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Burner Phone 101
- metadat 1y agoeSim erodes privacy? Well, that sucks, because how long until Apple, Samsung, and Google decide the Sim slot should go the way of the 3.5mm headphone jack?
- bongodongobob 1y agoThat has already happened. iPhones since the 14 don't have sim slots.
- h4ck_th3_pl4n3t 1y agoWhile I like the sentiment of the article, I think most people are not aware of how hostile baseband firmwares are implemented on most SoCs that phones come with. Usually the cell tower handshakes that make you trackable can't be put off, meaning the modem will run in sleep mode even when you are in airplane mode (which is kinda funny considering the dangers of air travel, right? Right?). Are there actually smartphones without an IMEI and with a Wi-Fi card only, preferrably not a Broadcom one?
- KeybInterrupt 1y agoYou might be looking for an android based Media player device. But they are likely not ideal for the use case...
- goopypoop 1y agoSony BRAVIA
- madethemcry 1y agoCan you please give any sources? While it sounds plausible and interesting it's nothing more than a wild conspiracy theory without some background information.
- aja12 1y agoBaseband SoC running their own OS independent from Android/iOS and staying asleep (while still listening for incoming signals) is very much no longer in conspiracy theory territory and more an established fact now. I don't have the source at hand but it's in one of the standards. And the purpose is very clear: LEA like Interpol must be able to locate any IMEI at any point if in tower range, regardless of the power state of the "main" OS
- pdesi 1y agoEven in airplane mode?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- h4ck_th3_pl4n3t 1y agoI dare you to do the following: Charge phone to full 100%. Turn it off. Put it into a faraday cage, e.g. a steel box, for 7 days. Take it out again and wonder why the battery is empty. (The faraday cage has the effect of making the modem have to switch bands constantly, which costs more electricity than sleep mode in LTE)
- arendtio 1y agoAs far as I remember, the whole 'turn off your phone on a plane' was just a precautionary measure and is not a real technical problem nowadays. The risk was that mobile networks could not handle moving many devices from one cell to another at high speeds (during takeoff and landing).
- SahAssar 1y agoHow would that be different for trains? Trains would have similar numbers or more devices, moving at a similar speed (for high speed trains compared to planes at take-off/landing).
- kelnos 1y agoI think part of the issue is that cell tower antennas are designed for talking to devices on the ground or at very low altitudes (like those you'd experience in a tall building). So a cell tower's capacity for talking to lots of somethings directly above it, thousands of feet up, is much lower than talking to lots of somethings below it or adjacent to it.
- reaperducer 1y agoAs far as I remember, the whole 'turn off your phone on a plane' was just a precautionary measure and is not a real technical problem nowadays. My memory is that it was necessary at the time when lots of people started taking phones on airplanes because the wiring/navigation wasn't shielded against a transmitter that might be actually inside the aircraft. Since then, plane electronics are better insulated making it less of a problem.
- tonyarkles 1y agoThere are another two issues that aren’t technical, which are starting to come up again now that Internet access is rapidly becoming available and good onboard aircraft: - People not paying attention to/ignoring the instructions of the FAs during safety briefings and emergencies due to being engaged in a phone call. - People being assholes and talking on the phone, bothering the person stuck in the seat next to them. On all of the flights I’ve been on recently the preflight brief has been crystal clear that you can do whatever you want on the internet connection except have voice calls.
- userbinator 1y agomeaning the modem will run in sleep mode even when you are in airplane mode AFAIK this is not true at least for the Mediatek 65xx and early 67xx platforms; I've analysed the firmware and hardware on those. They actually power off the modem and rest of the RF system when in airplane mode. The modem only boots up and starts searching for a signal when you take it out of airplane mode, which is why it takes a noticeable time (10-30 seconds, depending on how many bands are enabled) to get a signal. If your phone goes from airplane mode to having a signal and immediately capable of calling, then I suspect it's one where the modem is not truly turned off. I haven't inspected Broadcom, Qualcomm, or Spreadtrum in any detail to say whether they do things differently. Are there actually smartphones without an IMEI Look for a "tablet" or anything else without the word "phone" in it if you just want a touchscreen portable computer. An IMEI is obligatory to connect to cellular networks, in much the same way as a MAC address is to Ethernet and WiFi.
- therein 1y agoPhones with MediaTek basebands are able to change their own IMEIs. Do with this information what you will.
- reaperducer 1y agoAre there actually smartphones without an IMEI and with a Wi-Fi card only, preferrably not a Broadcom one? Maybe an old iPod Touch that can still run a VOIP program?
- torcete 1y agoI have the feeling that whenever you are on an airport (and maybe railway stations too) they cross your IMEI with the boarding pass info. I believe that in the UK police use some middle-man towers, which name I have forgotten, to collect as much data as possible.
- vaylian 1y agoYou are probably thinking of a stingray https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker
- theothertimcook 1y agoIn many countries you need a valid government ID document to activate a mobile service which means burners do not really exist in those places. Unless you bought a pixel, graphene’d it and then paid a homeless person to activate a pre-paid data only sim which you would top up with vouchers paid in cash and used a von and international voip service… A lot of effort though
- blitzar 1y agoJust track the hardware. A couple of days of normal usage and should be able to assign a 99% probability on you being the owner of that phone.
- eptcyka 1y agoYou should never turn on your burner in a place where you use your regular phone, duh.
- SoftTalker 1y agoEven using it in the same city, would only require time and maybe a bit more correlation to identify an individual.
- XorNot 1y agoAnd yet realistically you also probably don't turn it on except when you're within about 50 miles of your home. And this is while you're flagging yourself heavily by (1) using a phone which is easily identified as a burner and (2) using it intermittently which means you're trying not to be tracked. So you've already substantially identified yourself in any dataset.
- bigiain 1y agoI'm not sure how many people would get any use out of a burner phone that they need to be 50 miles away from home top use? One of my hobbies is Recreational Paranoia. I used to have (probably still do in a drawer here somewhere) a 3G WiFi hotspot, with an Arduino and GPS module that powered down the battery within a few km of home (actually, within a few km of a public library that's a few km from home, so plotting all the power up & down locations would centre on the library not my house). I could then leave home with that in my backpack and instead of my phone take a wifi only device - I mostly used an iPod Touch but also sometimes Android tablets. I wouldn't get actual phone calls sir SMS that way, but those are both rare for me, most of my social comms are via Signal which worked just fine. I figure wifi cellular hotspots are "not easily identified as a burner phone" and that intermittent use of them is the most common case. It would still have been able to be tracked as being a thing that turned on and off in my surrounding suburbs, and I'm sure I slipped up last least a few times and had it with me while I also had my phone with me - but like I said this was for my hobby, not running an international drug cartel or doing journalism critical of Saudi Royal houses...
- tenacious_tuna 1y ago> Radios off (GPS/Wi-Fi/Bluetooth) unless needed GPS is a passive technology, no? Downloading GPS assist data obviously isn't, and plenty of phones use wifi scanning as a way to augment GPS position fixes, but this seemed a strange callout. Am I missing something?
- netrap 1y agoif the phone is confiscated it could be saving GPS automatically, i guess
- kelnos 1y agoThis stood out from me as odd from the article too, but that's definitely a plausible explanation. I could easily see a phone with some sort of location tracking saving GPS data points internally until it can reach a network again to send them out.
- olyjohn 1y agoThey mean turn it off so that apps on your phone can't read your location.
- cguess 1y agoThe guide recommends PGPP to rotate IMEI numbers, however, the service shut down more than a year ago. https://invisv.com/articles/service_shutdown.html https://invisv.com/articles/service_shutdown.html
- codethief 1y agoI wish the article you linked wasn't so thin on details: > Unfortunately, due to technical issues outside of our control, we have to shut down our subscription services.
- Ccecil 1y agoOne thing I didn't see covered is to never have your "real phone" and your "burner phone" on you (or in the same location) at the same time while powered. Easy enough to say "Gee...these 2 phones are always together or nearby when activated" or "this phone shuts off right before this one powers up". Although, I suspect there are a few other ways to determine identity easier. Such as tracking the device identifier and then looking up nearby public facing cameras.
- bigiain 1y agoAlso, 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.
- dfc 1y agoI 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 events.
- bigiain 1y agoI'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 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.)
- fortran77 1y agoThe Dumphone Finder (https://josebriones.org/dumbphone-finder https://josebriones.org/dumbphone-finder) referenced there is useful, too, if you need to get a phone a 90 year old person has a chance of being able to use.
- mikeytown2 1y agoIf you need to communicate with people in your area and not be tracked; MeshCore software with LoRa hardware like the this https://lilygo.cc/en-ca/products/t-lora-pager https://lilygo.cc/en-ca/products/t-lora-pager is something to consider. Text only, completely offline
- supersour 1y agoThese look pretty fun, have you played with them much? What kind of range can you get?
- bronco21016 1y agoI’ve tried them on snowmobile trails. With the vegetation the range was about a mile. Range can be 100+ miles though if you can establish line of sight. Depending on the scenario, a high elevation repeater could give several mobile devices pretty significant range.
- mikeytown2 1y agoRange is line of sight. If you can see it, even if 100 miles away, odds are it'll work. Seattle area has one of the better networks for MeshCore. Tacoma to Vancouver BC is the range for semi reliable messaging
- hypercube33 1y agoDon't the different frequency bands change that a lot? iirc these are all lower frequency so they can cut through foliage better than say 5ghz wi-fi
- mikeytown2 1y agoYes you can get decent reception inside buildings. It operates in the 915mhz band. Similar frequencies to old school pagers. Lora is an interesting RF protocol, it has really good properties for operating below the noise floor.
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- schoen 1y agoWhen 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 which base station a device is connected to, and which other base stations can see it at a given moment. If you aggregate all of that data, then you know a (geographically moderate-resolution) complete history of where almost all people have been at almost all times, and patterns of their habits and whom they probably recurrently spent time with. Not all of this data has to be collectable, because these things could be disaggregated by introducing different protocol layers. For example, you could pay the mobile company for data connectivity, but use cryptographic blinding mechanisms so that it doesn't know which specific subscriber obtained connectivity at a particular place and time. (Those blinding mechanisms could be implemented inside of SIM cards, so the SIM card's task is to cryptographically prove "I am a SIM card of a current paying subscriber of carrier X" rather than "I am SIM card number 42d1b5c0".) You could have device hardware IDs be ephemeral rather than permanent. Actual messaging and call services could all be "over the top" (as phone industry jargon puts it), provided by people who are not the phone company itself. This disaggregation is a straightforward improvement from a privacy point of view because it prevents companies from knowing things about you that they didn't need to know in order to provide services. Meanwhile, in the world we live in, we see governments trying to make it harder to make phones less trackable, by putting legal restrictions on changing hardware addresses, or requiring legal ID in order to establish service. I imagine that an additional cryptographic indirection layer in SIMs to prevent carriers from linking a permanent identifier to a network registration (or specific data use) would also be banned in some places if it were invented. This shouldn't be inevitable. One thing that made me think about this was when there was a little scandal (which I was a small part of) about companies tracking device wifi MAC addresses for commercial purposes. There was a little industry that would try to recognize people and build commercial profiles based on recognizing that the same device was present (in fact, at the time, even if it didn't actually connect to the wifi -- because a typical wifi-enabled mobile device was sending broadcast wifi probe packets that included its MAC address). So Apple was like "this is a bad use of MAC addresses, which only exist to distinguish devices that happen to be on the LAN at the same time, and perhaps to allow network administrators to assign permanent IP addresses to specific devices", and they made iPhones randomize wifi MAC addresses for some purposes, mostly fixing that particular issue. We could think just the same way about GSM networks: "these identifiers exist for specific protocol reasons; using them for device or user tracking is an abuse that should be mitigated technically".
- neilv 1y ago> Strong PIN, not biometrics And also be aware of "shoulder surfing", which is different today in 2 ways it wasn't in the past. In the past, the risk was something like someone looking at you type in your PIN on a bank ATM, or maybe your password on an computer keyboard. Today, shoulder surfing is mainly different in 2 ways: (1) near-ubiquitous high-resolution surveillance camera networks, which can be places/scale and capture images that humans practically didn't; and (2) with machine learning, they don't even need to see what buttons you press, only see movements of your arm. (Randomizing button positions on a touchscreen can help, and also help fight forensics like traces your fingers leave for where they touch. But randomization means you need to be able to see your screen, which reduces the ways you have to hide your screen from the view of others.)
- rollcat 1y agoShoulder surfing is exactly the risk factor that biometrics are meant to mitigate. Every time you type your PIN - that's an opportunity to snoop it. Neither will protect you against rubber hose cryptography.
- pcthrowaway 1y agoIn addition to surveillance cameras and video of movement, AI can also determine what keys your pressing on a keyboard of an airgapped computer, merely by the sounds you make when you type
- neilv 1y agoKudos to this article for: 1. starting with threat modeling (though they don't call it that); 2. mentioning that your OPSEC affects not only you but also people connected to you; and 3. mentioning that maybe you should just leave the device at home (because it's basically a surveillance machine that you pay for). (A more common article format would be to unload a pile of supposed security&privacy measures without putting them into context, and wouldn't properly set expectations for what that gives you. Neither of which is very helpful, and can be very counterproductive.)
- girvo 1y ago> Buy phone & service in cash Step one is already difficult here in Australia: to do so you must hand over your personal details and ID. At least that was true for anything with a SIM card for sale back in the 2010s So the “step 0” was “find a retailer who didn’t follow the rules”, and they’d usually be a corner store selling handsets or SIM cards by the bucket load to all sorts of interesting characters
- ajxs 1y agoThis was already the case in Australia as early as 2003. I distinctly remember being shocked that I had to provide ID when I bought a phone from a store for the first time.
- apt-apt-apt-apt 1y ago> Buy phone & service in cash Movies make it seem anyone can walk into any store in a trenchcoat and walk out with a burner phone ready to go. I get the service part (you can buy prepaid SIMs in cash). What about the phone?
- aftbit 1y agoThe phone part is easier in many places. I've personally bought both a phone and SIM card in cash from a corner store in SF. I was asked to provide some legal information for the SIM, but they pointedly did not look at my ID or anything, so I was free to write whatever I wanted on the order form. They told me only the SIM required the info, not the phone.
- therein 1y agoYou could have also just bought a T-Mobile SIM and then activated a pre-paid plan with just credits you buy with whatever you want. You can get them for cryptocurrency as well on a lot of places.
- Desk1com 1y agophone get it from a used devices place so it already has someone else's footprint
- scarface_74 1y agoJust a note, Android and iPhones have abysmal security once police have physical access after first unlock (AFU) once your phone is rebooted. https://blogs.dsu.edu/digforce/2023/08/23/bfu-and-afu-lock-states/ https://blogs.dsu.edu/digforce/2023/08/23/bfu-and-afu-lock-s...
- Citizen8396 1y agoyeah, a phone that has been unlocked after boot is easier to get into one that hasn't...
- kuon 1y agoIs there any sim you can buy internationally without an ID? Here you need an ID.
- lilsoso 1y agoIn Mexico you can buy prepaid SIM cards with cash, and without an ID, at convenience stores such as 7-11 or Oxxo.
- kuon 1y agoThat's far, but good to know.
- lilsoso 1y agoYou can buy prepaid SIM cards with cash, and without hassle, in the US as well. You can do this in many countries, I believe, as well as online through services offered in exchange for crypto. You didn't define where "here" is for you. Mexico is a better option than the US because the retail price of a SIM card with a number and service is around 50 pesos (maybe lower).
- kuon 1y agoYeah, I forgot: I'm in switzerland.
- Desk1com 1y agoUK you don't need ID and can pay in cash. They'll ask for your name and address but you can make it up
- wartijn_ 1y agoIn The Netherlands you can buy prepaid sims without any kind of identification.
- groby_b 1y agoI feel like any article on burner phones that glosses over acquisition with "buy phone and service in cash" misses the point. Buying a phone anonymously is much harder than "just cash". Most places demand name & address for sign-up, and if you're unlucky want to see an ID. You really should think through where and how you buy, how to find the "off the back of a truck" places, where to get SIMs, how to pay for renewal in untraceable money and without a CC, etc.
- electric_muse 1y agoWhat are the latest tips and best practices for acquiring a phone and service without having to deanonymize? For example, can you just walk into Best Buy with cash?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- aspenmayer 1y ago> without having to deanonymize > Best Buy Cameras are everywhere in big box stores. Anonymity is not sold in stores.
- whartung 1y agoAre satellite phones under the same microscope as cell phones? Are they broadcasting on all the different cell/wifi/bt frequencies or do they just connect to a satellite? Are they GPS tagged? Also if you want one-way “location less” communication, the old alphanumeric pager network is still available. I think those messages are simply broadcast across the network (which at least in the US is national). There’s evidence of a message being sent, none about whether it was received or where it was received.
- stillthat 1y ago[flagged]
- Desk1com 1y agoMental Outlaw and Rob Braxman on youtube have more comprehensive overviews on how to get burner phones
- aspenmayer 1y agoHow to Get a Private Phone, Number, and Cellular Data - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaHWcttD0tM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaHWcttD0tM (Mental Outlaw) There were simply too many possibly related videos on the Rob Braxman Tech channel to determine which one you might mean. Do you have a recommendation? Here's his channel for folks who are new to his content: https://www.youtube.com/@robbraxmantech https://www.youtube.com/@robbraxmantech
- Desk1com 1y agoThis one's a good overview where he references his own deeper dives into the tech details. Disclaimer he's selling his own de-googled phone but he's transparent about it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_I9bFIrFhDs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_I9bFIrFhDs
- aspenmayer 1y agoI appreciate the link. I get the sense that he is putting out a lot of content because he’s doing updates for his project, along with broad strokes videos for why folks should care about the issues, and also nuanced takes for specific topics, so I couldn’t cut through the noise to find the signal, as I haven’t followed his content closely, but I did like what I saw.
- Desk1com 1y agoyeah the definitely not as succinct as it could be. They all seem to pad out content with the same generalities. But fair enough, there is no foolproof solution looks like
- aspenmayer 1y ago
- commandersaki 1y agoAlways remember the three Cs of OPSEC (credit to grugq): compartmentalisation, cover, and concealment. Most OPSEC failures are due to leakages which is a failure of compartmentalisation.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Havoc 1y agoProblem is the utility of a phone is mostly in the things that are problematic. Email, cloud etc. It’s either got too much stuff on it or not enough stuff on it.
- pabs3 1y ago> in cash Cash is likely tracked too these days, if you get it from an ATM for sure, or maybe it is for some modern tills. So learn to busk before you think about buying a burner phone.
- Terr_ 1y agoIt's very hard to fight a big nefarious system. Especially with the democratic backsliding of the last few months in the US, it's starting to seem like a better bang-for-your-buck is to ensure the system shares your values, i.e. politics. That's not to say technical approaches don't remain important, but even most encryption is still based on the idea that someone can't just cut off your fingers until you reveal something that satisfies them.
- thinkingemote 1y agoThis post has an obvious rewritten-by-LLM smell to it. That's okay and increasing common but it's giving me a kind of funny feeling with regards to the content which I'd like to examine more. Firstly, What's the current opinion on using third party LLMs by the infosec community? Secondly it's more philosophical: do activists on the ground embrace this new tech or fight against it? Or is it an amoral tool, like what a phone is considered to be? Is there a distinction between the big third party APIs and local on device use? (If it helps, the feeling is a bit like a seeing a Linux developer use an Apple mac for development)
- matltc 1y agoAh sweet a schizo thread
- M95D 1y ago> Privacy Tips for All Phones: > Keep device & OS as updated as possible I don't think so! Cloud rot also affects tracking servers, ad-serving servers and pre-installed apps. A phone that is never updated will, in a few years, be affected by the cloud rot and most of it's tracking will stop working. The best burner phone is the oldest second-hand phone from a flea market that can still connect to the phone network. > SIM rotation: Rotating SIMs manually or using PGPP eSIMs changes your IMSI, though your IMEI stays constant. So then, why rotate them? If one phone is known to be yours, then each SIM inserted into it is known to be yours, and any other (burner) phone that SIM gets inserted into will also be known to be yours. Pair each SIM with only one burner phone and there will be no record of a connection between them, unless they're connected to the same tower and moving at the same time. > Do not share your email, phone number, or ID with carriers or clerks when activating service Not possible in Europe. Buying a SIM card requires an ID.