7 ms·

Create an anonymous Signal phone number with Android

90 points by nyolfen 11y ago

gfuguy 11y ago
You can't be serious. Ain't nobody got time for that.
edent 11y ago
Very interesting. But what happens if someone gets that temporary phone number and re-registers it on a different handset?
- gcb0 11y ago
  i was thinking you'd need that temp number only to register gvoice
yuvadam 11y ago
I'm curious why Whisper Systems aren't allowing registration with just a handle instead of tying accounts to a PSTN number. Telegram already allows this.
- LeoPanthera 11y ago
  > Telegram already allows this. No it doesn't. You can have a handle, but only after verifying a number first.
  - retromario 11y ago
    And Telegram is not secure anyways: https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/49782/is-telegram-secure https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/49782/is-telegr... Check out Threema for a secure alternative that doesn't require a phone number: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threema https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threema
    - LeoPanthera 11y ago
      That's all very well, but no good if everyone you want to talk to already uses Telegram, which is proving to be quite popular.
- anon4 11y ago
  IIRC, the last time the question was raised, the answer was "because that's what the average person expects".
  - kobayashi 11y ago
    Yeah, that's their answer, and it's a ridiculously shallow answer. I don't understand how people who are so dedicated to communications security won't add such a seemingly simple feature. Even Wickr allows it.
ars 11y ago
Can't you just buy a prepaid phone at some corner market, and not use it for a month (to wait for any video surveillance to overwrite)?
nunobrito 11y ago
This is stupid. Wants to be anonymous, uses Google. Google records your calls, the number of times you access their service, the messages, the IP address you are using and happily shares this information with your favorite government information service. Wake up. If you are not paying for the service from Google, YOU are the service..
- fulafel 11y ago
  The point is creating a new network identity that is not connected to your public identity, and let Google etc track it all they want. So it's pseudonymous more than anonymous.
  - blubb-fish 11y ago
    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".
    - fulafel 11y ago
      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 exposure."
      - mindslight 11y ago
        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.
ynezz 11y ago
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 for device serial number, WiFi and Bluetooth MAC addresses. Otherwise some of the apps might leak this information over the air, even in clear text form. 3. You need to remove or somehow power off the GSM baseband, otherwise you can still be tracked. I'm not an expert in this area, so there might be a lot other missing weak spots in this guide.
- blkhawk 11y ago
  1. the chances that a random old device you bought at a fleamarket with cash is pre-loaded with an attack package thats targeted to you is low. Lower than say ordering a phone in its "originaly sealed" package. Since Snowden we know that Hardware is intercepted and modified. I am sure the package looks sealed afterwards. 2.Installing a ROM without the normal Google apps is something that is beneficial for this application. 3. in all the android phones i have taken apart the various antennas are easy to identify and remove. they are part of the back shell and can be peeled off or are sitting on their own little module that can be left out of the phone.
- dayon 11y ago
  Regarding #3, what about putting the phone into airplane mode and keeping WIFI on? Wouldn't airplane mode disable the baseband?
  - chadzawistowski 11y ago
    Possibly... but you have to trust that the software is doing what you told it to. A hardware killswitch would be far more trustable.
fulafel 11y ago
Talkatone (step 6) asks for money and in order to get the temporary phone number. Possibly this could be overcome anonymously by buying Google Play coupons with cash.
blubb-fish 11y ago
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 aims at content analysis. Also not any random bored Data Scientist at WhatsApp will be able to read your stuff. Controlling your meta-data is absolutely impossible with your day-to-day-smartphone anyway. You'd have to use stolen phones and SIM cards. In my opinion it ALL comes down to establishing online best practices to keep suspicion-independent mass surveillance at bay. The rest is politics - if your police is super corrupt - they'll just break your fingers until you give them access to what they want.
- Arnt 11y ago
  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 into" that phone or using the "available backdoors"?
  - blubb-fish 11y ago
    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.
    - 746F7475 11y ago
mseebach 11y ago
It seems pointless to go through that exercise if you're going to share that phone number with people who doesn't share your dedication to OPSEC (for a fictional argument, recall Zero Dark Thirty where they essentially find OBL because a guy calls his mother). And once you're there, you don't need PSTN numbers, which means you can leave Google out of the equation.
jalada 11y ago
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 number 8 on this list says 'never use the phone from a place you routinely go', which feels like it's on a similar level.
- 746F7475 11y ago
  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.
ikeboy 11y ago
Is there a secure way to make phone calls from a computer over tor? If you get an anonymous Google voice number, would it work over tor to make calls?
- therein 11y ago
  Google requires you to verify with a phone number if your IP address matches a Tor exit node.
  - ikeboy 11y ago
    Yes, but the article says you can use a temporary number to verify. If you can get a temp number on a computer for sms, then switch to the gv one for use, would calling over tor work?
JS3WUMP 11y ago
I think using https://ostel.co https://ostel.co instead of Signal would be easier and make a lot more sense. But in the absence of a defined threat model, it's hard to see what the author was going for.
zeropointmodule 11y ago
create a throwaway google voice number

90 points by nyolfen 11y ago

You can't be serious. Ain't nobody got time for that.

edent 11y ago

Very interesting. But what happens if someone gets that temporary phone number and re-registers it on a different handset?

gcb0 11y ago
i was thinking you'd need that temp number only to register gvoice

yuvadam 11y ago

I'm curious why Whisper Systems aren't allowing registration with just a handle instead of tying accounts to a PSTN number. Telegram already allows this.

LeoPanthera 11y ago
> Telegram already allows this. No it doesn't. You can have a handle, but only after verifying a number first.
- retromario 11y ago
  And Telegram is not secure anyways: https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/49782/is-telegram-secure https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/49782/is-telegr... Check out Threema for a secure alternative that doesn't require a phone number: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threema https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threema
  - LeoPanthera 11y ago
    That's all very well, but no good if everyone you want to talk to already uses Telegram, which is proving to be quite popular.
anon4 11y ago
IIRC, the last time the question was raised, the answer was "because that's what the average person expects".
- kobayashi 11y ago
  Yeah, that's their answer, and it's a ridiculously shallow answer. I don't understand how people who are so dedicated to communications security won't add such a seemingly simple feature. Even Wickr allows it.

ars 11y ago

Can't you just buy a prepaid phone at some corner market, and not use it for a month (to wait for any video surveillance to overwrite)?

nunobrito 11y ago

This is stupid. Wants to be anonymous, uses Google. Google records your calls, the number of times you access their service, the messages, the IP address you are using and happily shares this information with your favorite government information service. Wake up. If you are not paying for the service from Google, YOU are the service..

fulafel 11y ago
The point is creating a new network identity that is not connected to your public identity, and let Google etc track it all they want. So it's pseudonymous more than anonymous.
- blubb-fish 11y ago
  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".
  - fulafel 11y ago
    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 exposure."
    - mindslight 11y ago
      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.

ynezz 11y ago

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 for device serial number, WiFi and Bluetooth MAC addresses. Otherwise some of the apps might leak this information over the air, even in clear text form. 3. You need to remove or somehow power off the GSM baseband, otherwise you can still be tracked. I'm not an expert in this area, so there might be a lot other missing weak spots in this guide.

blkhawk 11y ago
1. the chances that a random old device you bought at a fleamarket with cash is pre-loaded with an attack package thats targeted to you is low. Lower than say ordering a phone in its "originaly sealed" package. Since Snowden we know that Hardware is intercepted and modified. I am sure the package looks sealed afterwards. 2.Installing a ROM without the normal Google apps is something that is beneficial for this application. 3. in all the android phones i have taken apart the various antennas are easy to identify and remove. they are part of the back shell and can be peeled off or are sitting on their own little module that can be left out of the phone.
dayon 11y ago
Regarding #3, what about putting the phone into airplane mode and keeping WIFI on? Wouldn't airplane mode disable the baseband?
- chadzawistowski 11y ago
  Possibly... but you have to trust that the software is doing what you told it to. A hardware killswitch would be far more trustable.

fulafel 11y ago

Talkatone (step 6) asks for money and in order to get the temporary phone number. Possibly this could be overcome anonymously by buying Google Play coupons with cash.

blubb-fish 11y ago

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 aims at content analysis. Also not any random bored Data Scientist at WhatsApp will be able to read your stuff. Controlling your meta-data is absolutely impossible with your day-to-day-smartphone anyway. You'd have to use stolen phones and SIM cards. In my opinion it ALL comes down to establishing online best practices to keep suspicion-independent mass surveillance at bay. The rest is politics - if your police is super corrupt - they'll just break your fingers until you give them access to what they want.

Arnt 11y ago
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 into" that phone or using the "available backdoors"?
- blubb-fish 11y ago
  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.
  - 746F7475 11y ago

mseebach 11y ago

It seems pointless to go through that exercise if you're going to share that phone number with people who doesn't share your dedication to OPSEC (for a fictional argument, recall Zero Dark Thirty where they essentially find OBL because a guy calls his mother). And once you're there, you don't need PSTN numbers, which means you can leave Google out of the equation.

jalada 11y ago

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 number 8 on this list says 'never use the phone from a place you routinely go', which feels like it's on a similar level.

746F7475 11y ago
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.

ikeboy 11y ago

Is there a secure way to make phone calls from a computer over tor? If you get an anonymous Google voice number, would it work over tor to make calls?

therein 11y ago
Google requires you to verify with a phone number if your IP address matches a Tor exit node.
- ikeboy 11y ago
  Yes, but the article says you can use a temporary number to verify. If you can get a temp number on a computer for sms, then switch to the gv one for use, would calling over tor work?

JS3WUMP 11y ago

I think using https://ostel.co https://ostel.co instead of Signal would be easier and make a lot more sense. But in the absence of a defined threat model, it's hard to see what the author was going for.

zeropointmodule 11y ago

create a throwaway google voice number