I just searched for them and all that came up was the new articles all released within 24h…
Honeypot?
Nick Merrill is freaking legit. He was behind Calyx before, one of the few people who’s challenged, and won, an NSL. I can’t see him flipping, ever.
Had no idea this was him. Explains the decision to back away from calyxos and do this then.
Great stuff.
It says this was created by the founder of the Calyx foundation, who is a reputable guy. So unless they’re just lying, I think it’s legit. Still might give it a few days or weeks to see what shakes out. Probably just paid marketing.
Yeah was sort of wondering about that too…
No. It’s fucking Merrill.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_Liberties_Union_v._Ashcroft
The Big Story is exclusive to subscribers
Just $4/month bro, $4 isn’t much bro, it’s just another small subscription bro.
Sorry, keep forgetting I have Bypass Paywalls on.
How
I was faced with a dono splash page as I clicked into this article, lol. Not a paywall, but still a bit ironic!
Holy wall of text Batman! I’m lowkey interested in the service, but uhhhh…
Well when you wanna know more you can go back and read it
It’s the text extracted from the linked article
Get out.
Thanks op.
Attention span. Get one.
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I actually do intend to be impolite. Stop copying and pasting bullshit AI reposes. That ziponlymobile.com isn’t even a real url. Typical ChatGPT slop.
I’m sorry, I truly do not intend to be impolite and I didn’t downvote you, but I think people can ask AI for a summary if they want to themselves.
Sorry again. I just really don’t like AI, and my expectation of a social media website is for it to be about human interactions. We can talk with AI anytime we want, what we’re lacking is pure human communication.
Agree, but such a brick of the posted text also don’t make easy a good conversation, in this case a summary can be helpfull knowing what is about.
But that ‘brick’ of the posted text is just the article that is linked. So if we are commenting under a post dedicated to the article it would stand to reason that we read the article itself, would you not agree?
a summary can be helpfull
No. LLMs can’t reliably summarize without inserting made-up things, which your now-deleted comment (which can still be read in the modlog here) is a great example of. I’m not going to waste my time reading the whole thing to see how much is right or wrong but it literally fabricated a nonexistent URL 😂
Please don’t ever post an LLM summary again.
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What the fuck. Why
Lmao it just…made up a website out of thin air.
Everyone, please report this comment to the mods
oh it’s nick from Calyx 😊
Is that good or bad?
That’s very good. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Merrill
It’s a good thing! he genuinely cares about user privacy. The Wikipedia entry had some info worth reading
That’s very good.
A few things. If you sign up, don’t then go use the number with things that associate it to your real identity like a bank account or credit card. Also, if you’ve already used your phone with a provider that has your real name, then it’s compromised because you could be linked by the IMEI. Get a fresh phone that you’ve never linked to your identity before. Also, don’t transfer your number to this service. Get a new number provided by them. Additionally, pay with cryptocurrency.
This is all if you want to stay truly anonymous with no traces back to you.
TLDR; Nicholas Merrill, a well known privacy activist, launched Phreeli, a phone service that lets you use mobile data and calls without giving your identity. It runs on T Mobiles network but only keeps a ZIP code and uses zero knowledge crypto so even payments are not linked to you. Merrill spent 10 years fighting the FBI over surveillance and now wants to make privacy simple and normal for everyone.
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And what a cute favicon!
Phreeli users can also pay their bills with tough-to-trace cryptocurrency like Zcash or Monero.
Lies. I did this so you don’t have to.
That’s just on the $25 plan because it’s auto-pay only. The other plans accept crypto.
How convenient…
I think that’s the point. You can trade some privacy for convenience if you insist.
Sounds like you’re trading money for privacy. Why isn’t it available on the $25 tier?
because it’s auto-pay only
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Yes I did read that the first time, but it doesn’t explain anything.
Good point. Many companies offer discounts for crypto. It’s disappointing to see a crypto surcharge here :(
A
n autopay discountfee for not using autopay is the standard in US cellular.
You don’t even need a zipcode if you use https://silent.link/ then you can pay with whatever crypto and have an esim where the balance never expires and it works in most of the world. I’ve used it a few months and it’s pretty good if you don’t need a phone number.
How does an esim work with no number? Data only?
Yes, suoer common travwl esims sans #
This, and because there’s no number it’s easier for them to not have KYC.
Interesting because the article says the ZIP code is required for tax purposes
Maybe the owner is outside of the US, maybe it’s OK?
Okay I looked over their stuff, a couple thoughts:
I want them to be more clear in their privacy policy about what exactly they can and would reveal for a court order, what their screening process is for those orders, under what conditions they would fight one and if they will reveal anything outside the context of a full court order.
Reason: this is one of your biggest areas of vulnerability when signing up for a phone plan.
The lexipol leaks showed that many police departments use phone information requests so much that they include a set of request forms (typically one for each carrier) in the appendix of their operations manuals. Frequently the forms are the only data request tool in that appendix.
If you happened to have a call with someone who then did something Cool™ and got picked up, expect the detective to have your name and address on a post-it on their desk by the next morning. If you talked to them on some online chat platform they’ll send a court order to that platform for your IP then do the same to your carrier to unmask your identity.
Yes, if you were also sufficiently Cool™ they’ll start doing more invasive things like directly tracking your phone via tower dumps, but that’s a significant escalation in time and effort. If things got Cool™ enough that this is a concern though, it may buy you time to get a new phone if you live in an area dense enough for that to not be immediately identifying.
Also: I suspect the zip code is completely unverifiable so put whatever you want in there, basically pick your favorite sales tax rate.
Cool™Cool™Cool™
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5G has exceptional location tracking accuracy and precision without the use of any GPS
That’s the question, what are they actually providing to warrants. You don’t need to provide a name to be able to identify someone. Do they provide logs or data that could be uniquely identifying before the police pull a tower dump? Who knows…
Very impressive.
When will this service be forced to change or shut down? I think five years. Possibly less if a major case hits the news where a bad actor used the service.
seems like a boon to swatters and the shitbags of the world… sure, privacy minded people, ICE trackers etc., yeah, but also… the shitbags…
Verbose
Wait, they ask for your details when setting up a phone in America?
I thought y’all lived in the land of the free!
The most I’ve ever been asked for to setup a phone is my bank details, and that’s it, so they can setup direct debit for my contract
Every EU phone number has to be connected to an identifiable person or company.
By name, not by anything else
Yes, by name. And that name has to be verified. They know everything else by default.
They still think I live at my parents house even though I moved out 25 years ago, it’s wildly inaccurate and easy to circumvent
ironically that is the last thing i would want to give to a phone company
The ability to pay money for your contract?
Edit: they only ask for that if on Contract, if pay-as-you-go they ask for no details at all
I like the ability to pay, I just don’t want to allow them access or even knowledge of my bank account.
A direct debit is a contractual agreement, they have zero access to the bank account, just the unique identification number and an automated system that requests money from that unique identifier once per month.
And that if there’s no money in the account, they don’t take you into credit, but instead just pause service until you pay
These services usually have the ability to debit whatever your bill is, and then suddenly their system fucks up, or you get hacked and someone commits fraud, and before you know it a $5000 payment comes out of your account instead of the expected $30.00.
It’s better to have that set up on a credit card in case something happens and you get a much better chance to dispute it.
That’s literally impossible, it’s not how it works
At the very least it’s literally impossible in UK and EU.
The system isn’t actually taking any money from you at all, it’s merely sending requests to the bank to ask for the money.
Some banks automatically will go “okay!”, some need human confirmation for every transaction, ALL need human confirmation for any transactions over £200 (by law)
That’s definitely a UK/EU thing then. If you get a $5000 cellphone bill in NA because someone did long distance fraud and you have pre authorized debits set up, $5000 is coming out of your account in Canada and USA.
Edit: assuming you have 5k and or have overdraft on the account. Not sure what happens if you have less than 5k and no overdraft. Like I don’t know if it’d take you to $0, or fail and charge you a insufficient fund fee.
Depends on where you live of course. I always find it very disconcernibg linking bank accounts even I countries where it should be ok. The fuck ups are way too many for me. I don’t want any of that.
Why?
Because they misunderstand how banking works
I had to give a fingerprint and a picture of me holding my passport, plus copy of the passport to get a Sim in Peru…plus a half hour of my life in the process
Jesus, that’s fucked
- cries in canada *
Is there a reason they used an image of a phone with a screen smeared with what looks like rendered goose fat?
i think it’s fingerprints…?
Like a pun on data fingerprinting. But that’s not exactly what this service protects against.
I’ve bought and activated several prepaid phones over the years, paid cash, obviously pseudonymous name, no ID. Last was several years ago, idk if you can still do that. When I did it, it was at phone stores and they told me it was ok.
That said, phones will never be private. There’s too much tracking and logging. People can’t accept that, because they love their phones too much. But you have to make a choice. Anonymous carriers are of almost no help because all the stuff about deanonymizing database records applies even more to phones. At best they help stay away from some marketing crap and stuff on that level. Government surveillance will see right through it.
Its still possible some places, but a lot of stores have cracked down on it
It’s not possible in any corporate stores purely for the fact that they use facial recognition extensively. Doesn’t matter if you can technically get away with paying cash and using a fake name. You’re being tracked the moment their cameras can see you and they have extensive profiles on people even if you’ve never used a debit card, given them an email, or given them a phone number.
Also, the ones I’ve seen in stores lately hare only the trial offers that are only good for a couple days and have to be “replenished” with an online account to stay functional for more than a couple days. Mint wouldn’t even activate initially with an email alias. I called support and they said “we can’t activate it with that email, we need your real email.” I then told them no worries, I’d just return it to best buy. Then they “found a way” to activate it, but I would have needed to give a credit card if I wanted it to stay active more than the 3 days. Best buy didn’t carry any longer duration prepaid card in the stores.
Pay some guy to go in and buy them.
Or have them mailed to someone you know
Or use prepaid esim, paid with prepaid debit card
Prepaid sims exist, no?
You can still do it.
Just buy from a heavily trafficked grocery store. Arrive by foot. Wear a good covid mask. Pay with cash. Wait a few weeks after purchase before use.
Before you turn it on, cover all cameras with tape and disable the microphone if you can (or plug it with a cutoff headphone jack).
Cut a piece of paper and wedge it between the battery leads. Only pull it out and turn it on in a public place far from your home. And you have to burn the phone after every service you activate.
