I’ve visited Australia as a traveler, apparently I’ve heard that “burner” phones over there are not really anonymous since they literally demand for ID (WTF? That defeats the purpose of it being classed a burner phone) otherwise they aren’t allowed to sell it to you, what’s meant to be a ‘disposable’ phone turns out on buying a regular one when you consider the fact they ask for driver’s license prior to finalizing the transaction.
Don’t even talk about SIM cards for BP, since that too is subjected to KYC in Australia as I’ve learned. They want to harvest data such as driver’s license & residential address (for citizens), or passport info / flight confirmation (return ticket) if you’re a traveler. Without those things: vendors can’t legally sell you a burner phone, so: DON’T BUY A BURNER PHONE IN AUSTRALIA. Their method of acquisition defeats anonymity.
Police have successfully identified burner phones by looking at what other phones they’re geographically close to. What I mean is, some crime boss carried his burner and regular phone around together all the time, so the phone records showed that the anonymous burner phone used to make shady deals was always near Joey Mobster’s phone. Hence, Joey is the likely owner of the anonymous burner.
If you do get a burner, never turn it on near your house, near your work, or near your regular phone. Keep it off and wrapped in aluminum foil until you’re in a location that you can’t easily be connected to.
Does aluminum foil actually work? You might be better off using a faraday bag that designed for this purpose.
It’s probably not as good, but this where convenience wins because it’s good enough. You can get aluminum foil almost anywhere and it’s already in about every house.
It may not be as effective as a proper faraday bag but yes it can greatly reduce the signal coming in/going out
Depending on the bag, foil works better. Always test your gear before relying on it.
Currently you can, but there was news last month the FCC is planning to force carriers to verify ID before allowing them on their networks.
There’s options out there, yes, but you have to go look for it. The way I got my burner was buying a google pixel (for graphene os,) with cash and then putting it on a pay as you on a cash-funded visa got card
Verizon happily hooked me up.
(I use the phone for going to protests and such things.)
Buying a phone anonymously is easy, you can do that in every phone store.
It’s the sim card that’s the problem. if you pay for your service with VISA, it’s not anonymous.
It’s the sim card that’s the problem. if you pay for your service with VISA, it’s not anonymous.
As I mentioned in my original comment…. It’s specifically a visa gift card.
Which you get by paying cash and reload by paying cash, with no information given. Verizon just goes you the sSIM card when you set up on their service. (And the only real reason to do that is so I don’t have to go into their stores all the time.)
Thanks for the explanation.
You can buy a sim card and service for cash at most drug stores and Walmart
OK, that’s USA then,
I don’t think you can do that legally here in Denmark anymore.Edit:
I looked it up, and I was surprised to learn that actually you can?
They probably looked at who users burner phones and quickly realized it’s mostly people cheating on their spouses or people of the criminal variety. None of these groups are going to start a political movement. And cheaters gonna cheat and one more obstacle for the criminal folks isn’t a bad thing. Tourists are a rounding error.
Sure, in the past we had phone booths and boxes. The majority of landlines were registered to a name, a business, or an institution. There isn’t really a long established right to have a burner number. People used to voluntarily list their names and numbers in a book. And no cheating farmer Bob had a secret line put in the barn so he could talk to his side piece.
I’m going to guess the Aussie rules apply to most of the countries we group under the label western. And there is a danger that they harvest your data but it is more likely a government requirement to register ID. Like with private car ownership in the US as well if I’m not mistaken. It’s not wildly outlandish as a concept.
Don’t look into what they make you do if you want to own a firearm.
It all used to be very easy in Australia, you bought the phone at a supermarket and gave bogus info when registering the SIM. Then the “War on Terror™” began and the government started taking things a bit more seriously started mandating the paper registration forms needed to be completed or the retailers could get in trouble. But your average supermarket worker wasn’t going to take the time to do that and it was way too widespread for the government to actually crack down on it.
Took a few years but the Telcos started actually paying attention to the fact that the majority of prepaid phones weren’t getting completed paperwork at point of sale so they just moved to make all sim card activations require online or over the phone ID checks.
Every bit of training I ever did made it clear it was all about catching terrorists, drug dealers and paedophiles, which of course means “We want all that juicy data without citizens asking any annoying questions.”
The trick with burner phones in Australia is buying the sim as a business. Not like I have done that…
Plus eSIM and you’re golden?
no. they’ll know the phone number, who you are and have video of you buying the phone and they’ll have video of you walking and driving
you can see this when you watch police investigations on YouTube
Why would you burn the phone anyway? Isn’t it enough to burn the SIM card?
It’s a phrase meaning the phone is to be used then thrown away because it has been compromised.
Your phone sends its device ID (called IMEI) to the network provider with every connection.
As far as I last checked, yes, still possible in the US.
Stores like Walmart sell the phones and phone cards for prepaid service and all that can be paid with cash which doesn’t require ID.
If nothing else, you can buy a second hand phone from online places for meeting people or wherever and get a phone card for cash and neither doesn’t trace back to you either.
Of course this is likely because everywhere we go is covered by cameras so you’re never truly anonymous if someone is determined enough.
If you saw the show Better Call Saul, this is what Saul was doing when he sold phones to people from the shop he worked at.
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