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Comment by laksdjfkasljdf | Hacker News Reader

Who does the proxying? Does it expose all your traffic to yet another entity?

Well I think the idea is that you are simply exposing your identity to a different entity, not another one, since your identity isn't passed down the chain.

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.)

In the US, you can buy prepaid sim cards with cash and without ID.

But I believe these are scrutinized pretty heavily. I saw an article Woz wrote and you have to call someone before they are activated - I guess that might be a 6dof thing to identify your habits.

I know of a hackerspace where people go buy and activate prepaid sims then toss them in a communal bowl.

Take a sim leave a sim.

There are always ways around this nonsense.

I live in the US and I've definitely bought sim cards and activated phones without sharing an ID.

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.

In today's world you will be wearing a mask so if you add a ballcap and keep your head down, identification will be difficult.

This is perhaps the first time in generations the outcome of a major negative world event made more privacy socially acceptable.

And keep your electronic devices off.

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...

What? LOL this isn't the 1990's, there's gait detection now.

Okay, so stick a pebble in one shoe.

While one can still buy a prepaid SIM card without ID in the USA (though I don’t expect that to remain the case for long), there are plenty of OPSEC slipups: if you top up your account with a bank card in your own name, the mobile provider will associate your identity with the SIM card. If you leave the phone with that card turned on overnight at your own home, it is trivial for the mobile provider or authorities to link that SIM to your own identity, etc.

Sorry to be blunt, but you have no idea how "Targeting" works on Advertising/Telephone co.

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.

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