Winter Olympics: Athletes advised to use burner phones in Beijing

bbc.com

Two comments

1. I think "burner" is the wrong terminology, you're not using it for a drug deal, you just want a phone that doesn't have personal data on it

2. Given the story yesterday about australia, as well as other countries mandating app installs, it makes sense anyway to have a sterile phone for presentation to government.

"Burner" seems to perfectly describe the use case: the phones are acquired for a particular situation (presentation to privacy-hostile government), used to minimal effect for the duration, and then discarded (burned). Just because they are not buying drugs with the phone makes them no less "burners."

I agree with your second point as well: I think many people have a clear case to use "burners" in their everyday lives as privacy becomes harder to come by.

Gotta keep the flip phone market alive somehow!

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