Purism's AweSIM – monthly plan for Librem5 including unlimited data
puri.sm
puri.sm
I use such a service for home internet in Ottawa, Canada (https://ncf.ca) and it’s been working great - with much better customer service.
The stopper for Bell Fiber FTTH is Bell blocking resale of service on their pure fiber lines to 3rd parties. I don't remember any specific dates but the CRTC is bound to hopefully force their hand one day.
I am too hoping they one day offer it, I love NCF.
Assumedly, this number will not work for that...
EDIT:Bi previously said that the irs required you to have a phone in your name. That was incorrect. I meant to refer to the full secure online access: You can verify by phone or mail, and they disabled mail option during covid a while ago.
https://www.irs.gov/individuals/secure-access-how-to-registe...
When I opened the account in person, I needed a photo ID (driver license) and social security card (proof of SSN). Online, I surprisingly did not need the driver license at all, just had to provide SSN and e-sign a thousand forms. Phone number was not required and was not checked beyond confirming it was mine with a text code.
> “You also authorize your wireless carrier (AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, US Cellular, Verizon, or any other branded wireless operator) to disclose information about your wireless account, such as your mobile number, name, address, email, network status, customer type, customer role, billing type, mobile device identifi ers (IMSI and IMEI) and other sub-scriber status, subscriber method and device details, if available, to support identity verifi cation, fraud avoidance, and other uses in support of trans-actions for the duration of your business relationship with us . This information may also be shared with other companies to support your transactions with us and for identity verifi cation and fraud avoidance purposes . See our Privacy Policy for how we treat your data .”
Their privacy stance overall looks just ok, maybe somewhat above average.
It does make me wonder how strong of a privacy stance Purism will take, or will be able to take as a service provider.
Some emphasis added, and some info trimmed (noted with ellipses ...)
https://www.visible.com/legal/privacy/
... I. COLLECTION OF INFORMATION We collect information when you use our service. This includes information about the calls you make and receive, text messages you send and receive, ___websites you visit, mobile applications you use___, and wireless network and device information, including location, Internet protocol (IP) address and connection speed, mobile telephone number, ___device and advertising identifiers___, browser type, and operating system. Some Visible devices include Verizon-provided system applications that collect information about network and device conditions, which is used to secure and improve our network and services. ...
II. USE OF INFORMATION
... * Determine products and services that may interest you and market them to you, including on Visible sites and apps and on others’ sites, services, apps and devices as described in Section V below ...
III. DISCLOSURE OF INFORMATION
* Authorized service providers and partners. We share your information with service providers and partners that help us with a variety of things, including development and delivery of our sites, apps and service. ... ... * Aggregated and De-identified Information. We may aggregate or otherwise de-identify information and use it for our own purposes or share it with third parties for their own purposes. ...
... Your Right to Say “Do Not Sell”
The CCPA gives you the right to say no to the sale of personal information.
We do not sell information that personally identifies you such as your name, telephone number, mailing address or email address.. We allow Verizon Media and third-party advertising companies to collect information about your activity on our website and in our app, for example through cookies and similar technologies, mobile ad identifiers, pixels, web beacons and social network plugins. These ad entities use information they collect to help us provide more relevant Visible advertisements and for other advertising purposes. This activity may be considered a sale under the CCPA. Visit the Digital Advertising Alliance's Consumer Choices page to learn more about how you can limit this type of advertising. App users can opt out by using your device settings to “Limit Ad Tracking” (for iOS devices) or “Opt out of Ads Personalization” (on Android devices) ...
(edit: formatting)
The IRS most certainly does not require a cell phone registered in your name, nor could they.
They don't but the alternative 2FA for them was a letter mailed through USPS.
I had to do that back in the day when Google Fi wasn't recognized by the IRS as a mobile phone.
Last time I manually filled taxes this wasn't something I had to do.
That has not been my experience with the IRS and my banks.
Given that it's (probably?) impossible to use cellular internet without handing over your ID to at least one entity, the target audience of this plan is probably one that would prefer that entity to be one for which privacy is a primary concern.
(This is why I always wished Apple would become a cellular provider.)
Take a sim leave a sim.
There are always ways around this nonsense.
I even proceeded to (unknowingly) break the law with one of the phones I bought from target. (apparently you're not supposed to use prepaid phones for balloon tracking.)
Not that it matters, they can still subpoena the place you got the phone from and now they have a video of you.
Target uses your devices radios to track your movements in a store. I wonder if they also use it to correlate cash purchases.
One of many articles about this: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jan/21/shops-tra...
When Verizon/Att/Tmo/etc sells your information to Advertising companies, they will "infer" your identity. They do not care if phone SIM have your ID associated. That ID is built from traffic.
If they see DNS requests to real state sites, they may put you in a bucket that says "high income", if they see searches (via DNS hijack to when you search by your addressbar like tmo does) for things like fastfood breakfast delivery, up in the "low income" bucket you go. Also, it will always have your Phone number.
Then those Advertising companies "enrich" this data with data from google or others, and can pin point you by email plus all the correlated data. Happy that you have facebook two factor auth to your SMS now?
It shocks me that people in this forum are completely oblivious to Tracking and think that the aborted "think of the children" law that requires you present an ID to buy a phone line has any importance...
So, to conclude, the traffic here is observed by the proxing entity, by the tel co, etc.
Nevertheless, once you start spending 8 hours/day in the same spot for days on end, it will be pretty easy to link you from tower records to traffic, and then to your real world identity.
Combining this with financial blinding and you can likely use LTE at a protest in an oppressive country without much chance you get pinned down there and arrested later.
Having your phone radio on at all (even without a SIM, e.g. E911 calls) is inherently privacy violating. If you must have connectivity on the go, any prepaid SIM + always on VPN will do the trick. Use Twilio if you want multiple numbers.
$99/mo is ludicrous, even if this actually works, which I have doubts about given the history of purism.
It just feels like they're taking advantage of people.
Although now that I think about it I wonder how they do E911? Sounds like a liability
Perhaps a writable (auto-updating?) sim card could make this process easier and faster.
Also they have their Librem One offering that includes a VPN. So it very much fits that use case. It's just not included.
basically, I don't buy the significant value in their privacy mode (perhaps it has value to others, but not so much to me). I can see the value in supporting the development of the phone, but its a very significant delta in cost.
The sms and voice limits are high enough not to matter.
"limited to United States"
I hate it when marketers say one thing, but the contract says the exact opposite.
Or that only in San Marino (judging by the .sm domain)?
Presumably they have the information and will respond to a warrant but won't tell the carrier they're MVNO'ing who you are. This isn't that weird; for "work phones" companies often get a pool of SIMs registered to them which they then pass out to employees, and AT&T or whoever doesn't need to know who's in possession of each one at every moment.
No clear definition of where deprioritization limits kick in or how it is to be enforced. Who cares though! The Librem 5 ships with a cat3 LTE modem. That is only just LTE on a single carrier, no LTE Advanced, no carrier aggregation. Forget talking about 5G, we don't even have a modem that supports full 4G operating speeds. Stop hyping something you aren't close to.
Now I get it, I'm sounding very harsh but understand that this is a company that's selling a packaged virtue signal (sorta like Virtu used to) and is consistently over-promising and under-delivering. Making phones is hard, making them in the US is next to impossible. I'd rather have a piece of working/shipping Chinesium (Pinephone) for a fifth of the price and use a sim card paid in cash from a prepaid carrier that I can load whatever to it and isn't going to be gone in a year, if I cared to attempt anonymity.
I pay 18.80 GBP a month for this.
I'm not suggesting that $99 isn't too much, just that to expect price parity when the average subscribers per square mile is vastly different isn't realistic.
EDIT: rereading it, it looks like the extra cost is giving you some privacy benefits and helping fund them.
(It was in a country of >1billion people)
> A phone number registered & operated under Purism
> Help fund additional developmental services offered from Purism
?
I don’t think anyone’s arguing that everyone wants this, but I think it (including “privacy as a service” as part of point №1) is ⅔ of the value proposition.
99 USD in Canada will buy you 50GB of data and unlimited calls to Canadian numbers only. Why are you judging a US phone plan based on how it compares to UK plans?
What does this mean, exactly? At what point does "compression" kick in, and what does "compression" entail?
For Android, if getting a Lineage OS in phone, the first problem is Lineage OS still does not have automatic update without manually reboot into recovery mode, and need for user invention. Let's be honest I don't bother to update because of requiring human intervention in update until I find the time to do it. Not a good practice but hey...
Secondly, any phone could be dropped support by Lineage OS if the developer of that model just starts using another phone and cannot find another to continue supporting the phone.
The best option for privacy seems to be using GrapheneOS with Pixel phones, but GrapheneOS only supports as long as the support cycle of a pixel phone, so it is 3 years before end-of-life minus the time to develop GrapheneOS ROM for a new pixel phone. If you are going to value your privacy so much then this is the best, but a quite expensive route and not really environmental friendly.
An iPhone can receive update as long as Apple the company is not bankrupted. Well, you get a worse performance after update but at least it is an option to continue to use.
Again, ignore the fact that iPhone is closed source, it does provide a infinite software update until it's broken, which is better service than most Android phone, even if considering installing ROM.
That's a big thing to ignore.
> it does provide a infinite software update until it's broken
No, it provides a long (several year) life cycle, but Apple does EOL devices.
> which is better service than most Android phone
Absolutely agreed.
> even if considering installing ROM.
Less obvious; Apple probably beats many aftermarket ROMs on lifespan (while losing on other points), but it's a lot closer competition.
P.S. If/When they do and you use LOS be sure to tip LOS and the developer ;)
I need a phone with robust support and good warranty. At the time I bought my iPhone 10S, it was a good choice, and I could even buy it locally to me. I was unaware of any option that would offer those things, was generally available, and didn't run Android (with Google Apps) or iOS.
iOS is a closed platform, but this is the only obvious negative thing about it, privacy-wise. You can opt out of every single cloud thing that ships with the phone, and most are even opt-in (for example, iCloud and Apple accounts in general). The phone ships with a robust suite of productivity apps, a modern web browser that is kept up to date, and many privacy options. And usually, opting out of something doesn't break some other random other feature on the phone for no reason. (I recently saw a recording of how you cannot have Google search installed on Android and refuse to share your call logs with it. Why? There are no such restrictions on anything on iOS, as far as I have found.)
Not sure what you mean exactly, I'm talking about the service, not the basic existence of dual-SIM functionality (something I already have).
I'm not sure this instinct applies much to this situation, but it immediately came to mind. Vertical integration is where user privacy (from service providers) starts to erode.
Ideally, we should have competing but inter-operable service providers on common platforms and protocols which have nothing to do with the service providers.
Perhaps you object more to the $840 than the $360? Did you see the price of the phone?
Edit: s/phone/dialtone/
It might be the personalized pricing you get, just because they know your zipcode.
But it hurts that Purism uses their monopoly over their niche to upcharge customers so much.
edit: I'm wrong. Didn't know about their financial woes.
Monopoly? Purism barely exists as a company.
This is just another desperate attempt to get some cash flow, I don't think they've even managed to ship the gen1 phone to all the backers yet.
This is not a desperate attempt, it is another service offering to align with their privacy focused hardware and software products.
They have been very open and honest about any delays in the shipping of the phones. Evergreen batches are nearly a month away. So they haven’t “managed” that yet because the process has not completed yet.
I signed on for their LibremOne family plan, and gave them 18 months to pull it together. They were unable to keep a Matrix homeserver operating correctly. I gave up.
I discovered privacytools.io operating services, and recently debian.social. And bought a PinePhone.
They said Element is asking too much money for consulting on how to keep your Synapse server up, and have no one on staff equipped to do it. So, whatever the status of Librem 5 the phone, LibremOne the service is not a priority.