Yakuza bosses struggling to upgrade phones from 3G | Hacker News Reader

Yakuza bosses struggling to upgrade phones from 3G

soranews24.com

33 pointsivanvas26 comments

Somehow i think articles like these are bs. Those people can move drugs, weapons, and even people yet the author imagined they’d struggle getting phones and sim cards.

Right? Isn't fake identities a really lucrative business? You would think the Yakuza would have their hands all over that to get around the "No-Yakuza" rule for contract signing. Also, if they are worried about getting caught through fraud tracking, why use 4g/5g at all? They could get connected to wifi and communicate through encrypted voice chat to keep law enforcement from listening in

Yeah supply scarcity in the black market is nearly always artificial; usually due to whatever gang that has monopolized that resource making some sort of power play.

Drugs, weapons, people are all moved using cash.

Obviously, the higher echelons of the yakuza have businesses setup that will provide them with whatever they need.

The ones who are really excluded are the local, small gangs, that are hired by the big bosses to run jobs. The big bosses won't provide street thugs with their own SIM cards.

Why don't they buy a contract-less prepaid SIM card? Do these not exist in Japan? Sure, it's a prepaid subscription that costs more than a normal subscription, but I don't think that's an issue for Yakuza bosses.

These don’t exist in most countries, you need to show your ID to get any SIM.

You can absolutely get a contract-less prepaid SIM card in Japan, but you have to show an ID to get it.

Yes, I was responding more to the “prepaid, without ID” part. I may not even know what a proper “contract” in US terms mean FWIW, I’ve always used prepaid plans, for me the paper thar registers SIM with your ID is the contract.

tl;dr because yakuza members aren’t allowed to sign new contracts since 2011. And if they did it would be fraud which enables police to investigate further. This is such a large contrast to cell phone stores I worked at in USA. You didn’t need any ID or any form of identification. You didn’t need to sign anything. It was normal to wear hoodies and masks in the store(it was a ghetto area and during Covid) You could go into the phone store and hand some minimum wage employee $70 and walk out with an anonymous phone in 5 minutes.

Im surprised that the Yakuza doesn't have a fake ID section in its business. Its not like they follow the law anyway. As long as they keep the fake identities looking legit, how would the police know they were using fakes?

Using IDs as an authentication method worked okay in previous decades maybe but now anybody can order a fake ID that looks 99% real from the Philippines for $400 and they are so common even teenagers have them to get into bars. Also at this phone company, it a person forgot their PIN and no working device to receive it then it could be reset if they had their ID. Meaning 99.9% of accounts at <major US phone company> could be hacked for a mere $400. I understand why they do it, after selling 1000+ phones on the sales floor to the general public, you wouldn’t believe how many people forgot their PIN when it came time to get a new phone. Usually once their old one broke - and then there’s this massive pressure being put on us by the customers to help them get back into their phone number, for which they often have 2fa configured on all their important accounts and all their pictures backup on Google, as well as a massive pressure being put on us by our bosses to sell boxes even if it means skirting the official rules for PIN resets. Account security at major US phone companies is nearly non existent.

What do they use instead of an ID then?

We would just ask them verbally for a first and last name + address.

Why wouldn't they just fake that, though?

Because then if something happened they won't be able to recover their account with their ID. most peoples phone account is pretty important to them. But if someone wants to use a fake name to maintain their privacy personally I see nothing wrong with that. Phone companies sell customers personal information all the time(location history, etc) to unscrupulous 3rd parties so a better question is why would you want to give a pre-paid phone company your real name?

Thats the point I am making. The Yakuza doesn't follow the law, presumably they want to stay Anonymous, so why is getting new phones a problem? Just lie about your identity, get your phone, continue being the Yakuza but with more modern tech.

I think this problem only exists on paper and not in reality.

Previous decades herein being the 80s?

Certainly by the early 00s most of my then-teenage circles had IDs sufficiently plausible to get past bouncers into bars. Arguably anti-fraud has improved since then with holographic threads, stuff that reflects certain wavelengths of light etc.

But also all that is still limited by the bouncer weighing have to get the stuff out to check it versus feeling it's good enough they won't get in trouble for letting someone underage in

Yeah, I hate that texting a phone has become defacto 2FA for so many things. It's really a terrible idea for anything high-value.

Can't they get a foreign plan that works in Japan?

Or VOIP over a VPN but then again why would yakuza bosses be using the regular unencrypted telephony system in the first place?

The fact that they don't like foreign people really works against them in many levels.

I would assume they'd use burner phones, no?

Some countries limit unregistered IMEIs (ie: you can only roam for a while before they force you to register).

But if you can clone one…

I guess in Japan it’s a badness to have someone else register a phone for you.

I’m also guessing Japan doesn’t have ubiquitous wifi, but not sure on that.

> I’m also guessing Japan doesn’t have ubiquitous wifi, but not sure on that.

They do have "free" WiFi (usually limited to an hour), but you still need to register... usually by using your phone number (and of course the "anti-social forces" declaration (formal term for them) is in the terms and conditions).

Encrypted apps?

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