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Create an anonymous Signal phone number with Android

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Re: Create an anonymous Signal phone number with Android

#21

Post by blubb-fish »

Arnt wrote: post #20
blubb-fish wrote: post #13

I don't see the problem to begin with. The question with anonymity and data securing always is - " who do you want to protect against?" No matter how you set up Signal it's not going to help you against intelligence agencies - they'll just hack into your Android or use the available backdoors in your I- or Windows Phone. Signal is very good (the best?) to encrypt your messages and to sabotage mass surveillance which…

Try harder. Pretend there's a phone on my desk now that was bought by someone else via ebay and reflashed to cyanogenmod. There actually was, its owner forgot it while visiting, but you can pretend that you're a powerful snooping government and that's my secret phone that you want to hack. Not registered in my name, not purchased by me, maybe there's not even a SIM card in the phone. How do you go about "just hacking…

Well, usually there has to be a SIM card in your phone to use it for communication. That SIM card has an ID and sooner or later there is going to be a correlateable pattern - the location of a phone which happens to be close to you very often or simply a voice that can be identified as yours. It depends if NSA wants you and then figures out your alter egos or if its the alter ego they care first about and then they'll try to figure out who's the real ego.

What's the satisfaction to be 100% untraceable anyway? The practially and politically relevant idea is to not cater your data to them.

Re: Create an anonymous Signal phone number with Android

#23

Post by 746F7475 »

blubb-fish wrote: post #21
Arnt wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try harder. Pretend there's a phone on my desk now that was bought by someone else via ebay and reflashed to cyanogenmod. There actually was, its owner forgot it while visiting, but you can pretend that you're a powerful snooping government and that's my secret phone that you want to hack. Not registered in my name, not purchased by me, maybe there's not even a SIM card in the phone. How do you go about "just hacking…

Well, usually there has to be a SIM card in your phone to use it for communication. That SIM card has an ID and sooner or later there is going to be a correlateable pattern - the location of a phone which happens to be close to you very often or simply a voice that can be identified as yours. It depends if NSA wants you and then figures out your alter egos or if its the alter ego they care first about and then they'l…

>Well, usually there has to be a SIM card in your phone to use it for communication.

Isn't the whole point here to only use public WiFi through Tor with the "anonymophone"?

Re: Create an anonymous Signal phone number with Android

#24

Post by 746F7475 »

jalada wrote: post #19

It feels like the steps taken to improve anonymity are really arbitrary, without any particular threat model. 'Randomly' taking a bus you never take to a city you've never been to and never go to again just to buy a phone, sit in a coffee shop for 5 minutes, and go home, sounds like a good way to make someone pay attention to what you're doing. And if you think that's too much paranoia, I'm pointing it out because nu…

Of course you can (and probably should) be "sneaky" about it and have alter motive to go to that city, say you go to a concert or maybe it has better movie theater or maybe there is some kind of conference.

About using the phone in places you don't routinely go, I can think of at least couple places like coffee shops that are within range of another public wifi which I don't normally associate with.

Re: Create an anonymous Signal phone number with Android

#27

Post by Arnt »

blubb-fish wrote: post #21
Arnt wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try harder. Pretend there's a phone on my desk now that was bought by someone else via ebay and reflashed to cyanogenmod. There actually was, its owner forgot it while visiting, but you can pretend that you're a powerful snooping government and that's my secret phone that you want to hack. Not registered in my name, not purchased by me, maybe there's not even a SIM card in the phone. How do you go about "just hacking…

Well, usually there has to be a SIM card in your phone to use it for communication. That SIM card has an ID and sooner or later there is going to be a correlateable pattern - the location of a phone which happens to be close to you very often or simply a voice that can be identified as yours. It depends if NSA wants you and then figures out your alter egos or if its the alter ego they care first about and then they'l…

WLAN is sufficient for a lot of use in some use cases, but that's a digression. The main point is that even if you do have zero-day exploits, just finding the phone can be a big, big hurdle, particularly if you don't know the name of its main user.

Re: Create an anonymous Signal phone number with Android

#28

Post by mindslight »

fulafel wrote: post #17
blubb-fish wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They'll still track you by correlating your Signal meta-data with that resulting from your usage of other Google services where you are "onymous".

You mustn't use your "onymous" Google ID on this burner phone, nor have any contact between your pseudonymous Google ID and your public Google ID. I guess the guide should spell this out more, I took it as implied when the guide started by buying a non-trackable phone with cash. Edit: quote from the guide: "11. Only use this device for Signal (and maybe Google Authenticator, see #13) from now on to minimize its expos…

It's even worse - simply using the same wifi point as your other Google accounts or even your friends will deanonymize you.

Trustable local software (so not GApps/Android) and a mix network is the only way to get anonymity.

I'd personally like to see communication apps that use TOR for messaging, with the option to explicitly break anonymity for voice calls - leaving your location untracked most of the time.

Re: Create an anonymous Signal phone number with Android

#29

Post by mindslight »

Arnt wrote: post #20
blubb-fish wrote: post #13

I don't see the problem to begin with. The question with anonymity and data securing always is - " who do you want to protect against?" No matter how you set up Signal it's not going to help you against intelligence agencies - they'll just hack into your Android or use the available backdoors in your I- or Windows Phone. Signal is very good (the best?) to encrypt your messages and to sabotage mass surveillance which…

Try harder. Pretend there's a phone on my desk now that was bought by someone else via ebay and reflashed to cyanogenmod. There actually was, its owner forgot it while visiting, but you can pretend that you're a powerful snooping government and that's my secret phone that you want to hack. Not registered in my name, not purchased by me, maybe there's not even a SIM card in the phone. How do you go about "just hacking…

The phone still contacts the network for E911 service. Locate the phone on your desk based on signal strength to towers. If the phone moved every day it would be easy to uniquely identify, but even if there's some false positives who cares? Then simply access the application processor through the baseband processor which is likely the same chip and pwnt-by-design given its secretive nature and the stakes.

The only reasons we trust Intel processors is because A. we have to, and B. we (think) we can audit all of its communications. Neither of these is true for a cell phone.

Re: Create an anonymous Signal phone number with Android

#30

Post by dayon »

ynezz wrote: post #10

I think, that it's not that anonymous. Weak spots: 1. I wouldn't recommend buying used devices, you don't know what has been done with the device, what's running there, even if you reflash it from scratch. Try to buy somehow (anonymously) device in still original and sealed packaging. 2. One would need to first install modified AOSP/CyanogenMod with patched core libraries/apps/services to return fake/random values fo…

Regarding #3, what about putting the phone into airplane mode and keeping WIFI on? Wouldn't airplane mode disable the baseband?
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