner Phone 101

#188

Post by fuckaj »

bigiain wrote: post #186
fuckaj wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basic police work gets you. They know the sim owner. Know its a backpacker. Find their last location. Interview who was there at the party. Etc.

If you become of enough interest to the sort of people who will interview everybody who was any a party at a bar to try and identify who someone that's left the country gave their SIM to, you're probably well beyond fucked already. Amateur opsec can help prevent you getting identified if you leave footprints in dragnet surveillance - like if you were at or near a protest. If you're planning on committing crimes serio…

True. Replace "crime" with "things that motivate the government to investigate you". They arent the same but overlap alot of course. In 2025 the non intersecting area got larger.

Re: Burner Phone 101

#189

Post by dfc »

bigiain wrote: post #187
dfc wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure I agree with this. I don't think that running out of battery or rebooting a phone is that rare. But more importantly, if these events are noticeable and Alice does what you suggest she is probably going to highlight her location. Especially if she naively waits till she is 15 minutes from home to switch her burner on. Over time there will be a circle around her house of no burner phone network attach ev…

I'd be surprised if my daily driver phone ran out of battery more than once or twice a year. It probably only ever reboots in exactly the same 24 hour time window as every other iPhone during iOS updates. If Alice's threat model doesn't include NSA/KGB/MSS/MOSSAD, just being slightly less naive and switching on the burner at (or within a set distance from) some location other than her home is likely fine. I describe…

What about elevators, parking garages, basements? Network Attach messages are fairly common in the mobile device logs I have seen.

Your "Recreational Paranoia" should include rebooting your iPhone more often.

Re: Burner Phone 101

#190

Post by wraptile »

wildzzz wrote: post #179
wraptile wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm unconvinced that secure communications is the bottle neck when it comes to criminal prosecution. We can expand police power without sacrificing our communications like that. Anecdotally, take a look at China where privacy doesn't exist and yet Chinese syndicates are responsible for a major chunk of the issues you've listed. So clearly lack of privacy doesn't even correlate with decreased criminal behavior.

Probably because any successful Chinese crime syndicate has the backing of both the government and big business.

Which happens due to totalitarian control of CCP which prohibits self correction mechanisms we have in democratic societies, so what's the Goldilocks area of authoritarianism here? My bet is that compromising all secure communications is all the way in the big bears bed, if we're sticking to the Goldilocks analogy. It's just a fundamental dead-end without fantasy scenarios like benevolent dictatorship which we all know doesn't exist in the real world.
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