Has anyone successfully used a prepaid phone and number for app registration?
Has anyone successfully used a prepaid phone and number for app registration?
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?
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.
3Prepaid 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.
2Yes, I created an entire fake identity with it that I'm now using here so I can say what I want without worrying about loosing my job.
One thing to keep in mind is that most prepaid providers require you to use the phone every once in a while, or you loose the number (don't ask me how I know and don't ask me what happens if I forgot my password)
3That is good advice, thank you! Is there a particular brand you’d recommend (DM me if you don’t want to share publicly). I was looking into a few major retailer flip phones but they both required the retailer to scan it for activation and I wasn’t entirely sure what that does tracking-wise, so I stopped to do some more research.
1But Lemmy doesn’t require a phone number? Unless you’re saying you used the phone number to register an email, then used that email for Lemmy. I have a hard time believing your job would jump through that many hoops to track down your Lemmy comments. Seems like it wouldn’t be worth their time. Maybe the NSA.
1I assume they mean that this Lemmy is part of their fake persona, so maybe links to another social media account they use for this persona, or an email address, or the personal details they mention in their comments matches with their fake persona's personal life and not their real personal life. But yeah seems like overkill if your threat model is only your employer, unless you're employed by some military intelligence agency, in which case it's probably not enough.
1
A bit out there, but I plan on doing this soon:
- Get a SIM
- Grab an old Android phone
- Relay SMS to Matrix via the SMS bridge
I already use Matrix bridges for Signal, Discord, IRC, etc, so this means the number is never tied to my location, but I can use it for things like banking 2FA.
18Umm, how does this protect your privacy?
SMS messages don’t include your location. The cellphone towers know your location. Getting a transmission from sms to matrix means it’s going from old phone over the Internet to a cell tower to your real phone/or cellular enabled laptop.
1The provider of the SIM on the old phone who provides the phone number, and data brokers associated with them, will never be able to associate that number with my actual location, because the old phone will be in a static location.
The provider of the SIM in my main phone will have a number that is never used, and it's location can never be tied to the number that is actually used because the old phone relays VI's matrix.
Is it better than avoiding SMS altogether? No. Does it obfuscate? Yes.
I also plan on having VNC on the old phone for running banking apps that GrapheneOS may not support in the future.
1
You should publish a guide once you do it. That sounds pretty interesting.
11I could, but honestly the guides for Matrix and then for the mautrix (not a typo) bridges are pretty good if you click through to them: https://matrix.org/ecosystem/bridges/sms/
9
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.
22This is the answer I was looking for! Thank you!
5The 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.
3Just 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.
8
Got flip phone recommendations?
1Nope. I've never used one.
1
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.
20i'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.
6Yup, 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.
1Depends 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.
5A way around that is to port a prepaid number to a voip service. I've kept old numbers that way when moving
5I guess I can’t go with T-Mobile because I idiotically handed over my ID to them when I was checking out plans and running on 2 hours of sleep. They asked for my driver’s license “to see if you already have an account with us”, I handed it over like a robot zombie, and watched in slow motion as they SCANNED IT INTO THEIR STSTEM. Identity infrastructure. No T-mobile for me :/
0
smspool seems like a much simpler / cheaper solution.
3I don't see why it wouldn't work. Just VoIP numbers often get rejected.
2I've used Temp-Number for that in the past to create anonymous accounts,
you pay a small amount for each account,
and it's only charged if you successfully receive a verification code:
https://temp-number.org/Make sure to also use No-Script to block Google + Cloudflares JavaScript on the site though:
https://noscript.net/0