I’m looking into getting a flip phone with a separate number so that I can sign up for a few apps that without associating them with the complete identity profile in the data marketplace that is linked to my actual phone number.
To be clear, the apps will still be downloaded and utilized on my primary smartphone. But the phone number through which I receive verification codes during registration will be a separate device.
Has any one done this? Tips for selecting a cheapo phone and prepaid service?
This is standard practice for me. You don’t even need another flip phone. Most phones come with a dual sim tray. I keep the 2nd sim in my phone and keep the sim switched off in the settings. I do all signups with this number.
This is the answer I was looking for! Thank you!
Just be careful about the sim expiring. Each network will have its own rules. The sim I have stipulates that it needs to be topped up at least once every 6 months and a call or SMS sent every 3 months to keep it active.
The IMEI number on the phone is essentially locked to the device, swapping sims won’t change it. So a phone activated under your real name on one network could technically get traced back to you even when using a different SIM card.
Also, carrying a phone with both SIMs active is completely unprotected from correlation attacks by anyone with access to the cell tower data. It’d be blatantly obvious that the location of one SIM is the same as the other all the time.
All depends on the threat level you expect, but if you’re worried about a VOIP account being compromised to get your real number, you are talking about pretty sophisticated actors.
It’s not really compromising but that the VOIP service sells or shares my info as part of their T&C so it would mean having the same level of security as my putting my primary phone number out there, only now I have 2 entities selling & sharing my info, plus the VOIP cost.
Got flip phone recommendations?
Nope. I’ve never used one.
Honestly, if you don’t want a separate device, I’d sign up for a VoIP number. I use voip.ms, it’s a dollar or two a month for the number, and you pay per minute and per text (about a penny each, IIRC). You can forward calls to your primary number, or set up a SIP app (I’m using one called ZoiPer). I usually load it up with $20 per year or so.
A lot of services block known voip numbers. I remember my Google voice number not working on a lot of sites
I use Google voice for everything so I wonder which you’re thinking of
Lots is US banks reject VoIP numbers.
Discord rejects them as well but I doubt many here use it.I don’t use it for those cases. Mostly use it when I don’t want a website to have my data. I use my real one for gov and banking
I can’t remember at this point, as google stealthily reclaimed my number at some point because the decided it wasn’t being used enough
Possibly the public ones, that don’t require an account or payment.
The problem I have with this is that it still links to my primary number through data profiling. Seems like a good option if I just want to keep my personal number separate from my work clients. But for data privacy, idk.
Through data profiling? Not sure what you mean.
Every person has a massive profile (table / database) built all about them. This isn’t conspiracy. This is big business. There are a few data brokerage companies focused on people:
-Acxiom (worlds biggest broker, pretty much every piece of junk mail you get drives from a company purchasing data from them)
-TransUnion (credit, such as if you pay the minimum bill or are late on payments)
-CoreLogic (all real estate purchase information)
-FourSquare Labs (location broker which i find to be particularly insidious)
There are also databases built specifically for business entities, such as Data Axle.
And companies will purchase packages from ALL of these data brokers when they want to target a specific audience.
Ah, gotcha. I kinda figured that was out there, but didn’t have names to associate with them.
I guess I’m wondering how a VoIP number would differ significantly from a burner phone. Obviously the burner is more private (assuming you pay cash, there’d be zero way to trace it anywhere). Signing up for a VoIP number with an alias seems almost as untraceable, assuming the VoIP company isn’t selling your data?
Why would we assume the VOIP company isn’t selling our data?
Depends on country. In the United States, you might look at something like the T-Mobile Connect prepaid plan and the Nokia 225 4G. And yes, prepaid numbers absolutely do work for app registrations. I’ve been on prepaid for years and had no issues. It’s voice over IP numbers that have problems.
A way around that is to port a prepaid number to a voip service. I’ve kept old numbers that way when moving
I have been thinking about going with JMP chat and if I do that’s probably what I would do just port my current number to them so that I don’t lose it since that’s my primary number and I don’t really want to deal with getting a new one and giving it out to everybody.
Get a prepaid with an eSIM with AT&T/Rogers (or any of their MVNO’s) for maximum compatibility; cheapest the better. You need an eSIM compatible phone. You can verify this through the carrier’s site from your phone.
Only need the IMEI and Account number essentially
Port the number to voip.ms
Do whatever you want with that number for like pennies a year.
VoIP.ms has an SMS app for android that I know of
Even if it’s more expensive, I will probably go with JMP because it’s open source and open source to me is a hill I am willing to die on. I do absolutely everything I possibly can to use only open source software at any time that it is feasibly possible to do so.
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i’ve been using prepaid for almost a decade now and i only buy $100 androids with the latest release and i use my voip number for everything.
i started doing the prepaid plan because i don’t always renew each month since i only need the data connection and i’m almost always at home. the $100 androids are a thing for me because i’m klutz with all personal electronics. so it’s more like i accidentally stumbled upon this form of privacy rather than seeking it out from the onset.
Yes, I do this plenty. I have some SIMs I continue to pay for in cash (pay as you go) so I keep having access to the phone number, and it’s not easily tieable to my identity (ie you’d figure out who it was probably through watching CCTV of me buying it which seems like quite a lot of effort, so good enough for people with lower threat models).
I don’t know where you are but in terms of selecting a service or phone, I would just walk into a local shop and see what they have on offer. I can’t imagine prices would vary that wildly between shops.
Edit: also no need to buy a whole new phone if you don’t have a state threat model and just want to make it harder to track you for eg data mining corpos. You can just swap out the sim in your normal phone to receive texts then put your regular sim back in afterwards. Or if you have a dual sim tray. You could also anonymously buy an esim so it doesn’t take up a physical sim slot.
smspool seems like a much simpler / cheaper solution.
I don’t see why it wouldn’t work. Just VoIP numbers often get rejected.
Prepaid is the same as Postpaid in my country (USA). I can’t speak for your country, but here, banks accepted my prepaid number just fine. My Google Voice (VOIP) number, however, got rejected by my bank. So banks here seem to treat prepaid as just a normal number.
The only way to test if that work is to buy the cheapest plan and try it. Don’t give up if it fails, sometimes you get a number that was misused by the person who has it before and they got the number flagged, try again by contacting customer service of your cell service and requesting a number change.
Yup, it works in the Czech Republic and it’s fully anonymous. How would they know it’s prepaid?
I use phones from e-waste, 2G still works here so there’s plenty of Nokias (even 3310-like ones) I can use.
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