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Comment by zwieback | Hacker News Reader

When I'm standing on a corner somewhere and I can use GPS, live traffic data, restaurant reviews and simultaneously make call to someone, at that moment I don't think about my beloved PC at home, sorry.

You can always use a burner phone with a fake identity if you want to stick it to the man.

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> You can always use a burner phone with a fake identity if you want to stick it to the man.

For the uninformed, living in the U.S., how do I get a burner phone that isn’t associated with my identity? I’ve looked in the past, it’s been a few years admittedly, but it seemed non-trivial.

Getting the phone is easy, just pay cash. Getting the SIM is a bit more tricky, and might involve someone in a dark alley.

Walk in to a convenience store and buy a prepaid phone with cash.

And now its ok to wear a mask while doing that.

USA is probably the only country in the world where you can still buy a cellphone/smartphone with a working number somewhat anonymously. Walk into any convenience store/gas station and buy a cheap phone with a prepaid plan and pay cash. In most other countries they are required to verify and scan some official ID first.

US is far from the only place where this is possible. It's entirely possible to use cash to purchase a used unlocked smartphone plus a prepaid SIM card here in the UK.

I don't think I've seen a non-CCTV'd store that sells those in years.

I don't think I’ve seen a non-CCTV’d store in the US for years, especially not a convenience store/gas station, so that's not a difference.

You might be surprised at the number of cameras that are fake, or not actually recording. It largely depends on whether the business has insurance and if the local police actually investigate petty theft.

Convenience stores and gas stations in the US are frequent targets of armed robbery, which is what the security is for, not petty theft. (There may be some that count on camera shells as a deterrent rather than having live cameras, but if so it has nothing to do with whether the police investigate petty theft.)

UK actually handed me a SIM at the Airport (or did I just pick it up from a counter) and I used it throughout my stay for a few months. Isn't that the case anymore?

There are vending machines full of SIM cards at Heathrow, so I'd say they're still available.

Are those card only though?

It's probably a courtesy thing that one company or another arranged for you, or some kind of a promotion. I never had this happen to me.

It's generally the case that if you want a prepaid SIM card, you go to pretty much any shop to buy it for a nominal fee (usually just £1, but shops that rip you off may charge up to £5 in some cases). As soon as you buy and activate a top-up voucher, you are good to go. At no point is your identity or a card payment required.

Same in Netherlands.

Better yet, have the teenagers/panhandlers lingering around outside to go in to buy it for you. Also, do it in another town than where you normally live. Don't drive there in your own car. Wear a mask and hats and whatever else. Dodge the cameras.

As you can see, there are many additional steps that can be done to ensure anonymous use of said burner phone.

A burner phone is really only useful one time. Each time it's turned on and used more and more statistical indicators are emitted.

- The location the device was turned on, used, turned off.

- The devices contacted by the burner phone

The kind of graph databases the government uses can round down the number of people that could be using any burner phone to a reasonable guess after just the first power on and contact (call/text). This is possible with only metadata. If you have the persons voice and message content it's even easier. As the phone stays on and contacts multiple numbers the graph database increasingly narrows down the possible user. I would guess within 3 calls/texts (not considering location data, or god-forbid other smartphone data) you would have 99%+ certainty who the user was if those interactions follow any previously known pattern.

You can't hide.

> You can't hide.

Nonsense ;) You just can't practically and cheaply hide. The various world governments regularly hide things from the other world governments. Crime organizations manage to stay operating, etc. I forget the exact statistic, but the FBI's most wanted list has a 90+% effective capture rate, but that leaves some that manage to hide sufficiently well as individuals. How much of that is luck vs skill is unknown by me at least.

To be fair, I basically agree with you, it probably takes 1 mistake to leave a useful to trackers digital footprint that can get back to you, so it takes a lot of skill/luck to leave no digital traces these days, but it is arguably possible, even for individuals, it's just not remotely easy.

To think it's as easy as using a VPN is ridiculous. It's generally not the technology, it's the relationships and habits that get you tracked. I.e. It doesn't take a genius to see the communication logs and figure out the close relationships. We all regularly communicate with our loved ones and do the same sorts of things day after day.

> there are many additional steps that can be done to ensure anonymous use of said burner phone.

It depends on who you want to be anonymous from. A spouse? Ad tech companies? Local cops? The FBI/Homeland Security? The various intelligence agencies of the world?

In Ireland you can buy a SIM card without ID and pay cash. Similarly with mobile phones too -- I would very much doubt the US is the only country where this is possible. Data protection is generally taken much more seriously in Europe than the US.

Many places in Europe require ID [0](I realize this may not be the most accurate source).

[0]: https://prepaid-data-sim-card.fandom.com/wiki/Registration_P...

US is not the only country in the west where you can buy a SIM anonymously, though certainly one could say it would probably be the last country in the west such law would be implemented. The EU really tried(and succeeded, for the most part) to pressure european countries to implement mandatory ID when buying a SIM card.Certain countries have withstood this push from Bruxelles, not surprising more than 50% of those on the eastern side of the continent [0].(To give a bit of a context: communists 'used' to do this back in the day and it was very known --monitor communications-- that's why many people don't want it, even under the umbrella of "protection from terrorists")

[0] https://www.comparitech.com/blog/vpn-privacy/sim-card-regist...

Czech Republic is another country where it's easy to do so.

Ukraine has fully anonymous smartphones and sim cards. I wouldn't say most other countries, just most western countries.

Not just western. You cannot get an anonymous sim card in any Asian country.

Not any. In Taiwan for example, buying a prepaid sim + service still requires a form of state/national identification, even when they're purchased from a 7-Eleven.

Where I live, (the netherlands) you can pretty much walk into a electronics store and buy a phone. Then walk into a supermarket and buy a simcard.

You could use the likes of Tracfone, Total Wireless, or Simple Mobile... but you'd have to provide some identity (whatever you want).

You can buy one with cash at most corner stores.

As foreigner who traveled to the US a couple of times: how do you get a phone number that is associated with your identity in the US? I recall only needing $60 and a compatible phone to put the sim card into.

>how do you get a phone number that is associated with your identity in the US?

If you sign up for a post-paid cell phone plan. That comes with a credit check an the option to finance your phone.

> ...how do I get a burner phone that isn’t associated with my identity?

What adversary are you worried about? Taking to a divorce lawyer without your spouse knowing? Not having higher-skill cybercriminals bypass your SMS-based 2FA via SIM-swap? Outsmarting the NSA? The answer really depends...

Tracfone paid using cash from a Walmart...but even then, it's not like you're not being observed at checkout.

Walk into any Walmart and buy a TracFone. It's about as trivial as can be.

This is what I used to do back when I was poor and couldn't afford a cell phone plan. It was pre-smartphone, but I see data included on the prepaid "minutes" now.

Before cell phones I used to buy minutes on calling cards[1] at Walmart in order to call long distance.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_card

> You can always use a burner phone with a fake identity if you want to stick it to the man.

You cannot do that everywhere (legally). For example in Greece you are required to give your id to the network provider or they block your sim card.

I don't think he's saying you shouldn't be able to use maps and call people.

The problem is that we've gotten used to devices which turn us almost exclusively into consumers instead of using computing devices more as Douglas Engelbart envisioned them: human intellect force-multipliers.

Part of the problem with phones is intentional (massive centralization), but some can't be helped (input capabilities are very limited on a phone).

We should probably be part of the solution.

Can I just say "phone calls" are something that dumb phones can do. GPS and live traffic data are, essentially, the same service in that they fill the same need. Restaurant reviews? Who actually needs those except maybe on a road trip? And then it really seems like a GPS-style feature.

It seems like the phone as GPS+ is use-case you identified.

I will say though, even dumb phones have web browsers, and have for a long time. You can access Yelp over the internet on a candybar from a decade ago.

> GPS and live traffic data are, essentially, the same service in that they fill the same need

What?

> Restaurant reviews? Who actually needs those except maybe on a road trip?

Anyone who likes to visit new restaurants.

GPS and live traffic data are both "route me to X". I don't think people really have another use case for either, although in some cases the "route me to X" may include "X is a close gas station" or "best route is to wait 45 minutes before leaving".

Do people really choose new restaurants while out (unless on a road trip)? I can see using Yelp while planning to go somewhere with friends, but once you're actually outside the house? In other words, I don't see a use case for Yelp outside the computer, with the exception of a road trip.

> GPS and live traffic data are both "route me to X". I don't think people really have another use case for either, although in some cases the "route me to X" may include "X is a close gas station" or "best route is to wait 45 minutes before leaving".

None of this is true.

> Do people really choose new restaurants while out (unless on a road trip)?

Yes, very often. Maybe I'm at the pub with my partner and we decide to get dinner somewhere. I'll use reviews to find something. It's a very very common use case.

> None of this is true.

Wow, way to fill in use cases I didn't think of.

> Maybe I'm at the pub with my partner and we decide to get dinner somewhere. I'll use reviews to find something.

You go out to a bar before dinner? I suppose some people do. I've always thought of dinner as starting an evening out, or at the very least being part of a plan (eg, Show X followed by dinner at Y)

>You go out to a bar before dinner?

Does it matter? Maybe they wanna look for a bar after dinner then? In which case, you know, the phone is still useful.

>I've always thought of dinner as starting an evening out, or at the very least being part of a plan (eg, Show X followed by dinner at Y)

I'd suggest you look into the idea of spontaneity. It can be pretty great.

The people I know who bother to look at yelp are planners and often choose a restaurant to meet at quite far away because it's special. The people I know who decide things spontaneously don't bother checking yelp.

Since you tried condescending at the end of your comment: I suggest you try places that smell good from the street and not outsource your thinking to an app. It can be pretty great.

>The people I know [...] The people I know

Are you incapable of escaping from your little corner of the world?

>I suggest you try places that smell good from the street and not outsource your thinking to an app.

Guess what? I can, and do, do both!

Am I misunderstanding or are you saying people can buy a TomTom and a Motorola Razr and that's just as good as a modern day smartphone?

Do you remember annoying it was to use the browser on those candybar phones?

Buy a TomTom? GPS is already built in to most cars (although they may be phasing it out if they think everyone can just use their phone.) But I know people who have dedicated GPS units (TomTom, Garmin, etc.) in their cars. They do provide better directions than GoogleMaps/AppleMaps.

I think the browser on candybars was annoying, but it also was sufficient. Not for daily browsing, but for occasional lookups.

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