Is it? because from my perspective you've taken yourself out of a few databases (AT&T / Verizon / Telco) and plopped yourself into a few other databases (2nd Line, Grab) without having a whole lot of benefit.
Some of us struggle with having constant connection to the internet in our pocket. Its a distraction at its mildest, and an damaging, health affecting addiction at worst (social media, and 24/7 work/communication expectations especially).
Well done to those of you who are able to carry around a smartphone and regulate yourselves but some of us need to take more drastic action to cut it out.
Get a SIM without a data plan? You can still call or SMS people, get SMS 2FA when required, but you can't use social media apps.
I cut my phone use by removing most social media apps. I have also disabled notifications for most remaining apps, except for Facetime and iMessage (since I use them for high signal/noise ratio communication with friends an family).
The problem for me is carrying around a phone with apps on it.
So I have a SIM with a dumbphone but no smartphone. People can call and send me messages. Frequently I leave that at home too.
I do have an iPod touch though which i use for podcasts, as a camera, and for a few specific things like a banking app. But no messaging, social media or distraction-type things are allowed on there.
I fear things will go in the opposite direction with ubiquitous 4G. Very often 4G is already much faster than most WiFi hot spots, to the point that I don't even bother anymore and just use personal hot spot on my laptop.
The problem is that free public WiFi is wildly variable in quality, whereas 4G is usually quite good. Most of the time I just tether even if there's WiFi available since I can use my data plan in most countries and the WiFi is usually disappointing.
Also, many countries now require public hotspots to verify the user by getting them to receive an SMS. In some countries it even has to be a local number, because they have compulsory SIM registration, so requiring a local number lets them tie the Internet usage to an identity.
If saving money is the reason, go for a prepaid card. German/Dutch prepaid cards have far long credit life. I travel full-time nowadays and I can use my KPN number for less than €1 per year.
German Alditalk credit lasts 24 months IIRC, and topping up extends the credit shelf life.
Pretty much every SIM card has free incoming SMS when roaming. USSD are also free with some carriers.
Losing SIM card is less of a hassle with eSIMs.
Perhaps other than tracking concerns, I'm totally not convinced with the reasoning.
> Perhaps other than tracking concerns, I'm totally not convinced with the reasoning.
Tracking is not an issue, if you keep your phone in airplane mode (wifi and bluetooth can be enabled on most phones, but mobile network stays disabled), or if you just remove the sim card, and put it back, on those rare occasion when you need it (so you don't have to bother other people)
If you have wifi turned on then what's to stop you being tracked. I imagine Google Maps can track you using a combination of GPS and WiFi, as well as working out your likely route between locations for periods you're out of contact.
Precisely. With any outgoing connection, your phone is constantly looking, reporting, and talking. IIRC, didn't Google (or maybe even some Open Initiative) do a huge mapping of routers based just on the MAC and overlays with GoogleMaps or OpenStreet?
A connection exposes you to surveillance, and yes, it's worse with SIMs, but having WiFi on just adds a little latency to the same thing. Public Routers that you're discovering do the same thing. I had thought this was the entire point of iOS devices randomizing their MACs when scanning available networks (no idea if this ever got shipped with Android devices).
I am probably in the "nutty" quadrant when it comes to concerns about tracking, surveillance concerns, and online privacy, but I also don't really like needlessly inconveniencing myself just to undermine the entire purpose of why the inconvenience is necessary in the first place. Your phone is always talking -- SIM card or not. I'm not even sure modern non-smart phones (flip revivals and such) are wifi free.
Such protections are a good ideal, but a lot of people have an unrealistic idea of the threat actors they're trying to protect against.
A German/Dutch sim card doesn't help someone living in Indonesia/Malaysia.
Also, the fact that the credit lasts 24 months before they steal it for not using it is meaningless, since life with a sim that has no data and makes no outgoing calls or sms is almost identical to life without a sim, except for the tracking and the ability to be found by others.
Getting a prepaid unregistered SIM is no longer possible in an increasing number of countries. I think most of Europe requires identification to buy a prepaid SIM.
Most likely they have heard of the MVNO/"service reseller" LycaMobile, but how does that respond to their comment at all? LycaMobile still require you to register your ID with them in countries that have that rule.
I have not had an issue buying a prepaid sim in eastern europe AND EU is a "free roaming" zone, so if it works in the Eastern parts, it's going to work everywhere else as well.
Some of the inconveniences listed aren't really a thing: For example, you can use google services on devices with no sim so long as you have it connected to wifi. I figured this out because i had a new phone that wouldn't accept the SIM size, so I carried both that and the working phone with the sim for a short time. Google Maps and Open street maps works offline, but you need to be online to, say, get driving directions. Google will still give turn-by-turn directions offline, though. It simply won't have the same features of your choice of maps.
I think facebook still works so long as you have signed up from a computer, but I might be wrong. I've only considered having it on my tablet (that has never had a sim), but never bothered to install it on my phone.
So many things depend more on the device being on the internet (through whatever means) than having the sim card. The main thing you need it for is phone calls, SMS, and roaming internet - and sometimes, banking, but not always. I've realized this because my phone has roaming internet turned off by defaut - I use wifi as my primary phone internet and as it turns out, I pay minimal amounts for the phone (I'm not willing to go without, even though it is rarely used).
It's news to me, I thought you needed (in the UK) a phone number to register with Google. They send you a text message as part of onboarding (or did last I tried). That's common to most online social apps now, perhaps all of them?
> …it's the only thing which has prevented me from having to continually make international calls from a friends phone
By relying on other people it is possible to do without many things.
However, unless you have other ways of signaling sufficient status or wealth (such as being a digital nomad living abroad in a lower income country), people you continuously rely on for essentials might start treating you with a little less respect.
My sister’s former boyfriend used to carry a phone without a SIM. His mom ended up calling my sister or our landline to check up on her son. It was annoying AF.
Feel free to live off the grid, but please make sure you don’t leech off of those around you.
The example doesn't quite seem to connect to the moral. Maybe he didn't want his mom to call him. If a third party calls you to inquire about me, why is that my problem?
> make sure you don’t leech off of those around you
I think that's a toxic attitude. Picking up the phone for someone else every now and then is really not a big of a hassle. Obviously I don't know the whole situation, but in general I do think that one should be ready to do such minor favors for another human being without calling them a leech.
I know someone who lives off the grid like this, they are also too cheap to ever pay their share of airbnb lodging (I will stay with someone else, oh you got it I come stay with you), too cheap to give a bit of scotch tape for taping up a box when clearing out their dead mothers house because they bought that tape for 2 euro, or finally too cheap to buy their own chewing gum when they have had all their other expenses paid (flight, lodging) to go to a wedding in Kiruna Sweden.
on edit: changed some incorrect uses of to to correct usage of too.
exactly the original comment was make sure not to leach, and someone else thought it was a toxic attitude, and I don't think it is too toxic an attitude - because there are people who are leaches after all.
Yes but there was the original comment which suggested that it was not nice to suggest not to be a leach, because that was a little bit much to assume, so I provided a counterexample where that was a reasonable assumption.
Normally I would not expect, given that thread of conversation, that I should have to explain that my example was not meant to be a universal condemnation of anyone not having a sim card in their phone.
Especially because it wasn't that long ago (by my standards) that not everyone had a personal phone in their pocket.
In fact, only 33 years ago my parents had to call the neighbours 3 doors further to call my aunt to notify her (and my grandparents who happen to be visiting her) of my birth.
Although, I admit as someone with a speech impediment, I absolutely loath using the phone. But it's a necessity even as a software developer. But nothing as annoying as having to pick up the phone, only to hear that it was (effectively) the wrong number and they needed someone across the room...
That's easy to fix though - I am putting my phone to do-not-disturb (or even airplane) mode when I go to sleep every day and I honestly don't see any disadvantages of doing that. If somebody calls me when I'm sleeping, I will react when I wake up. I don't think giving the people on the whole world the ability to wake me up whenever they want to is justified in any way.
Well I kow I should do that, but perhaps because I'm near my fifties (so lived a lot without a mobile phone), I always fail to remember to active it back when I wake up.
My wife (who is younger than me, as in 16y younger) do that too and have no problem.
For me, if I do it, I sure remember, but 2 or 3 days later :-D
I have been on do not disturb mode 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for the last few years. It’s actually amazing. It has allowed me to use my phone on my own terms, when I choose to, not on someone else’s terms when they want me to.
I haven't gone that far because unwanted phone calls aren't a problem for me, so I've just turned off most notifications and it's been great. Email is a much better tool when you don't have notifications on, I'm much better at paying bills because I check a couple of times a day when it's also convenient to pay them, with notifications on I'll swipe away and forget. Same goes for things I actually want to read, I'll read them properly now instead of a quick skim at an inopportune time.
Google has been awful at respecting my decision though, they'll keep enabling various news notifications and the have a very different opinion on "breaking news" than I do, I think the last one was for some Hollywood awards show. If there really is some breaking news I need to be interrupted for then the government emergency SMS service should suffice.
I first read this on HN: app notifications should really be called app interruptions. It really changes how things should be viewed.
I feel you. After my last phone broke I decided to get a dual SIM phone. I set up my phone to block all calls on the first SIM from any unknown number. I got a cheap second pre-paid SIM and essentially made it my 'business number'. On my android I then have it set up to 'Do not disturb' mode during sleeping hours. The transition was a bit more cumbersome than I anticipated, but after it was all said and done, I couldn't be happier with the outcome. My friends and family can get a hold of me whenever, and I no longer get calls from business/employer/etc unless it is in the allocated times I want.
You deliberately took a very narrow interpretation of OP's message, and then you create an elaborate viewpoint on top of that. That's just retarded. OP was specifically calling out people who leech, not people who take an odd favour off of others - consistently carrying a phone without a bloody SIM is definitely the hallmark of a leech.
This is really hard to do. I don't live off the grid by any means - there's a million ways to contact me, e.g. text message, calling, Signal messages, emails, etc. However, I don't use Whatsapp in a country where the vast majority of people does.
I'm fine with missing things if people don't feel like using any of the methods I have to get in touch with me. However, instead of either not bothering or using one of the communication channels we have in common, people tend to ask my partner to relay messages to me. So short of starting to use Whatsapp (which I'd really rather not do, and which requires installing a different OS on my phone - and possibly get a data subscription as well), the burden is on my partner to either tell them to contact me directly, or to relay the messages.
Any good tips for others ways of dealing with this are very welcome.
Your signal: I don't care enough about our communication to use WhatsApp, because of reasons that are obscure to 99% outside a tech community. Similarly, they don't bother to reach out to you on other communication channels, because they don't bother enough.
The important thing to understand is, from your communication partners point of view, you create a burden without reason, so they work around it in (their) most effective way.
I've been there and didn't support this or that messenger. By now I think, the only way to solve those kind of issues are i) sane laws that regulate privacy and communication security, and ii) trends that create a need for a new communication style - private, secure, and human (like, calling from time to time, find a better solution to ghosting, things like that).
I'm convinced that we need positive incentives for that, instead of creating artificial burden.
Oh yes, I wasn't trying to imply that any party was at fault here - just that the outcome is unfortunate.
This isn't just limited to communications tools. For example, people might have dietary restrictions for non-health reasons (religion, environmental impact, etc) that others do not share or even understand. I don't mind accommodating those (to a limit) e.g. when picking a place to eat, but it is a burden placed on people around them. That's just the way it is, I guess, and I suppose all people can do is try to minimise the burden, and to be accepting of those placed upon you.
I think that both sides create a burden. In my opinion, the difference is that, it is a one-to-many kind of matching scenario. One person (the one opting out of using the preferred messaging method of all their friends) creates a burden to many people, while all those people create a burden just for one person.
If it helps, you can try visualizing it as a fully connected graph that initially has equally weighted edges between all nodes. But then the weight of all edges connected to one specific node goes up by multiple factors. That node loses out much more than all the other nodes.
> I think that both sides create a burden. In my opinion, the difference is that, it is a one-to-many kind of matching scenario. One person (the one opting out of using the preferred messaging method of all their friends) creates a burden to many people, while all those people create a burden just for one person.
I personally rather observe various groups in society with very different kinds of preferences.
You're creating extra cognitive load for people. If there's one thing behavioral psychology has reliably taught us (in spite of the repeatability issues on a few findings), it is that our brains are wired to avoid cognitive load as much as possible.
The cost of putting cognitive load is many people will choose not to pay it and that cost is instead borne by your partner
Would you walk through wet mud if a grass or concrete alternative path is available? That's pretty much what your contacts are doing
Another metaphor: if someone decided not to pave their driveway, because they don't want it to get so hot in the summer, would you tell them, hey I'm not going to visit you until you pave your driveway?
In practical life, people who chose to live in less accessible places actually don't get visited much except by very close relatives & friends (I can think of 4-5 of my relatives like this). So probably proves the point :-)
Not a solution for even most people unless you're really into Matrix and running your own servers though. (I bridge WhatsApp, but use a physical phone to do so)
And then take it a step further with something building on matterbridge[1], which has libs to "bridge between mattermost, IRC, gitter, xmpp, slack, discord, telegram, rocketchat, steam, twitch, ssh-chat, zulip, whatsapp, keybase, matrix and more".
I just don't think most "people get annoyed" by such things, definitely not "annoyed AF", besides some very impatient people who'll always find this or other reasons to be annoyed.
You mean the 'cost of interrupting other people while they are in the middle of living their lives' is near zero. On the other side of the coin, the cost of being constantly interrupted by beeping, buzzing, ringing, and jingling of every asshole in the county who calls/text on a moment's whim, and gets annoyed/offended when I don't instantly respond, is not zero.
Likewise, the cost of being constantly surveilled by intelligence agencies and evil corporations is definitely nowhere near zero.
I live completely off the grid. Far from giving a fuck about how offended/inconvenienced others are by my lifestyle, I purposely disconnected from all of those people. Life for me is much better now.
I remember plenty of annoyance in those days! My friends' families being on the phone for hours and making it impossible to reach them. Having to get off the internet so someone could make a call. Having whole systems to make sure the people got important messages in a timely manner whenever they got home. Having every call need to take place in a central room of your house where you were usually in the way of other people. Having to make sure someone was near the phone/in the house if you were expecting a call.
It's not a constant annoyance, but if anything there were more annoyances in the 90's around phones than having people call me to speak to my sibling.
>What you call "annoying AF" was reality for many many years and yet people were not constantly annoyed..
It might have been a reality pre-00s ─ today if you want to play out any Jason Bourne fantasies, they will not be considered just annoying but suspicious, as your number gets intrinsically linked with somebody else's activities.
Yea that's by definition not "off the grid" anyway.
It's like German getting out of nuclear power generation but then buying nuclear power from Czech and France, where power plans are literally at the German border.
He could've just used a SIP client (plus e.g. WLAN, which does not even have to be on 24/7), and being the one who initializes the call. If he does it on a sane time, then he'll reach contact.
I don't. My use-case, where you have a SIP client and WLAN, allows for you to be disconnected, and only connect when you feel like it. It is akin to Invisible mode on ICQ; and that was perfect for people who wanted to lay low.
People need your return number for voicemail (if you decide to opt into that; personally, I don't), and to recognize who's calling them. I know enough people who don't accept a call from a "private number" or "unknown number".
I have my smartphone 24/7 on DND. I only feel/hear my vibration motor if I get a call. Sometimes, this causes me to miss phone calls, but in general it works well enough. It also makes me one of these people who isn't annoying in public transport or on yoga class.
It's great if you choose to do that. But if everyone else has to compensate to deal with your choices, like parents can't reach the person so they call their friends, you aren't really living off the grid.
We’ve recently got rid of roommates like that. They owned nothing and borrowed everything. Plus their ideology was that every corporation conspires to poison people. And they were heavy on drugs. And smelled pretty bad.
Sharing is great when you put in something material in, not just try to be bubbly person.
But it's not what they own, it's what they impose on others.
The implication here isn't that they're being judged for not having a phone (with a SIM card), and that they're constantly relying and leaching from others. That can be annoying, and people tend to not like annoying people?
> 'But it's not what they own, it's what they impose on others.'
But I haven't imposed anything on anyone. It's society--or rather, a certain loud, vocal, and extremely selfish segment of society--which is attempting to impose something on me.
It speaks volumes about the mentality of such people that they somehow think I'm imposing on them, because they're 'forced' to think and plan ahead a little bit if/when they desire to contact me, rather than me being instantly available at their beck and call 24/7/365.
> 'they're constantly relying and leaching from others. That can be annoying, and people tend to not like annoying people?'
Exactly my reasoning for purposely disconnecting from those who always have to be joined at the hip with their digital devices 24/7/365, and who insist that I need to be also, for their convenience.
If you have friends that like you enough to chase you around to try and make plans, that's awesome. I'm thrilled for you and I'd have to imagine you're an awesome person.
The fact that you refer to people trying to make plans with you as an imposition on you tells me that might not be the case, but I'm not in any position to judge either way.
> "If you have friends that like you enough to chase you around to try and make plans, that's awesome. I'm thrilled for you and I'd have to imagine you're an awesome person."
Tons of assumptions packed into your post here, all of which are incorrect due to your own lack of perspective.
Let me put this into perspective for you.
So that you can better understand the totally warped and ridiculous mindset of antisocial, contemptible extremists like me, try this little experiment: Give up your phone for 90 days. All phones. Totally and completely. Use email and snail mail only for communication. Or even IM, if you like; you don't have to go "whole hog" like me and not even have internet at the house. Just dip your toes in the water. Use a desktop or laptop for your computing needs, and leave the toy in the drawer.
There are many ways you could go about justifying this to your shocked and horrified colleagues and family members, limited by your own imagination; the best way from a scientific standpoint (to conduct a study and learn from it) would be to example pretend to be a person like me, who has decided to do this because of very legitimate reasons concerning security, privacy, etc, perhaps leaving off the part about the unwanted intrusion of society's selfish demands on one's own personal health and well being, of course, so as not to offend anyone.
(You don't want to offend anyone, right? Neither did I.)
You could say that you're doing it as an experiment for a limited time. Whatever suits your personality and temperament, while preserving whatever modicum of social standing that you hold so dear. The point is, just do it. Step into my shoes for a time, if only briefly, just to see what it's like.
Here is what you will learn:
* Yes, there are annoyance and inconveniences involved with not having a phone. They're pretty small, actually, for the most part. By far the biggest difficulty lies in dealing with other people's bullshit.
* In some people's minds, you will immediately and instantly because the biggest asshole on the planet, a totally selfish person in their viewpoint, just because they can no longer text or call you up on a moment's notice, but instead have to email and wait (sometimes an entire day!) for a reply.
* This is even despite the fact that you actually went out of your way to make it easier for them to contact you via alternate means, knowing that it would be something of an inconvenience to them, and wanting to mitigate that as much as possible. No appreciation will be shown for your efforts.
* Further reflection on the above points will demonstrate just what a low place you must have really occupied in such people's esteem, if this rather small inconvenience to them is really enough to turn people against you. This is one of many fascinating unanticipated insights into the mind and heart of humanity which you'll glean by following the road less traveled.
* Some people will instantly understand why you are doing this. To them, no explanation is needed. In many cases you will find there are others who quietly would like to do the same, but feel afraid to do so, because of social pressure. Or sometimes they will secretly think you're a nutcase, but yet will express solidarity to appear polite, while quietly judging you. And also assuming that you don't understand that they are pretending to express solidarity while quietly judging you.
* Some never will understand. They will refuse to understand, badgering you with ten thousand questions like "What? You don't have a phone? Why don't you have a phone? How can you not have a phone? What if there's an emergency? What if [...]? How is this possible? How can you even breathe?" etc.
* In many cases people will hardly be able to hide their contempt of you, and may even go out of their way to purposely make your life difficult--as if the
> Such people will have this greatly exaggerated bias against you, as if you have placed this enormous unwanted burden on their shoulders
Maybe what's really going is that you made them conscious of having an enormous unwanted burden on their shoulders. And every time yet another compromise is forced on them, the weight increases. And you had the strength to shrug it off.
I simply have a low tolerance for "just putting up with things." The things people are out there tolerating in their lives just staggers the mind.
Like junk mail, to name another easy example. I complained about all the junk mail one time at the postal counter, and the woman replied, quote, "You call it junk mail; we call it job security."
(Which is exactly why I no longer have a mailbox, either; just a PO box that I check once in a while. I refuse to waste away my precious life dealing with such bullshit.)
Tells you everything you need to know right there about the entire society, really. The rot is everywhere. Which is why increasingly the only sane option is to Opt Out from the madness entirely.
Life is much more peaceful on this side of the fence.
I remember playing Leisure Suit Larry back in the day. I think it was episode 2 or 3, where at the end of the game the story goes that Larry has retired to his "programmer's shack" out on a lake in the wilderness, to write the next LSL game.
I remember being struck by the beauty of that scene--the idea of being out in a shack on a lake, alone in the wilderness, nothing but me and the compiler. The "escaping from the world" aspect seems to have been a large part of the allure, especially as a kid, dreaming about not having to wake up early and go to that sorry ass school in the morning. No more society and its constant demands and burdens. Just living, in peace and contentment.
Today I am blessed to also have my own "programmer's shack" on a lake out in the wilderness, with nothing but me and the compiler and time.
I'll take this life over a $500k Silly-Con Valley rat race job any day of the week. And indeed, the very reason I'm here today is because that's the choice I made, period.
People have a lot more control over their lives than they allow themselves to believe. Where they inevitably end up is a result of their choices and actions. As time goes on, more and more will see the wisdom of unplugging and dropping out of this insane society. It's no big loss. In time we'll start our own new and better society.
Carefully reading the GP I have to agree. But that's calls.
Let's talk texts.
Compare:
1. An employee gets all of their break time eaten up by a friend who is off work and sending tens of low-effort messages for help with choosing an appropriate cafe for a double-date that night. (Saw it happen.)
2. An employee has nice, relaxing breaks. Then they meet up with a group of three that includes a friend who spends five minutes annoying the other three until someone finally decides on which cafe to visit.
Given that employee as input data, which is the preferable system? If you answer 1 then I've got a lot more questions for you.
It's too bad that texts generate so much flak that an "off the grid" person's absence doesn't register. But it's still a benefit for current SIM card holders that the "off the grid" person isn't adding flak to that broken system of communication.
Not sure it outweighs the mom calling the sister. But texts are generally such a productivity drain it is worth noting.
This thread is insane... How did we go from someone borrowing others' phone on occasion to these ideas of Social Darwinism? At this rate, someone is going to suggest euthanasia within two more comments tops.
For most people, lending their phone won't even incur marginal costs considering the trend towards flat rates.
If you find yourself being annoyed by such situations, note that these feelings are bound to make you miserable, and are unlikely to have much of an affect on the target of your anger. I've found that it is far easier than I thought to just consciously decide not to get worked up such issues, and that it's remarkably effective at improving mood and social life.
Lending the phone to someone who is in need for some other reason is fine.
Lending the phone to someone who doesn't want to carry one even knowing they will need it? Not fine. That person has little respect to others if they think they can't be bothered carrying a phone but everyone else should lend theirs when needed.
Not to mention modern phones are very personal. Our entire lives is there.
My decision to permanently disconnect from your ilk has nothing to do with convenience. All your ilk ever cares about is convenience--which is your biggest weakness. You don't think look at things from a bigger perspective, but are always focused narrowly on what's easiest.
Some of us have principles also. Yes, we know very well that having principles and living by them annoys your type, especially when the very existence of and our defense of said principles necessarily call the legitimacy of your entire mode of 'living' into question.
When in the end you inevitably lose said cultural battle, just remember: it wasn't us who decided to attack your lifestyle in the first place.
It takes a special kind of obnoxious tool to expect that they should be able to reach anyone they want at any moment, 24/7/365, and to be annoyed if said person doesn't make that possible for them.
My comment fits perfectly well into the discussion, and into the subthread, up to and including said 'condescension'--which literally radiates from many of the 'cell phone junkie' types.
I actually agree with you. The world would be much better if everyone fought for the values they believe. And I do value privacy. Unfortunately for me, life's already quite hard even with all the conveniences that the system offers. It would probably be too hard without them.
I envy those who have enough energy left to fight for a better world after their daily chores. I don't.
So I do my best to be productive, positive and kind. Throwing my phone away right now would not be a little fight. It would cause me problems at work where my boss expects me to be responsive regardless of where I am or if there's a working wifi nearby. I'd also lose business and social opportunities. Being harder to reach would make some friends eventually distance themselves just as a consequence.
We're not talking about people who have chosen to disconnect, such as yourself. We're talking about people who choose to keep connected, just using other people's connections.
I find it hard to take people entirely seriously when in order for them to live their pseudo-ascetic lifestyle, they require other people around who haven't taken that step.
The OP is claiming the way he uses his tech gives him a cost saving and encouraging people to follow suit, when if everyone did that then he wouldn't be able to do the things he does any more. So it's not a sustainable lifestyle, because it leeches off the idea that most people aren't doing it.
Another good example of this sort of behavior - I know someone who doesn't carry any credit cards and prefers to pay cash for everything where possible. This is generally fine, however, since they're responsible enough to be carrying plenty of cash to cover whatever they need.
It would be quite annoying if they constantly only had $5 in their wallet and needed their friends to cover for them with a card whenever we went out. I can respect the position they're taking, but you've chosen to interact with the modern world in ways that are unexpected and more difficult in some ways. In return, I expect you to think through those obstacles and solve them yourself.
If you ask me ahead of time if I can pay for something, or use my phone, that's totally reasonable. Just going through life assuming that it's a thing isn't thoughtful or respectful of my personal limits.
But in the example given, it wasn't the boyfriend who was always borrowing his girlfriend's phone to call his mom; it was his mom calling to contact him. Probably because she's also yet another one of those types who Just Can't Understand Why Someone Wouldn't Have A Phone. And yet he's the one imposing on others?
I'm sure he would be perfectly fine with her not calling at all, and just speaking with her the next time he sees her, the way 95% of humans on the planet are perfectly capable of doing. But she chooses to not respect his very wise and very reasonable mode of living, and you choose to see that as being his fault somehow.
It can be multiple people's fault. If he knows it will upset his parents to not be able to call him, and at this point clearly knows that they're going to bother his friends instead, that's still a decision he's making. He could tell his friends to just block the number/ignore it, or talk to his parents about not contacting him. Sure, if his mom is stalking him and harassing his friends, that's her fault/problem, but that doesn't mean it's not a burden on his friends. I'd be more sympathetic for sure towards his situation then.
I live tens of hours away from my parents right now. Calling them is how I get/keep in touch with them. If I decided to get rid of my phone, I'd be sure to come to some sort of other solution that would be acceptable to them and not just cut them off.
The issue is he presumably knows that his parents are like this and want to stay in touch with him. If he can't convince them to use email/skype/whatever else, then that's his issue to manage. He's not entitled to push that off onto his friends just because his parents are unreasonable. Either deal with your parents unreasonable demands by having a basic burner phone, or tell all your friends to just not pick up/blacklist it.
To me, is like if you decided you were worried about the environment and started biking everywhere. I can respect that as a decision, but it doesn't mean it's not imposing on me to always be showing up to things late because you haven't adjusted to how long it takes to bike places.
I always find this sort of "Just don't have your mind work like that then." response to be almost completely inane motivational poster sloganeering. If I could choose what annoys me, I'd love to just not pick anything. I'd love to have the sort of self-control to not feel anything that would make me miserable, and maybe you've reached that point of self-consciousness, but that's not just a switch people can flip. It's the same family of responses as telling someone to just "not be depressed by your situation anymore and be happy with what you have"
In addition, we're not talking here about how to specifically deal with one person. I've had plenty of friends with annoying habits, and I have managed to mostly ignore their behavior and just live my life. What we're discussing is the more general case - is it ethical to impose this sort of thing on someone else without their agreement/consent. I can both think that my old roommates should have cleaned the kitchen more as a matter of cleanliness and fairness AND have gotten to the point where it didn't bother me that much that I had to clean for them. My ability to not be bothered by it, and to put my friendship ahead of specific annoyances doesn't excuse behavior that makes doing so harder for their selfish reasons.
"Judging people for their actions" isn't the same as shunning them or wanting them dead. Any sort of anti-social behavior that asks for things from other people is going to trigger some sort of judgement or response. Often it will just be ignoring it or helping the person out, and that's fine, but that's part of the calculus of choosing it. You've decided the social cost of asking for other peoples phones is worth the personal moral/ethical/security gains of not having one yourself. Depending on how you approach it and how much you mitigate the asks of others will determine how people judge you on it.
I was going to say.. you definitely don’t need much if others are paying the bill. Some people see friendship as an excuse to expect to use the resources of others.
And waay too many glib answers and dismissals. GPS? Just pull over and ask... while you're taking the wrong exit to the wrong freeway in the wrong direction at night. This isn't about avoiding human contact.
Need signal/whatsapp? Just get a disposable number... that everyone adds to their contact books but has to change every time you re-install because you cant get the old number back.
The world is outright hostile to not having a number. It's like not having an address. I lament this, but there aren't easy solutions to this hostility.
I live without 3G on my phone, though I still have a SIM card for receiving "emergency" calls. I haven't topped it up though, so I can't call out.
It's been wonderful to make me focus on face to face conversations with people, rather than checking notifications all the time. I ask them to add me on Facebook, or make a note of their email address. If I can get online, I use mbasic.facebook.com with no ads, which loads quickly on an old phone.
My phone wakes me up with an alarm, but I'm not flooded with depressing Apple News first thing in the morning.
On the bus, I read books (the Bible and others, Edward Snowden's autobiography last year, currently The Shockwave Rider). I also browse offline Wikipedia (personally Wiki2Touch, but I've heard good things about Kiwix). I use Galileo Offline Maps with MOBAC-scraped tiles, without turn by turn directions.
Battery life is significantly better without 3G, and makes the old iPhone 4S quite usable.
Google Voice is often allowed for 2FA, and I use that when I need to receive SMS (e.g. TransferWise).
I could go without a SIM card entirely, but for the rare occasions when I do need to receive a call (e.g. I agree a place and time to meet someone, and they're late), then I still keep it in my phone.
It worries me to read that the US immigration department are using anonymised cell tower histories to trace people, but I don't know if removing the SIM card would solve that.
Keeping in touch with friends in other countries. Rarely, there's even targeted ads that I actually want (e.g. bands that are playing concerts nearby). I try to avoid the news feed, and usually just use messages and events. Unlike most other chat apps, Facebook has backwards compatibility for old phones. There's a limited sense of control: I choose when to update my location, employer info, Liked pages, etc. Yes, they know about me, but I also use it to analyse myself [1]. I have no expectation of privacy for the things I post, but I'm therefore more careful about what I post, which Lists I share content with, and what metadata is hidden in that content.
Not GP, but I turn off WiFi completely (not the intermediate “disconnecting nearby WiFi until tomorrow”) so that I control when I’m connected and when I’m not.
No, I just disabled notifications for most apps, because I'm using iOS 6. Several apps have stopped working entirely (WhatsApp, WeChat, KakaoTalk), so I just use them through an Android emulator on my laptop.
Not always. If the provider can be social engineered into granting you access to the account after proving access to that number then I’m not sure “better than nothing” is that solid.
It's potentially worse than nothing because you can steal someone's sim card and then use that to reset their account password. This is because (as in almost every company that uses text messages for 2fa) you use the sms to authenticate the reset.
Or these shitty fake 2fa photo tan things they have here in Germany.
Something you have (your phone, with saved passwords) and something you have (your wife's phone, or just a device to take a photo of your screen to show it back to your actual phone) isn't 2fa.
But it makes it so painfully difficult to do anything that a valid step for security, like quickly contacting the bank to say “my phone is untrustworthy” via another device, becomes unreasonable, difficult and unlikely.
(But in general, trying to do anything in Germany is a painful experience. The business culture here seems to be, “if it's beneficial to the customer, it's a cost centre to us so please remove it”.)
For the US and Canada, there is JMP.chat which can be used to 2FA over SMS without a SIM. Uses standard XMPP so can be used from a computer or phone while on WiFi.
There are other proprietary services which can do the same for no monetary cost (usually lots of advertising and tracking, though).
Of course, that means you're giving "Denver Gingerich and others" full access and control over the number and channel used to receive unencrypted authentication tokens.
Without a SIM card it would be a lot harder to do my taxes, access my online bank, check my insurance, etc., because the SIM card is used to veriy my identity using a solution called BankID. (https://www.bankid.no/en/company/)
It's a lot easier then the alternative with OTP codes, especially since BankID is now supported by a lot of different sites and services. From government, banking, phone companies, etc.
The BanID SIM-application has to be installed over the air and activated through online banking. It's bound to one physical SIM, so an attacker would need to get into the online banking in the first place to reinstall the SIM app onto the new card. I believe the auth keys are stored on the SIM as part of this solution, and regenerated every time it's reactivated, invalidating the existing SIM.
This is .. remarkably sensible, and a good example of using the secure elements of the SIM card for the intended purpose. Makes me wonder why more places don't do this.
It's possible to use OTP and password as well, which requires a physical OTP generator. But that's actually more cumbersome than using the SIM alternative in my experience.
I believe using the SIM adds layers of security that OTP apps can't compete with, including increased difficulty cloning the private key. I assume that accessing the relevant parts of the SIM is way harder and requires completely different vectors than attacking the OS.
Since the early 2000's, banks in Europe gave physical OTP devices. While somewhat inconvenient if you don't have it with you, I still liked it better than alternatives that are popping up lately:
SMS based authentication, an app that generates a code from a QR-like pattern displayed on your computer screen (neat but they didn't think of the case where the screen displaying the QR pattern would be the phone itself, or the fact that you're letting their app see what else is on your computer screen) and paper cards with a finite amount of numbers on them.
In fact I'd prefer TOTP as supported by authenticator as a better phone based alternative since it's standard and you can control if and how you want to securely back up the codes rather than have a plethora of different systems.
A SIM card contains a crypto module that can perform operations (signing, encrypting, etc) while not allowing the device to read the private key. Some phones include a chip like that too, but many don't.
How does this actually work on something like iOS, which I believe is a lot more restrictive and may not allow access to the SIM except through carrier services (which are in turn susceptible to attacks, including bribes, social engineering, etc.)?
The carrier is involved in transmitting and triggering the challenge as well, and I'm pretty confident that it works on iOS, though I've never tried myself.
The authentication works like this:
1. User fills out form with enough public and semi-private infoemation to securely identify the user (usually phone number and date of birth or social security number)
2. The user is presented with a random two-word string
3. The same message appears on the user's phone. If the words are the same, the user proceeds to input a PIN. The PIN is only stored on the SIM, and is chosen by the user.
4. A response is sent from the phone and the user gets logged in.
I assume that the challenge response employs asymmetric authentication, storing a private key for the SIM and public key for BankID on the SIM.
I'm not familiar enough with how the underlying crypto works to guess what kind of attacks they'd be suceptible to, but considering that the authentication is used for most public services in Norway (including taxes, welfare, medical records and document signing) as well as some private services (banking, insurance), I'll believe that the proper due diligence has been done.
There is a big focus on using these platforms securely, and BankID recently ran an at campaign with some TV spots, telling how people should never share their BankID login, not even with their loved ones - https://youtu.be/OFJmX7A--w4
In Sweden the banks issue the BankID instead, the certificate is tied to the phone/pc it’s downloaded to and is not connected to the phone# at all. You can however connect for example ”Swish” to your bank accounts for seamless transactions through youe phone# but it too has to be authenticated with bankid.
I’ve never really heard of a case when the bankid/authentication to any Swedish banks has been compromised with the exception of the users signing in fraudulent actors.
The SIM will be sent to the registered address of the owner. So you will have to intercept the post as well. And the PIN will be sent in a separate envelope on a different day.
That plus the other things like storing the encrypted keys in the SIM card activated by logging in to a bank by some other means make it pretty secure.
Not sure about Norway, but in the Netherlands, you have to note down the PUK code. You can't get a replacement SIM card without PUK code. This is for prepaid though.
Isn’t BankID subject to the same old issues with cellular networks that make SMS 2FA insecure? Mobile provider support human factor, connection MITM’ing, etc. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16810266)
Edit: from sibling threads I can see that issuing a duplicate SIM card in Norway may require a very dedicated attacker, but mass-spoofing cell towers could still be an issue. I don’t know why do companies dislike non-SIM-associated OTP tokens so much…
Not at all. And the comment you link to is "just" social engineering. Tricking people into signing in someone else and then signing their transactions.
Akin to "hey I'm from paypal please give me your password so I can verify it is you". Or "I'm from Microsoft support, you have a virus please run this executable so that we can help you".
But it is a problem. And they explicitly target old and other people that (statistically) treat any computer stuff as black magic and are more likely to trust a stranger because they say they are calling from a bank/whatever.
> because the SIM card is used to veriy my identity using a solution called BankID.
That's BankID over mobile. You can also use a key fob like this[1] + a password to authenticate. I use it when traveling and using a prepaid SIM occasionally.
I used a dumb phone until recently. It was only possible, because my partner's phone could fulfil both of our "smart" needs. It's not easy to get around that. If there's just 1 service that requires a smartphone that you can't do without, you have to get one.
I had been living without a sim card for almost 2 years, and just use wifi. Loved it. No I have to because I am starting my own company and have no choice, otherwise I would have removed tphone completely.
> For me getting rid of the SIM was a conscious decision after I caught Telkomsel in Indonesia running MITM attacks to inject ads over HTTP communications
If this is bothering you, you shouldn't really be online at all.
What the point? It’s so much hassle for no reason. If you want to be not dependent on something then don’t use a smart phone. But having a smart phone without a SIM seems the worse of both worlds.
A good point that I've not made in my post above. When people learn that I've no SIM card in my smartphones they inevitably remark why bother having one. The fact is smartphones are excellent computers and I use them as such all the time in applications where cellular modems aren't necessary.
One major advantage is the impact on phone battery life - partly because various services aren't repeatedly pinging over the mobile network (especially in "notspots"), WiFi tends not to burn through battery. And partly because it tends to change your behaviour to do more focused things (the phone isn't constantly trying to distract you as it often can't, so you don't then waste time and power on these distractions).
I don't think I'd abandoned a SIM card in the near future but having used my old phone without the SIM as an alternate for my new phone on a few occasions, the old phone battery went from being awful to lasting way longer than my brand new phone of comparable specs.
I got a smart watch after being staunchly anti-smartwatch, because I can now leave my phone at home. It was a compromise that allowed me to stay connected via phone while not having a distraction-factory in my pocket. I don't have anything but the phone app and weather on there, and I have a whitelist so only friends and family can contact me. I delay text messages 'til I get home if I can, and I get maybe 2 phone calls a week.
My biggest issue with the phone was it could distract me with a notification, and I could dive into it for too long after dealing with the notification. That doesn't happen on the watch because frankly, they can't do all that much and they are a pain in the ass to use for anything more than a quick sentence.
Could I just "be a better person" and be disciplined with my phone? Totally. But I've tried numerous times, so this is my method and it's been working well.
Cellular really isn't all that power hungry, the problem is really data period, i.e. your phone being awake at all. If you get a 500MB plan, set everything unimportant to restrict background data, and turn off WiFi your phone can last for days.
He mention the risk of having stuff injected in the header while being connected to an isp. But doesn’t care about public hotspots? Personally I would rather trust a couple ISP’s than random hotspots.
On the other hand, any paid service must be tracking you, at least for billing purposes, whereas you might be able to reduce the tracking that free services do.
My First reaction was that it sounds awesome and I want to try it for a view month.
Then I realized that most German delivery services require a phone number and email address (like when you order a new shelf or phone or computer or ...).
Then I realized that the messenger I use to communicate with my family bases identity on the phone number (not my choice, but nothing I can easily change).
Then I realize that my main relevant usage is to get live information about public transport.
Well I guess I'm not quite ready for it yet maybe when I managed to convince everyone to switch to a non phone number based messenger.
> Then I realized that the messenger I use to communicate with my family bases identity on the phone number
It is only required upon registration or a change of a phone. Most messengers don't require (nor really have a way of figuring out) whether you have the same simcard in the phone, or whether you have a simcard in it at all.
Denmark is pretty similar to Germany, in that a ton of services require you to have a phone number. Technically there’s rarely a reason for you to give out your number, and for stuff I don’t care about I’ll enter the number of a loan company or the number of a telcos support.
Still, I actually somewhat concerned that you’re basically not allowed to not have a phone. No one will actually call you anymore, but they do want your phone number.
I can’t think of a single service that would require you to have a phone, it’s just some weak attempt at “authenticating” you, via someone else.
> most German delivery services require a phone number and email address
As somebody who lived years in Germany without having the ability to make or receive calls (there was a SIM with a number, but connected to a data-only tablet)... Most delivery companies lack proper input validation, so you can either enter "n/a" or 00000000000 to the phone field. Never had issues with deliveries because of this
It has been so ever since Thoreau lived at Walden Pond and waxed poetically of self-reliance and living alone, but had his mother take care of washing his clothes.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 280 ms ] threadLosing out on all those conveniences sounds miserable to me.
Is it? because from my perspective you've taken yourself out of a few databases (AT&T / Verizon / Telco) and plopped yourself into a few other databases (2nd Line, Grab) without having a whole lot of benefit.
Well done to those of you who are able to carry around a smartphone and regulate yourselves but some of us need to take more drastic action to cut it out.
I cut my phone use by removing most social media apps. I have also disabled notifications for most remaining apps, except for Facetime and iMessage (since I use them for high signal/noise ratio communication with friends an family).
So I have a SIM with a dumbphone but no smartphone. People can call and send me messages. Frequently I leave that at home too.
I do have an iPod touch though which i use for podcasts, as a camera, and for a few specific things like a banking app. But no messaging, social media or distraction-type things are allowed on there.
People often get a bemused or even aggressive reaction to those who cut out conventional device habits.
Colombia has lots of free WiFi in parks, for example. We should be doing this everywhere.
Also, many countries now require public hotspots to verify the user by getting them to receive an SMS. In some countries it even has to be a local number, because they have compulsory SIM registration, so requiring a local number lets them tie the Internet usage to an identity.
German Alditalk credit lasts 24 months IIRC, and topping up extends the credit shelf life.
Pretty much every SIM card has free incoming SMS when roaming. USSD are also free with some carriers.
Losing SIM card is less of a hassle with eSIMs.
Perhaps other than tracking concerns, I'm totally not convinced with the reasoning.
Tracking is not an issue, if you keep your phone in airplane mode (wifi and bluetooth can be enabled on most phones, but mobile network stays disabled), or if you just remove the sim card, and put it back, on those rare occasion when you need it (so you don't have to bother other people)
A connection exposes you to surveillance, and yes, it's worse with SIMs, but having WiFi on just adds a little latency to the same thing. Public Routers that you're discovering do the same thing. I had thought this was the entire point of iOS devices randomizing their MACs when scanning available networks (no idea if this ever got shipped with Android devices).
I am probably in the "nutty" quadrant when it comes to concerns about tracking, surveillance concerns, and online privacy, but I also don't really like needlessly inconveniencing myself just to undermine the entire purpose of why the inconvenience is necessary in the first place. Your phone is always talking -- SIM card or not. I'm not even sure modern non-smart phones (flip revivals and such) are wifi free.
Such protections are a good ideal, but a lot of people have an unrealistic idea of the threat actors they're trying to protect against.
Also, the fact that the credit lasts 24 months before they steal it for not using it is meaningless, since life with a sim that has no data and makes no outgoing calls or sms is almost identical to life without a sim, except for the tracking and the ability to be found by others.
So i think it completely misses the message.
German Freenet Funk offers one-day-one-euro prepaid SIM; you can cancel any day.
Satellite.me gives you a German mobile number through an app for free (SMS support is in alpha, though).
I think facebook still works so long as you have signed up from a computer, but I might be wrong. I've only considered having it on my tablet (that has never had a sim), but never bothered to install it on my phone.
So many things depend more on the device being on the internet (through whatever means) than having the sim card. The main thing you need it for is phone calls, SMS, and roaming internet - and sometimes, banking, but not always. I've realized this because my phone has roaming internet turned off by defaut - I use wifi as my primary phone internet and as it turns out, I pay minimal amounts for the phone (I'm not willing to go without, even though it is rarely used).
Considering there have been WiFi-only Android tablets since forever this cannot possibly be news to anyone?
By relying on other people it is possible to do without many things.
However, unless you have other ways of signaling sufficient status or wealth (such as being a digital nomad living abroad in a lower income country), people you continuously rely on for essentials might start treating you with a little less respect.
Feel free to live off the grid, but please make sure you don’t leech off of those around you.
Oh noo you had to answer a phone. Fu k me.
I think that's a toxic attitude. Picking up the phone for someone else every now and then is really not a big of a hassle. Obviously I don't know the whole situation, but in general I do think that one should be ready to do such minor favors for another human being without calling them a leech.
on edit: changed some incorrect uses of to to correct usage of too.
Normally I would not expect, given that thread of conversation, that I should have to explain that my example was not meant to be a universal condemnation of anyone not having a sim card in their phone.
In fact, only 33 years ago my parents had to call the neighbours 3 doors further to call my aunt to notify her (and my grandparents who happen to be visiting her) of my birth.
Although, I admit as someone with a speech impediment, I absolutely loath using the phone. But it's a necessity even as a software developer. But nothing as annoying as having to pick up the phone, only to hear that it was (effectively) the wrong number and they needed someone across the room...
My wife (who is younger than me, as in 16y younger) do that too and have no problem.
For me, if I do it, I sure remember, but 2 or 3 days later :-D
Google has been awful at respecting my decision though, they'll keep enabling various news notifications and the have a very different opinion on "breaking news" than I do, I think the last one was for some Hollywood awards show. If there really is some breaking news I need to be interrupted for then the government emergency SMS service should suffice.
I first read this on HN: app notifications should really be called app interruptions. It really changes how things should be viewed.
I'm fine with missing things if people don't feel like using any of the methods I have to get in touch with me. However, instead of either not bothering or using one of the communication channels we have in common, people tend to ask my partner to relay messages to me. So short of starting to use Whatsapp (which I'd really rather not do, and which requires installing a different OS on my phone - and possibly get a data subscription as well), the burden is on my partner to either tell them to contact me directly, or to relay the messages.
Any good tips for others ways of dealing with this are very welcome.
Your signal: I don't care enough about our communication to use WhatsApp, because of reasons that are obscure to 99% outside a tech community. Similarly, they don't bother to reach out to you on other communication channels, because they don't bother enough.
The important thing to understand is, from your communication partners point of view, you create a burden without reason, so they work around it in (their) most effective way.
I've been there and didn't support this or that messenger. By now I think, the only way to solve those kind of issues are i) sane laws that regulate privacy and communication security, and ii) trends that create a need for a new communication style - private, secure, and human (like, calling from time to time, find a better solution to ghosting, things like that).
I'm convinced that we need positive incentives for that, instead of creating artificial burden.
This isn't just limited to communications tools. For example, people might have dietary restrictions for non-health reasons (religion, environmental impact, etc) that others do not share or even understand. I don't mind accommodating those (to a limit) e.g. when picking a place to eat, but it is a burden placed on people around them. That's just the way it is, I guess, and I suppose all people can do is try to minimise the burden, and to be accepting of those placed upon you.
They create a burden without reason.
If it helps, you can try visualizing it as a fully connected graph that initially has equally weighted edges between all nodes. But then the weight of all edges connected to one specific node goes up by multiple factors. That node loses out much more than all the other nodes.
I personally rather observe various groups in society with very different kinds of preferences.
The cost of putting cognitive load is many people will choose not to pay it and that cost is instead borne by your partner
Would you walk through wet mud if a grass or concrete alternative path is available? That's pretty much what your contacts are doing
Not a solution for even most people unless you're really into Matrix and running your own servers though. (I bridge WhatsApp, but use a physical phone to do so)
[1] https://github.com/42wim/matterbridge
What you call "annoying AF" was reality for many many years, and yet people were not constantly annoyed..
You mean the 'cost of interrupting other people while they are in the middle of living their lives' is near zero. On the other side of the coin, the cost of being constantly interrupted by beeping, buzzing, ringing, and jingling of every asshole in the county who calls/text on a moment's whim, and gets annoyed/offended when I don't instantly respond, is not zero.
Likewise, the cost of being constantly surveilled by intelligence agencies and evil corporations is definitely nowhere near zero.
I live completely off the grid. Far from giving a fuck about how offended/inconvenienced others are by my lifestyle, I purposely disconnected from all of those people. Life for me is much better now.
It's not a constant annoyance, but if anything there were more annoyances in the 90's around phones than having people call me to speak to my sibling.
It might have been a reality pre-00s ─ today if you want to play out any Jason Bourne fantasies, they will not be considered just annoying but suspicious, as your number gets intrinsically linked with somebody else's activities.
It's like German getting out of nuclear power generation but then buying nuclear power from Czech and France, where power plans are literally at the German border.
I have my smartphone 24/7 on DND. I only feel/hear my vibration motor if I get a call. Sometimes, this causes me to miss phone calls, but in general it works well enough. It also makes me one of these people who isn't annoying in public transport or on yoga class.
Spot on. Nothing worse than feeling taken advantage of.
I don't think the author of that post is living "off the grid" at all.
I am surprised nobody noticed that he mentioned he uses OKCupid.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/01/grindr-and-okcupid-sel...
Sharing is great when you put in something material in, not just try to be bubbly person.
The implication here isn't that they're being judged for not having a phone (with a SIM card), and that they're constantly relying and leaching from others. That can be annoying, and people tend to not like annoying people?
But I haven't imposed anything on anyone. It's society--or rather, a certain loud, vocal, and extremely selfish segment of society--which is attempting to impose something on me.
It speaks volumes about the mentality of such people that they somehow think I'm imposing on them, because they're 'forced' to think and plan ahead a little bit if/when they desire to contact me, rather than me being instantly available at their beck and call 24/7/365.
> 'they're constantly relying and leaching from others. That can be annoying, and people tend to not like annoying people?'
Exactly my reasoning for purposely disconnecting from those who always have to be joined at the hip with their digital devices 24/7/365, and who insist that I need to be also, for their convenience.
The fact that you refer to people trying to make plans with you as an imposition on you tells me that might not be the case, but I'm not in any position to judge either way.
Tons of assumptions packed into your post here, all of which are incorrect due to your own lack of perspective.
Let me put this into perspective for you.
So that you can better understand the totally warped and ridiculous mindset of antisocial, contemptible extremists like me, try this little experiment: Give up your phone for 90 days. All phones. Totally and completely. Use email and snail mail only for communication. Or even IM, if you like; you don't have to go "whole hog" like me and not even have internet at the house. Just dip your toes in the water. Use a desktop or laptop for your computing needs, and leave the toy in the drawer.
There are many ways you could go about justifying this to your shocked and horrified colleagues and family members, limited by your own imagination; the best way from a scientific standpoint (to conduct a study and learn from it) would be to example pretend to be a person like me, who has decided to do this because of very legitimate reasons concerning security, privacy, etc, perhaps leaving off the part about the unwanted intrusion of society's selfish demands on one's own personal health and well being, of course, so as not to offend anyone.
(You don't want to offend anyone, right? Neither did I.)
You could say that you're doing it as an experiment for a limited time. Whatever suits your personality and temperament, while preserving whatever modicum of social standing that you hold so dear. The point is, just do it. Step into my shoes for a time, if only briefly, just to see what it's like.
Here is what you will learn:
* Yes, there are annoyance and inconveniences involved with not having a phone. They're pretty small, actually, for the most part. By far the biggest difficulty lies in dealing with other people's bullshit.
* In some people's minds, you will immediately and instantly because the biggest asshole on the planet, a totally selfish person in their viewpoint, just because they can no longer text or call you up on a moment's notice, but instead have to email and wait (sometimes an entire day!) for a reply.
* This is even despite the fact that you actually went out of your way to make it easier for them to contact you via alternate means, knowing that it would be something of an inconvenience to them, and wanting to mitigate that as much as possible. No appreciation will be shown for your efforts.
* Further reflection on the above points will demonstrate just what a low place you must have really occupied in such people's esteem, if this rather small inconvenience to them is really enough to turn people against you. This is one of many fascinating unanticipated insights into the mind and heart of humanity which you'll glean by following the road less traveled.
* Some people will instantly understand why you are doing this. To them, no explanation is needed. In many cases you will find there are others who quietly would like to do the same, but feel afraid to do so, because of social pressure. Or sometimes they will secretly think you're a nutcase, but yet will express solidarity to appear polite, while quietly judging you. And also assuming that you don't understand that they are pretending to express solidarity while quietly judging you.
* Some never will understand. They will refuse to understand, badgering you with ten thousand questions like "What? You don't have a phone? Why don't you have a phone? How can you not have a phone? What if there's an emergency? What if [...]? How is this possible? How can you even breathe?" etc.
* In many cases people will hardly be able to hide their contempt of you, and may even go out of their way to purposely make your life difficult--as if the
Maybe what's really going is that you made them conscious of having an enormous unwanted burden on their shoulders. And every time yet another compromise is forced on them, the weight increases. And you had the strength to shrug it off.
Like junk mail, to name another easy example. I complained about all the junk mail one time at the postal counter, and the woman replied, quote, "You call it junk mail; we call it job security."
(Which is exactly why I no longer have a mailbox, either; just a PO box that I check once in a while. I refuse to waste away my precious life dealing with such bullshit.)
Tells you everything you need to know right there about the entire society, really. The rot is everywhere. Which is why increasingly the only sane option is to Opt Out from the madness entirely.
Life is much more peaceful on this side of the fence.
I remember playing Leisure Suit Larry back in the day. I think it was episode 2 or 3, where at the end of the game the story goes that Larry has retired to his "programmer's shack" out on a lake in the wilderness, to write the next LSL game.
I remember being struck by the beauty of that scene--the idea of being out in a shack on a lake, alone in the wilderness, nothing but me and the compiler. The "escaping from the world" aspect seems to have been a large part of the allure, especially as a kid, dreaming about not having to wake up early and go to that sorry ass school in the morning. No more society and its constant demands and burdens. Just living, in peace and contentment.
Today I am blessed to also have my own "programmer's shack" on a lake out in the wilderness, with nothing but me and the compiler and time.
I'll take this life over a $500k Silly-Con Valley rat race job any day of the week. And indeed, the very reason I'm here today is because that's the choice I made, period.
People have a lot more control over their lives than they allow themselves to believe. Where they inevitably end up is a result of their choices and actions. As time goes on, more and more will see the wisdom of unplugging and dropping out of this insane society. It's no big loss. In time we'll start our own new and better society.
Let's talk texts.
Compare:
1. An employee gets all of their break time eaten up by a friend who is off work and sending tens of low-effort messages for help with choosing an appropriate cafe for a double-date that night. (Saw it happen.)
2. An employee has nice, relaxing breaks. Then they meet up with a group of three that includes a friend who spends five minutes annoying the other three until someone finally decides on which cafe to visit.
Given that employee as input data, which is the preferable system? If you answer 1 then I've got a lot more questions for you.
It's too bad that texts generate so much flak that an "off the grid" person's absence doesn't register. But it's still a benefit for current SIM card holders that the "off the grid" person isn't adding flak to that broken system of communication.
Not sure it outweighs the mom calling the sister. But texts are generally such a productivity drain it is worth noting.
For most people, lending their phone won't even incur marginal costs considering the trend towards flat rates.
If you find yourself being annoyed by such situations, note that these feelings are bound to make you miserable, and are unlikely to have much of an affect on the target of your anger. I've found that it is far easier than I thought to just consciously decide not to get worked up such issues, and that it's remarkably effective at improving mood and social life.
Lending the phone to someone who doesn't want to carry one even knowing they will need it? Not fine. That person has little respect to others if they think they can't be bothered carrying a phone but everyone else should lend theirs when needed.
Not to mention modern phones are very personal. Our entire lives is there.
Some of us have principles also. Yes, we know very well that having principles and living by them annoys your type, especially when the very existence of and our defense of said principles necessarily call the legitimacy of your entire mode of 'living' into question.
When in the end you inevitably lose said cultural battle, just remember: it wasn't us who decided to attack your lifestyle in the first place.
It takes a special kind of obnoxious tool to expect that they should be able to reach anyone they want at any moment, 24/7/365, and to be annoyed if said person doesn't make that possible for them.
I envy those who have enough energy left to fight for a better world after their daily chores. I don't.
So I do my best to be productive, positive and kind. Throwing my phone away right now would not be a little fight. It would cause me problems at work where my boss expects me to be responsive regardless of where I am or if there's a working wifi nearby. I'd also lose business and social opportunities. Being harder to reach would make some friends eventually distance themselves just as a consequence.
I feel you. Have a good week!
The OP is claiming the way he uses his tech gives him a cost saving and encouraging people to follow suit, when if everyone did that then he wouldn't be able to do the things he does any more. So it's not a sustainable lifestyle, because it leeches off the idea that most people aren't doing it.
It would be quite annoying if they constantly only had $5 in their wallet and needed their friends to cover for them with a card whenever we went out. I can respect the position they're taking, but you've chosen to interact with the modern world in ways that are unexpected and more difficult in some ways. In return, I expect you to think through those obstacles and solve them yourself.
If you ask me ahead of time if I can pay for something, or use my phone, that's totally reasonable. Just going through life assuming that it's a thing isn't thoughtful or respectful of my personal limits.
I'm sure he would be perfectly fine with her not calling at all, and just speaking with her the next time he sees her, the way 95% of humans on the planet are perfectly capable of doing. But she chooses to not respect his very wise and very reasonable mode of living, and you choose to see that as being his fault somehow.
I live tens of hours away from my parents right now. Calling them is how I get/keep in touch with them. If I decided to get rid of my phone, I'd be sure to come to some sort of other solution that would be acceptable to them and not just cut them off.
The issue is he presumably knows that his parents are like this and want to stay in touch with him. If he can't convince them to use email/skype/whatever else, then that's his issue to manage. He's not entitled to push that off onto his friends just because his parents are unreasonable. Either deal with your parents unreasonable demands by having a basic burner phone, or tell all your friends to just not pick up/blacklist it.
To me, is like if you decided you were worried about the environment and started biking everywhere. I can respect that as a decision, but it doesn't mean it's not imposing on me to always be showing up to things late because you haven't adjusted to how long it takes to bike places.
In addition, we're not talking here about how to specifically deal with one person. I've had plenty of friends with annoying habits, and I have managed to mostly ignore their behavior and just live my life. What we're discussing is the more general case - is it ethical to impose this sort of thing on someone else without their agreement/consent. I can both think that my old roommates should have cleaned the kitchen more as a matter of cleanliness and fairness AND have gotten to the point where it didn't bother me that much that I had to clean for them. My ability to not be bothered by it, and to put my friendship ahead of specific annoyances doesn't excuse behavior that makes doing so harder for their selfish reasons.
"Judging people for their actions" isn't the same as shunning them or wanting them dead. Any sort of anti-social behavior that asks for things from other people is going to trigger some sort of judgement or response. Often it will just be ignoring it or helping the person out, and that's fine, but that's part of the calculus of choosing it. You've decided the social cost of asking for other peoples phones is worth the personal moral/ethical/security gains of not having one yourself. Depending on how you approach it and how much you mitigate the asks of others will determine how people judge you on it.
Need signal/whatsapp? Just get a disposable number... that everyone adds to their contact books but has to change every time you re-install because you cant get the old number back.
The world is outright hostile to not having a number. It's like not having an address. I lament this, but there aren't easy solutions to this hostility.
It's been wonderful to make me focus on face to face conversations with people, rather than checking notifications all the time. I ask them to add me on Facebook, or make a note of their email address. If I can get online, I use mbasic.facebook.com with no ads, which loads quickly on an old phone.
My phone wakes me up with an alarm, but I'm not flooded with depressing Apple News first thing in the morning.
On the bus, I read books (the Bible and others, Edward Snowden's autobiography last year, currently The Shockwave Rider). I also browse offline Wikipedia (personally Wiki2Touch, but I've heard good things about Kiwix). I use Galileo Offline Maps with MOBAC-scraped tiles, without turn by turn directions.
Battery life is significantly better without 3G, and makes the old iPhone 4S quite usable.
Google Voice is often allowed for 2FA, and I use that when I need to receive SMS (e.g. TransferWise).
I could go without a SIM card entirely, but for the rare occasions when I do need to receive a call (e.g. I agree a place and time to meet someone, and they're late), then I still keep it in my phone.
It worries me to read that the US immigration department are using anonymised cell tower histories to trace people, but I don't know if removing the SIM card would solve that.
It worries me to read you’re still using Facebook even though it looks like you value privacy. Why’s that? (Not trolling, serious question)
[1] https://github.com/peterburk/sortlikes
> My phone wakes me up with an alarm, but I'm not flooded with depressing Apple News first thing in the morning.
So you turn off wi-fi before going to bed?
But the main problem is 2FA many services force you to use now.
Going without a data plan is wonderful, but every now and then, having a couple minutes are SMS services is great.
SMS 2FA is a joke tho.
Something you have (your phone, with saved passwords) and something you have (your wife's phone, or just a device to take a photo of your screen to show it back to your actual phone) isn't 2fa.
But it makes it so painfully difficult to do anything that a valid step for security, like quickly contacting the bank to say “my phone is untrustworthy” via another device, becomes unreasonable, difficult and unlikely.
(But in general, trying to do anything in Germany is a painful experience. The business culture here seems to be, “if it's beneficial to the customer, it's a cost centre to us so please remove it”.)
There are other proprietary services which can do the same for no monetary cost (usually lots of advertising and tracking, though).
I believe using the SIM adds layers of security that OTP apps can't compete with, including increased difficulty cloning the private key. I assume that accessing the relevant parts of the SIM is way harder and requires completely different vectors than attacking the OS.
SMS based authentication, an app that generates a code from a QR-like pattern displayed on your computer screen (neat but they didn't think of the case where the screen displaying the QR pattern would be the phone itself, or the fact that you're letting their app see what else is on your computer screen) and paper cards with a finite amount of numbers on them.
In fact I'd prefer TOTP as supported by authenticator as a better phone based alternative since it's standard and you can control if and how you want to securely back up the codes rather than have a plethora of different systems.
The authentication works like this:
1. User fills out form with enough public and semi-private infoemation to securely identify the user (usually phone number and date of birth or social security number) 2. The user is presented with a random two-word string 3. The same message appears on the user's phone. If the words are the same, the user proceeds to input a PIN. The PIN is only stored on the SIM, and is chosen by the user. 4. A response is sent from the phone and the user gets logged in.
I assume that the challenge response employs asymmetric authentication, storing a private key for the SIM and public key for BankID on the SIM.
I'm not familiar enough with how the underlying crypto works to guess what kind of attacks they'd be suceptible to, but considering that the authentication is used for most public services in Norway (including taxes, welfare, medical records and document signing) as well as some private services (banking, insurance), I'll believe that the proper due diligence has been done.
There is a big focus on using these platforms securely, and BankID recently ran an at campaign with some TV spots, telling how people should never share their BankID login, not even with their loved ones - https://youtu.be/OFJmX7A--w4
I’ve never really heard of a case when the bankid/authentication to any Swedish banks has been compromised with the exception of the users signing in fraudulent actors.
That plus the other things like storing the encrypted keys in the SIM card activated by logging in to a bank by some other means make it pretty secure.
Edit: from sibling threads I can see that issuing a duplicate SIM card in Norway may require a very dedicated attacker, but mass-spoofing cell towers could still be an issue. I don’t know why do companies dislike non-SIM-associated OTP tokens so much…
Akin to "hey I'm from paypal please give me your password so I can verify it is you". Or "I'm from Microsoft support, you have a virus please run this executable so that we can help you".
But it is a problem. And they explicitly target old and other people that (statistically) treat any computer stuff as black magic and are more likely to trust a stranger because they say they are calling from a bank/whatever.
In Norway BankID is quite definitely connected to the SIM card.
Sweden did briefly have a SIM card-based version of its BankID, but it was quickly replaced with the smartphone app-based “Mobile BankID”.
That's BankID over mobile. You can also use a key fob like this[1] + a password to authenticate. I use it when traveling and using a prepaid SIM occasionally.
[1] https://bank.obos.no/globalassets/bilder-alternative-str/sig...
But I will do it
If this is bothering you, you shouldn't really be online at all.
It's been a lifesaver in the pre-EU-roaming era
I don't think I'd abandoned a SIM card in the near future but having used my old phone without the SIM as an alternate for my new phone on a few occasions, the old phone battery went from being awful to lasting way longer than my brand new phone of comparable specs.
My biggest issue with the phone was it could distract me with a notification, and I could dive into it for too long after dealing with the notification. That doesn't happen on the watch because frankly, they can't do all that much and they are a pain in the ass to use for anything more than a quick sentence.
Could I just "be a better person" and be disciplined with my phone? Totally. But I've tried numerous times, so this is my method and it's been working well.
Any free service should ring major, major alarms for any one advocating for privacy.
Then I realized that most German delivery services require a phone number and email address (like when you order a new shelf or phone or computer or ...).
Then I realized that the messenger I use to communicate with my family bases identity on the phone number (not my choice, but nothing I can easily change).
Then I realize that my main relevant usage is to get live information about public transport.
Well I guess I'm not quite ready for it yet maybe when I managed to convince everyone to switch to a non phone number based messenger.
It is only required upon registration or a change of a phone. Most messengers don't require (nor really have a way of figuring out) whether you have the same simcard in the phone, or whether you have a simcard in it at all.
Still, I actually somewhat concerned that you’re basically not allowed to not have a phone. No one will actually call you anymore, but they do want your phone number.
I can’t think of a single service that would require you to have a phone, it’s just some weak attempt at “authenticating” you, via someone else.
As somebody who lived years in Germany without having the ability to make or receive calls (there was a SIM with a number, but connected to a data-only tablet)... Most delivery companies lack proper input validation, so you can either enter "n/a" or 00000000000 to the phone field. Never had issues with deliveries because of this
GSM, WiFi, TCP/IP, SIM cards, debit cards could provide strong privacy for everybody by default.
Requiring random, temporary, untracked addresses by law is possible and achievable.
Yet, society accepts corporate surveillance for the masses and privacy for the powerful and wealthy.