One of the product creators here -- we're working on this :) We ended up launching the site today (a week earlier than expected), due to the press on the topic.
Hey, one of the creators here -- I wrote about this in another thread, but here's why we think we're better than physical stores:
- You can order the product online without making a physical appearance anywhere.
- Many of the prepaid cell phones in physical stores come with the SIM chips activated -- so the phone's location has already been broadcasted to cell towers and is pre-registered, making it slightly less anonymous for the end user.
- We're going to be accepting bitcoin in the near future (we're finishing that integration now), so we hope to compete with cash purchases in that regard.
- You can recycle these phones like you would normal phones.
- We piggyback off a ton of different US carriers -- so as you move around you'll be swapping between various carriers in your region.
Hat and sunglasses? It sounds cliche, but the prosecution has the burden of proof, and if they can't make out your facial features or hair, and you don't arrive on a traceable mode of transportation (like, a bus would work), then it could have been anyone.
The the "strip search prank call" suspect (fictionalized in the recent movie Compliance) was located through video footage of him purchasing "anonymous" phone cards with cash:
Learning that the call had been made with an AT&T calling card... they used the serial number of the calling card used to make the call, and learned that the card had come from a different [Panama City] Wal-Mart store than the card used for the Massachusetts calls. Using Wal-Mart's records of the second store, the cash register, and time of the purchase of that card, the police were able to find surveillance camera video of the transaction. Unlike the Massachusetts investigation, which had gone cold when surveillance video failed to show the purchaser because the cameras were trained on the parking lot and not the registers, the cameras at the particular store where the card used in the Mount Washington call was purchased were trained on the cashiers.
The buyer in the video was wearing a correctional officer's uniform for the private security firm Corrections Corporation of America. Video and stills from both Wal-Marts were compared and the same man was seen entering and exiting the Wal-Mart at the time of the earlier purchase. The police used this footage to produce a front-and-back composite image of the suspect, and subsequent queries to the private correctional company's human resources department led to the identification of the buyer as David R. Stewart.
I'm sure there are burner retailers that don't have security cameras on 24/7 like Wal Mart. Or even if they do, they may recycle their tapes more quickly than Wal Mar would. Buy some burners now--wait six months until activating/using.
Thanks! After 30 days, you can purchase a new SIM chip from us directly if you'd like -- but the existing SIM chip will be completely unusable.
Right now our site only sells the phone + chip together, but we can sell both the hardware phone and SIM chips separately as well (3 day, 7 day, 14 day, and 30 day SIM chips).
Due to our early launch (this is our MVP), we don't have those advertised on the website yet (although, if you email us, we can arrange something).
I'm confused with how a dead man's switch would be useful in this scenario. If the company is persuaded to keep the transaction logs linking sim cards/phones and credit card numbers/addresses then how would we know? I don't see that as being fixed by having a dead man's switch.
At that level of 'paranoia' / privacy concern you might as assume this is an elaborate honey-pot. An unlikely scenario but certainly the safest assumption from a privacy perspective.
Churchill: "Madam, would you sleep with me for five million pounds?" Socialite: "My goodness, Mr. Churchill... Well, I suppose... we would have to discuss terms, of course... "
Churchill: "Would you sleep with me for five pounds?"
Socialite: "Mr. Churchill, what kind of woman do you think I am?!" Churchill: "Madam, we've already established that. Now we are haggling about the price”
Hey all, I'm one of the creators of BurnerPhone, and just wanted to leave a comment with a few facts about the product.
We weren't really planning on launching this thing so quickly (we planned on making improvements to the site, etc. and launching in the next couple of weeks) -- but since all the press about the NSA / phone stuff came out it seemed like a good time to put our MVP online.
Anyhow, we're basically trying to provide our users with a secure-as-possible communication device that allows them to remain as anonymous as possible. Yes -- the government can definitely collect call data and SMS data, but by using different devices and SIM cards (phone numbers) you can abstract away all but the most difficult to track details: your voice, your writing style (sms messages).
Using a BurnerPhone allows you to make phone calls and send SMS messages that won't be linked back to your by your telco billing records.
In regards to how we work:
- These phones come with unlimited talk and text for 30 days, nationwide coverage.
- We piggyback off of tons of US carriers, so depending on where you're located, you'll be connected to a different cellular network.
- You can recycle these phones (we have a lot of plans with this in the future).
I'd love to get some feedback from you guys, really respect HN and your opinions.
We don't keep these records -- after we ship we destroy it.
The USPS would have records for this sort of thing, of course, but you could also have items shipped to PO Boxes, places that offer greater anonymity, etc.
Furthermore, it's very unlikely that within 30 days of usage you'd be tracked down / monitored and have records queried like that.
It's definitely not a perfect system, but we're working on it :)
Oh, a data plan would probably make a killer feature. Not sure how you would deal with people doing "things that are rightfully illegal" with it, though.
> Not sure how you would deal with people doing "things that are rightfully illegal" with it, though.
One of the things about privacy-boosting mechanisms is that they explicitly do not make such a judgement. In other words, they refuse to deal with it on principle. The exact letter of the principle differs between the actual people implementing the mechanisms, but the result is generally the same.
I don't personally agree with it, though, so that's my limit on being able to explain it.
Hah, no. Myself and my partner both work in the telephony industry, and are familiar with the name 'burner phone' (sounds kind of cool, usually refers to those spy phones that get thrown away in movies).
What a great show. And interestingly, despite being fictional, the point where the dealers failed was the collection of the phones - just the issue discussed above.
I recall that phones were supposed to be bought from stores all over the place, but a lazy gang member kept getting all of them from one source.
While I haven't heard the term burner phone outside of The Wire, I assumed it had been a real term since the writers were so close to these subjects. What I meant (more precisely) was that, from my perspective, The Wire popularized the term for a broader, non-burner purchasing audience.
Does the 30 day talk time start when you get the phone? Or after you make a call? I'm curious if this is something that you could buy and then hold on to as a backup or emergency phone.
Many Finnish prepaids are activated from first outbound call. So actually you can use SIM and receive calls, without starting the day counter. Only annoying thing is that SIM must be in home network before it's getting activated. So I can't send Phones & cards all over europe to only receive calls & SMS without starting the timer. In many countries you can get anonymous SIMs direclty from any SIM card automat.
Are you willing to insure, in real money terms, the privacy of your customers from leaks/warrants at your end?
If so, how much? Can that money be held in escrow by a third party?
Are you willing to go to jail for your customers? For how long?
If a customer orders 134 phones ($10k), will you comply with any relevant federal financial disclosure guidelines?
If served a national security letter that includes a gag order, how will you react?
Will you accept cash transactions through the USPS, with only $75 and an address enclosed?
Can you prove that records are not kept? How?
These questions are partially rhetorical, but for people who want/need anonymity, they're important.
edit, to keep questions in one spot:
How do you anonymize shipping? It's straightforward to find ways to accept anonymous payment, but how do you keep the Man from following all outbound packages from burnerphone?
What are advantages over buying a gift card with cash and purchasing a phone online or through an intermediary?
We're totally aware that we need to be a lot more explicit and include more information on our site about the product / processes / security stuff. We've been working on this for a while now, but kind of rushed the launch due to the recent press over the NSA stuff -- we figured it was better to launch early than delay.
We're actively working on answering all those questions, and will be including a page which covers all the security aspects fully in the next week-ish.
We're 100% dedicated to making this work for our users (and ourselves), and providing real security for people.
How are you planning on proving that no records are kept? I'm currently engaged in a project that takes privacy very seriously and that also makes that very promise (amongst others). I would be very interested in hearing about your approach.
A huge pile of escrowed cash, held against any release of records (inadvertent or otherwise), does seem to be a way of moving some of that trust around.
The only way I could think to do it would be to have it process the transaction in memory and never store the data at all. Make the running code open source, and make it hashable in some way so that when you visit the site, you could tell if the current running version is the same as the one in the code repository.
While it's probably good to answer these questions eventually for your clientèle, don't worry about an early or rushed launch. As Reid Hoffman said, "If you're not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late."
That $10,000 limit you're thinking of only applies to money service businesses. Specifically, it's from the Bank Secrecy Act and is invoked in reference to negotiable instruments.
Also, if you want to prevent tracking at the USPS -- ship the phones in unmarked boxes with postage purchased with cash. Don't use a return address and randomize the post-offices drops you utilize to send the packages.
Bitcoin isn't anonymous, and if the NSA has infiltrated the various Bitcoin whitewashers (er, "exchanges") it also has your incoming transaction history, to boot.
If you control both the tor entrance and exit nodes, you can unmask the user. Statistically, controlling 300 nodes (~1% of the network) should be enough to unmask a large number of users. It is not hard to spin up a whole bunch of servers to the mix, and I would find it very hard to believe that the NSA/similar does not already control a substantial portion of the network.
Why is turning away business smart - don't prepaid cards get authed the same way normal cards do? Are they commonly associated with fraudulent orders? I am genuinely curious, they seem like they would be generally safe for merchants to accept online.
They're generally associated with fraudulent orders in a lot of markets. They're easy to get and hard to trace, and limit the liability of the person doing it. I've heard that they're common to use for buying resealable goods to launder smaller amounts of money.
You can go online and add an address or call the number on the back. I have done this with a pre-paid Amex, simple as can be (you can choose any address!).
When the phone is turned on, the phone communicates with cell towers. This can approximate your location. To be truly anonymous (as much as possible) you should have the phone cut ALL communication with the cell towers. When you make the call, the antenna turns on, call is made, antenna turns off.
Additionally if the phone can be configured to use wifi for phone calls, then ideally you decrease the possibility of the location being tracked.
If the phone is on in theory authorities should be able to pull records from the cell companies and track every place the carrier of the phone visited.
For added shipping security always ship from a VERY high volume shipping place. This way its hard to isolate your package, but not impossible.
Using the existing phone network? Probably not easily.
I think the ideal way would be to make the device a passive satellite receiver. Then when a phone call arrives for your device, the satellite broadcasts a message which your device can passively receive which tells it to wake up and get on the cell network.
In theory you can do this with cell towers (it's how pagers work -- you may even be able to reuse the existing infrastructure), but in that case you either have to know somehow which tower is in range of the device (which obviously leaks the device's general location) or you have to broadcast on all towers everywhere (which, as wireless bandwidth increases, becomes increasingly practical since the incoming call message would have nearly trivial length).
Some business advice, you are opening yourself up to interesting levels of CC fraud (desirable good, lack of needed info, lack of data for pattern checking). Which if chargebacks don't directly kill your bottom line, the payment networks will simply cut you off for your high fraud.
I hope you fail with CC and let the public know bitcoin's strength rather than see sneak in some paragraph in the small print of your TOS that allows you to keep the CC data for half a year just in case.
We've added Bitcoin support since this comment was added -- but if you look at our website copy now we've revised it to pushed users towards using Bitcoin as the preferred payment medium.
Does it have cool special features like a microphone that ca be turned on (preferably even when the phone is off) and used as a room bug? My current phone has this and I'd really miss living without it.
Have you guys consulted an attorney and tax professional to verify all of this is legal? Maybe I'm just naive but it sounds like by destroying all records of every sale and shipment, you guys might be setting yourselves up to get shitfucked if the IRS comes after you with an audit. But then again I don't know much about the telecom industry or their reporting standard.
Less than 6% of business reporting less than $5MM / year are audited. If the IRS might take especial interest in this business, we're getting back to why this business is getting attention from this crowd.
Actually, one more question. I see that you're marketing the Tank T190 phone by Blu which can be purchased on Newegg for $25 (http://bit.ly/ZyKBHA) and packaging it with an unknown 30 day data plan with talk and text which sounds very similar to the 30 day talk + text ReadySIM card which retails for $40 (http://bit.ly/13qyhtM). I guess what I'm wondering is what your company is adding to this equation for the extra $10 aside from being a middle man to obscure the trail? Also have you obtained permission from Blu to use their imagery?
You can do either. This is our MVP and we didn't yet have a chance to write all the copy the way we wanted.
We're working on improving the site / product a lot, and will definitely talk about recycling. We're also considering a program where after 30 days are up, you send us the phone back and we'll get it shuffled around.
Do you deny all GSM technology have state accessible wiretapping built in?
Also, your product is less anonymous than paying cash for a pre-paid phone at a store because you ship it to a physical address.
Buying this phone from you instead of NewEgg is worse for privacy because with traffic analysis it will be easy to identify the sales to you as opposed being mixed it with the 9k orders NewEgg gets a day.
Why should people trust you not to be a FBI run honeypot (like they do with warez BBS, etc. etc. ad nausium)?
Any idea what the implications for taking this device out of the country are, given the number of carriers you guys rely on? If you could elaborate on how you guys deal with the carrier networks, I'd be really interested, but I understand if you don't want to.
Great idea, by the way.
EDIT: Ooops, just saw your response to the Canada question below. Ignore this.
Your target market seems to be the unwise and the gullible: even the purchase of one of these overpriced phones is made using a reasonably anonymous currency (e.g. tumbled Bitcoins) there is a still a record of delivery address.
Thus, these phones of yours are completely unsuitable for any sort of serious anti-Government whistleblowing, and probably inappropriate even for criminal communication, given the ease by which electronic records can be accessed by the various police authorities.
This is either a deliberate scam, or a really stupid business idea.
I think the market will be more the ineffective but paranoid types. Anyone who wants to be truly anonymous will work hard to reduce, not increase, the amount of interaction other people have with their plan.
The old saying "two can keep a secret if one is dead" is apt as using this service only adds extra layers of things that can go wrong and are out of control of the person buying the burner phone. The only way I could see this as even potentially useful is to maybe buy the phone and store it in case its needed in the future hoping by the time its needed the trail has gone cold.
don't blame this startup for trying. i don't know how big a cut the telcos take and yes, a phone should not be that expensive but we'll see where the price goes. for a start, higher prices are completely normal and later hopefully some competition will bring the price to more reasonable levels. ultimately anonymous would it only be if wallmart started buying them in bulk and people could grab one at the counter paying with cash.
You know that Walmart, and gas stations, and bodegas sell these already right? That's why this is a bad idea. Not only is this less anonymous from buying from Walmart, but it's more expensive as well.
The price was really a minor point against the idea. There are more fundamental issue that makes this a non-starter for supplying an actual "burner phone".
Unless you actually created the phone itself, all you are doing is putting a Sim card in it, and calling it a BurnerPhone. No offense, but I can't just buy an iPhone, put a Sim card in it, and call it the YoPhone.... Can you clear up the fact that you make the phone or you buy it yourself in bulk?
All phones have a unique identifier that is sent along with the SIM identification. Fairly easy to connect your "anonymous" SIM with any others you've used.
I'm generally curious if there will be any (or many) "legitimate" (using it for a genuine belief in privacy for the sake of privacy) users of this phone? I mean, it costs more than a traditional cell-phone plan presumably and with fewer features... so anyone actually using this probably has something to hide to go through this length (or he is Richard Stallman).
16 hour talk time is the amount of battery life you'll have if you're on the phone for 16 hours nonstop talking.
You get 30 days of unlimited talk / text, so if you talk for more than 16 hours on the phone you'll need to recharge using the charging cord that comes with the phone.
Anything but cash/bitcoin leaves too much of a trail. Just because you destroy your records doesn't mean your merchant bank does. Nor does it mean my bank will.
I would add a note about that now so people know it is coming and you don't lose a potential customer because they saw the site today and had the same opinion of the parent comment.
"We launched this early due to press on the subject"
So prematurely launching an incomplete and unvetted security/anonymity product to profiteer from momentary spikes in hysteria and paranoia is disingenuous at best. Besides all of the issues of payment, shipping, trust, legality, etc. that have already been raised, what is your companies qualifications to provide for secure/anonymous service?
Not all the time. If you buy a prepaid card at e.g. Target, they do not collect your SSN or IIRC any identifying information unless you opt to register the card. You might choose the register the card to replace in case of theft.
When I've bought prepaid cards, I either bought them for zero-value or with pre-stored value, and in either case they were not usable until I registered them online. I haven't found any prepaid cards yet that do not follow this pattern. If you have then I would be quite delighted if you shared.
The thing is, big retailers have cameras, a lot of fucking cameras. Better to buy them from the rinky dink mom and pop shops that take cash with no cameras in the shop. They don't care if you are John Doe or George Washington.
Sorry to say but you still have to pay by credit card (huge trail), and even if you use bitcoin, you still have to have the phone delivered somewhere, and to someone.
That's correct -- it's definitely not perfect, but we're working on it.
One of the things to keep in mind, however, is that even if you order this phone and use it, it's highly unlikely that any organization will be able to track your phone within a 30 day period -- and even if they do, and they realize the phone is a BurnerPhone (unlikely), if they come talk to us we have no records of which phone was sent where, or even where things are shipped.
They'd have to query the USPS, and then they'd have to speculate as to which phone went to the person in question.
But we have to take your word for that, right? How do we know you're not a front for an NSA sting operation? (Feel free to treat that as a rhetorical question :-)
I see two possible outcomes of this business model:
1. The gov't catches wind, demands you keep proper records and you say "no" so they shut you down.
2. The gov't comes to you asking for identifying information for a customer, you say "no" and they shut you down.
I honestly don't know that much about it, so I can't claim that these two are the only possible outcomes.
Can you provide more details? What are the regulations? Do you have a plan if the gov't comes knocking?
Why doesn't someone just built a Tor hidden service that is an interface to the Twilio (or similar) API? Sign up with Bitcoin, get a phone number and then send/receive SMS and send/receive calls using DAP/getUserMedia (html5 mic + audio) in a web browser.
Using a physical cell phone still leaves a trace of the purchase, shipping, physical call location, cell site pings, etc. Plus in a lot of jurisdictions it is now a legal requirement to verify identity and adress with issuing phone numbers.
Using a Tor hidden service (+VPN, etc.) I could be anybody anywhere in the world. Less bits figured out.
In this case, wouldn't it be acceptable? I mean, if we stay in the context of a burner and security is the main feature, would it matter so much if it was like basically talking on a half-duplex voice call? Again, if the main goal is security and anonymity, would it matter so much if the conversation wasn't as fluid as a 'regular' call?
It doesn't seem as though Twilio accepts Bitcoins. In this case, would it be that whoever is running the Tor hidden service would have to purchase the account themselves and their reimbursement would be BTC?
Like others have said, voice would be impractical over Tor or VPN. Text would be better. The thing that most comes to mind is DeadDrop http://deaddrop.github.io/.
> Every time you make a purchase we'll package and ship your order, then destroy all transaction records in our system. We make it impossible to give or share your information with anyone.
Come on. There is absolutely no way you can convince anybody of this fact. It is impossible (and I mean this in the mathematical sense) to prove that you have no record of how it was purchased or where the phone went.
Since all mail has to be sorted to reach its destination, and there's little reason to expect that shipper and recipient data is given an expectation of privacy it probably does not even matter whether the company keeps records.
I suppose it is safe to assume that it would be unknown which SIM card is inside of the package, but having a list of recipients in a given area code and merely noticing when SIM cards came online in that area would be somewhat of a give away.
It seems like the phone would just encourage anyone performing surveillance that you are more likely to be communicating something they'd find interesting, and therefore they might spend more resources on looking at these customers.
I think it serves the public good when more people communicate in ways that can not be traced or listened in on, but I don't think it serves specific customers of this service if they have concerns about their own anonymity, and might be doing things like disclosing information about official corruption.
If you need to coordinate your criminal activities all The Wire-like, why not just use some form of encrypted communication using the phone you already have? Maybe just get one for criminal activity only to be extra safe? Aren't all these problems solved by some 2048-bit encryption? I guess the phone company can see which IP you're making a connection too, but that doesn't seem like much. Why do we have to waste this much perfectly good hardware just to be anonymous?
One good reason to use a different phone is geolocation data (determined from which cell towers you connect to) which is classified as "metadata" and potentially stored indefinitely. If your cell is turned on, your phone company knows where you are.
I guess the phone company can see which IP you're making a connection too, but that doesn't seem like much.
It may not seem like much, but it's actually everything. Social network analysis gives a significant amount of information about peoples' activities, even if those activities themselves are encrypted.
The government said "trust us" too. I'm not entirely sure why anybody who wants to buy an untraceable phone would go to a website run by an unknown person to buy one. There are so many ways that this could go wrong for the phone purchaser.
I'm thinking either this is a spoof site where in a week's time you'll just say "Ha! Look at all this private information you just gave a complete stranger!" or it's a government-run honeypot.
What chipset do you use to manage baseband communications? Do you implement any Trusted Computing standards? Can you tell us anything about the hardware architecture?
That was my thought too. If i'm so concerned about security there is no way I'm going to trust a web site like this. Even if we give rdegges the benefit of the doubt and say he actually is, there's no way to know that 2 weeks from now the govt doesn't hijack / buy the site, OR that they don't just start tailing these guys on their trips to the post office. Great way to find people with a better-than-average likelyhood of being up to no good.
Exactly. It actually got me thinking if burner phones are already modified (either hardware or firmware) to basically be the man in the middle. There was a big problem with Chinese-supplied hardware in the US gov't which was modified for snooping. My tinfoil senses tell me it would be relatively simple to modify older phones to, for example, send GPS signals even when the battery is not in by adding a smaller hidden power supply that recharges off the main battery when the main battery is in the phone.
I guess the only way to be sure is by not using a mobile phone at all.
Do all the phones look the same? Because if so, "If you'd like to recycle your Burner when you're done using it, just throw it into any cell phone disposal box (these can usually be found at office supply stores)."
I know this has been said before....but I just couldn't help but chuckle at the irony of a "completely anonymous" phone, only able to be bought with a credit card :|
Whats your moral stance on your business? There are a lot of legitimate uses for your product, but its also (for obvious reasons) very attractive to people involved in criminal activities. Will you be putting any measures in place to counteract this?
For example, lets say you were regularly getting orders to a foreign country which is known to be a hot spot for terrorism. Then, you have the police knocking on your door, because there has been a major terror threat in a US city, and they need to track the terrorists phones.
I can guess the answer, but just want to make the point there are usually 2 sides to an anonymous service like this.
This just isn't a useful question. I can understand where it comes from, but "this could be used for bad things" puts it in exactly the same camp as cash, cars, anything heavy enough to throw at someone, and pretty much... well, everything.
If the service were "weapon specifically designed to kill large Rhinoceri and then instantly sever their horns" or "phone that will encrypt and forward only narcotic-trafficking-related conversations," this point would be valid.
Can someone provide a few examples of legal use cases for this type of thing? I understand people who want to protect their personal information, but these are going way out of their way to actively conceal their personal information. I just don't know why that would be a priority unless you are trying to hide something. I am not usually in the "you have nothing to fear unless you are hiding something" camp, but these seem pretty extreme.
Yes. The answer to this scandal is not making it technically harder for the government to get our information. I would compare it to DRM/piracy issue. Most of us on HN would agree that creating new, more onerous, and more difficult to crack DRM is not the answer to piracy. You instead convince pirates that it is more ethical, easier, or less risky to purchase something than pirate it.
The general citizen is not going to win a spy game against the NSA. Our only hope of preventing something like this from happening again is to put legal penalties and precautions in place to make sure that the government does not overstep its bounds. Using burner phones isn't going to accomplish anything.
I don't think the analogy to piracy is a good one. DRM is not theoretically possible. If someone can view media, they can copy it, end of story. You can make it harder, but it's always going to be with tricks, not solid theory.
Crypto, on the other hand, is theoretically possible, as far as I know. There may be holes in what's currently out there, but there's no reason in theory you can't end up with a crypto solution that the NSA can't crack. And I see no reason to think that you can't do this now. The idea that the NSA has cracked RSA or AES or whatever is just a little too out there IMO.
Rendering the government unable to read your communications is always a better solution than convincing them to promise that they will not. Technological solutions allow the individual to have control over trust.
Burner phones are not crypto, but they are a good idea for similar reasons.
What's legal and what's right aren't always the same thing. For example, in Nazi Germany, it was illegal to be Jewish; and communicating heavily with Jews may have increased suspicion that you were Jewish. Or in Rwanda in 1994, communicating with Tutsi's may have given rise to suspicion that you were a Tutsi. Or in North Korea today, communicating with defectors may raise suspicion that you are likely to defect.
Here are some legal, or questionably legal but morally correct things you may use this for, in the modern day US: you would like to notify news organizations about a secret NSA spying program, but don't know who to trust, since some news organizations may hand your information over to the federal government when pressured to do so, to root out the source of the leak.
You are a lawyer for a detainee in Guantanamo. To collect evidence, you need to contact several people who you know are on terrorist watch lists, but want to avoid being placed on such a list yourself and be restricted from flying.
You have are in the process of divorcing an abusive husband who is a high-ranking FBI official. You want to be able to contact your lawyer and his, without worrying that he may abuse his authority to find out information about where you are now living.
You are a founder of a whistleblowing operation, which has recently done a large exposé on US forces killing innocent children in the Middle East. You would like to keep in touch with your friends and family, without them also being added to watch lists that cause all of their electronics to be confiscated every time the fly.
You are helping to get information out of China about human rights abuses about Tibet. Given that the Chinese government has done hacking deliberately targeting surveillance back doors of networking systems of US companies, you worry that they may be able to track you.
Say you were going to be a whistle blower for some Government scandal. You want to communicate with the NY Times but you don't trust the government to not subpoena the phone records, any email records, etc. A phone that isn't linked to you sounds like a good idea.
Finance. Perhaps this is a knock-on effect from the industry's drug use in the 1980s, but traders are a paranoid bunch. Client communications have to be recorded, but it is not uncommon for hedge funds to have highly sensitive discussions in bug-free rooms or via encrypted voice calls (who we are talking to is of less concern to be known than what we are saying). Traders who slack on security tend to get mopped up fairly quickly.
Why is this $75? The cheapest phone around is about $20, the Nokia 105 comes to mind for example. Add some dollars for the calls, texts and your margin $75 seems a bit steep.
That's what I'm wondering, how is this any different than going to a local store and paying cash for a burner Net10 phone? You can get them for $15 and they include enough minutes for most people to get through a month, and if you don't use a CC or store loyalty card there is no way for anyone to tie the phone to you.
Wear a hat and sunglasses if you're worried about it. Pay a bum to go in and buy it for you. Wear a ski mask!
I'd be far more worried about the credit card transaction and ISP log from buying this online than I would be about a camera in the grocery store. Of course you could TOR the browsing or use a library computer. And maybe eventually they'll add support for non credit card payments that can't be tracked. But throwing on a hat and some sunglasses and heading to your neighborhood 7-11 seems a lot easier (and cheaper).
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 261 ms ] threadWe'll have bitcoin support by tomorrow.
- You can order the product online without making a physical appearance anywhere.
- Many of the prepaid cell phones in physical stores come with the SIM chips activated -- so the phone's location has already been broadcasted to cell towers and is pre-registered, making it slightly less anonymous for the end user.
- We're going to be accepting bitcoin in the near future (we're finishing that integration now), so we hope to compete with cash purchases in that regard.
- You can recycle these phones like you would normal phones.
- We piggyback off a ton of different US carriers -- so as you move around you'll be swapping between various carriers in your region.
Learning that the call had been made with an AT&T calling card... they used the serial number of the calling card used to make the call, and learned that the card had come from a different [Panama City] Wal-Mart store than the card used for the Massachusetts calls. Using Wal-Mart's records of the second store, the cash register, and time of the purchase of that card, the police were able to find surveillance camera video of the transaction. Unlike the Massachusetts investigation, which had gone cold when surveillance video failed to show the purchaser because the cameras were trained on the parking lot and not the registers, the cameras at the particular store where the card used in the Mount Washington call was purchased were trained on the cashiers.
The buyer in the video was wearing a correctional officer's uniform for the private security firm Corrections Corporation of America. Video and stills from both Wal-Marts were compared and the same man was seen entering and exiting the Wal-Mart at the time of the earlier purchase. The police used this footage to produce a front-and-back composite image of the suspect, and subsequent queries to the private correctional company's human resources department led to the identification of the buyer as David R. Stewart.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strip_search_prank_call_scam
Right now our site only sells the phone + chip together, but we can sell both the hardware phone and SIM chips separately as well (3 day, 7 day, 14 day, and 30 day SIM chips).
Due to our early launch (this is our MVP), we don't have those advertised on the website yet (although, if you email us, we can arrange something).
Then we could order in bulk, use a temporary address, and have enough for a year's anonymous talking without needing to make another order..
We value our privacy HIGHLY, and wouldn't be open to selling out. We'd much rather just close down the company than destroy our core principles.
Just negotiate in opposite direction :-)
We weren't really planning on launching this thing so quickly (we planned on making improvements to the site, etc. and launching in the next couple of weeks) -- but since all the press about the NSA / phone stuff came out it seemed like a good time to put our MVP online.
Anyhow, we're basically trying to provide our users with a secure-as-possible communication device that allows them to remain as anonymous as possible. Yes -- the government can definitely collect call data and SMS data, but by using different devices and SIM cards (phone numbers) you can abstract away all but the most difficult to track details: your voice, your writing style (sms messages).
Using a BurnerPhone allows you to make phone calls and send SMS messages that won't be linked back to your by your telco billing records.
In regards to how we work:
- These phones come with unlimited talk and text for 30 days, nationwide coverage.
- We piggyback off of tons of US carriers, so depending on where you're located, you'll be connected to a different cellular network.
- You can recycle these phones (we have a lot of plans with this in the future).
I'd love to get some feedback from you guys, really respect HN and your opinions.
The USPS would have records for this sort of thing, of course, but you could also have items shipped to PO Boxes, places that offer greater anonymity, etc.
Furthermore, it's very unlikely that within 30 days of usage you'd be tracked down / monitored and have records queried like that.
It's definitely not a perfect system, but we're working on it :)
One of the things about privacy-boosting mechanisms is that they explicitly do not make such a judgement. In other words, they refuse to deal with it on principle. The exact letter of the principle differs between the actual people implementing the mechanisms, but the result is generally the same.
I don't personally agree with it, though, so that's my limit on being able to explain it.
A list of carriers I think would be useful, or a way to verify that the phone will work in your area (e.g. zip code or phone number lookup).
Also, is it US only? Any support for Canadian carriers?
It's all US only right now, we're going to include a coverage chart shortly (we didn't expect so many visitors).
We piggyback off many US carriers, so our coverage is excellent.
Any thoughts on being able to do at least some sort of basic self test without starting the 30 day count down?
If so, how much? Can that money be held in escrow by a third party?
Are you willing to go to jail for your customers? For how long?
If a customer orders 134 phones ($10k), will you comply with any relevant federal financial disclosure guidelines?
If served a national security letter that includes a gag order, how will you react?
Will you accept cash transactions through the USPS, with only $75 and an address enclosed?
Can you prove that records are not kept? How?
These questions are partially rhetorical, but for people who want/need anonymity, they're important.
edit, to keep questions in one spot:
How do you anonymize shipping? It's straightforward to find ways to accept anonymous payment, but how do you keep the Man from following all outbound packages from burnerphone?
What are advantages over buying a gift card with cash and purchasing a phone online or through an intermediary?
We're totally aware that we need to be a lot more explicit and include more information on our site about the product / processes / security stuff. We've been working on this for a while now, but kind of rushed the launch due to the recent press over the NSA stuff -- we figured it was better to launch early than delay.
We're actively working on answering all those questions, and will be including a page which covers all the security aspects fully in the next week-ish.
We're 100% dedicated to making this work for our users (and ourselves), and providing real security for people.
There will never be a way to prove the records are gone. It's all based on trust.
http://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt
edit: I see in another comment that you're adding this (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5840440)
Also, if you want to prevent tracking at the USPS -- ship the phones in unmarked boxes with postage purchased with cash. Don't use a return address and randomize the post-offices drops you utilize to send the packages.
Since pretty much every place I tried to use one on the Internet does address verification when processing the transaction, they simply don't work.
IP address
> call the number
Phone number
Careful.
When the phone is turned on, the phone communicates with cell towers. This can approximate your location. To be truly anonymous (as much as possible) you should have the phone cut ALL communication with the cell towers. When you make the call, the antenna turns on, call is made, antenna turns off.
Additionally if the phone can be configured to use wifi for phone calls, then ideally you decrease the possibility of the location being tracked.
If the phone is on in theory authorities should be able to pull records from the cell companies and track every place the carrier of the phone visited.
For added shipping security always ship from a VERY high volume shipping place. This way its hard to isolate your package, but not impossible.
I think the ideal way would be to make the device a passive satellite receiver. Then when a phone call arrives for your device, the satellite broadcasts a message which your device can passively receive which tells it to wake up and get on the cell network.
In theory you can do this with cell towers (it's how pagers work -- you may even be able to reuse the existing infrastructure), but in that case you either have to know somehow which tower is in range of the device (which obviously leaks the device's general location) or you have to broadcast on all towers everywhere (which, as wireless bandwidth increases, becomes increasingly practical since the incoming call message would have nearly trivial length).
We've got copy prepared which urges users to pay with Bitcoin due to security concerns, and should have this up tomorrow.
probably nothing. this is what's known as a "value proposition"
We're working on improving the site / product a lot, and will definitely talk about recycling. We're also considering a program where after 30 days are up, you send us the phone back and we'll get it shuffled around.
Also, your product is less anonymous than paying cash for a pre-paid phone at a store because you ship it to a physical address.
Buying this phone from you instead of NewEgg is worse for privacy because with traffic analysis it will be easy to identify the sales to you as opposed being mixed it with the 9k orders NewEgg gets a day.
Why should people trust you not to be a FBI run honeypot (like they do with warez BBS, etc. etc. ad nausium)?
Great idea, by the way.
EDIT: Ooops, just saw your response to the Canada question below. Ignore this.
Thus, these phones of yours are completely unsuitable for any sort of serious anti-Government whistleblowing, and probably inappropriate even for criminal communication, given the ease by which electronic records can be accessed by the various police authorities.
This is either a deliberate scam, or a really stupid business idea.
The old saying "two can keep a secret if one is dead" is apt as using this service only adds extra layers of things that can go wrong and are out of control of the person buying the burner phone. The only way I could see this as even potentially useful is to maybe buy the phone and store it in case its needed in the future hoping by the time its needed the trail has gone cold.
- Unlimited talk and text for 30 days.
- 16 hour talk time.
I'm confused. Which is it?
You get 30 days of unlimited talk / text, so if you talk for more than 16 hours on the phone you'll need to recharge using the charging cord that comes with the phone.
Sorry for the confusion there.
We launched this early due to press on the subject, which is why it's not as polished as we'd like it to be =/
So prematurely launching an incomplete and unvetted security/anonymity product to profiteer from momentary spikes in hysteria and paranoia is disingenuous at best. Besides all of the issues of payment, shipping, trust, legality, etc. that have already been raised, what is your companies qualifications to provide for secure/anonymous service?
One of the things to keep in mind, however, is that even if you order this phone and use it, it's highly unlikely that any organization will be able to track your phone within a 30 day period -- and even if they do, and they realize the phone is a BurnerPhone (unlikely), if they come talk to us we have no records of which phone was sent where, or even where things are shipped.
They'd have to query the USPS, and then they'd have to speculate as to which phone went to the person in question.
What are the regulations?
If the gov't wants to track down the owner of a phone, what do you do? Just say that you don't have that information?
I see two possible outcomes of this business model:
1. The gov't catches wind, demands you keep proper records and you say "no" so they shut you down. 2. The gov't comes to you asking for identifying information for a customer, you say "no" and they shut you down.
I honestly don't know that much about it, so I can't claim that these two are the only possible outcomes.
Can you provide more details? What are the regulations? Do you have a plan if the gov't comes knocking?
Using a physical cell phone still leaves a trace of the purchase, shipping, physical call location, cell site pings, etc. Plus in a lot of jurisdictions it is now a legal requirement to verify identity and adress with issuing phone numbers.
Using a Tor hidden service (+VPN, etc.) I could be anybody anywhere in the world. Less bits figured out.
edit: apologies if this is hijacking the thread
Come on. There is absolutely no way you can convince anybody of this fact. It is impossible (and I mean this in the mathematical sense) to prove that you have no record of how it was purchased or where the phone went.
I suppose it is safe to assume that it would be unknown which SIM card is inside of the package, but having a list of recipients in a given area code and merely noticing when SIM cards came online in that area would be somewhat of a give away.
It seems like the phone would just encourage anyone performing surveillance that you are more likely to be communicating something they'd find interesting, and therefore they might spend more resources on looking at these customers.
I think it serves the public good when more people communicate in ways that can not be traced or listened in on, but I don't think it serves specific customers of this service if they have concerns about their own anonymity, and might be doing things like disclosing information about official corruption.
It may not seem like much, but it's actually everything. Social network analysis gives a significant amount of information about peoples' activities, even if those activities themselves are encrypted.
I'm thinking either this is a spoof site where in a week's time you'll just say "Ha! Look at all this private information you just gave a complete stranger!" or it's a government-run honeypot.
I'm a programmer at a telephone company currently, and have worked in the telco industry for a while now.
I have no government affiliations at all.
Nice try CIA ops.
I guess the only way to be sure is by not using a mobile phone at all.
Ummmm.
We're implementing bitcoin purchasing right now, will have it ready by tomorrow.
Sorry for the inconvenience =/ I realize it's not perfect, but we're working on it ^^
I wish you all the best!
We're implementing bitcoin purchasing right now, will have it ready by tomorrow.
Sorry for the inconvenience =/ I realize it's not perfect, but we're working on it ^^
For example, lets say you were regularly getting orders to a foreign country which is known to be a hot spot for terrorism. Then, you have the police knocking on your door, because there has been a major terror threat in a US city, and they need to track the terrorists phones.
I can guess the answer, but just want to make the point there are usually 2 sides to an anonymous service like this.
If the service were "weapon specifically designed to kill large Rhinoceri and then instantly sever their horns" or "phone that will encrypt and forward only narcotic-trafficking-related conversations," this point would be valid.
The general citizen is not going to win a spy game against the NSA. Our only hope of preventing something like this from happening again is to put legal penalties and precautions in place to make sure that the government does not overstep its bounds. Using burner phones isn't going to accomplish anything.
Crypto, on the other hand, is theoretically possible, as far as I know. There may be holes in what's currently out there, but there's no reason in theory you can't end up with a crypto solution that the NSA can't crack. And I see no reason to think that you can't do this now. The idea that the NSA has cracked RSA or AES or whatever is just a little too out there IMO.
Burner phones are not crypto, but they are a good idea for similar reasons.
Here are some legal, or questionably legal but morally correct things you may use this for, in the modern day US: you would like to notify news organizations about a secret NSA spying program, but don't know who to trust, since some news organizations may hand your information over to the federal government when pressured to do so, to root out the source of the leak.
You are a lawyer for a detainee in Guantanamo. To collect evidence, you need to contact several people who you know are on terrorist watch lists, but want to avoid being placed on such a list yourself and be restricted from flying.
You have are in the process of divorcing an abusive husband who is a high-ranking FBI official. You want to be able to contact your lawyer and his, without worrying that he may abuse his authority to find out information about where you are now living.
You are a founder of a whistleblowing operation, which has recently done a large exposé on US forces killing innocent children in the Middle East. You would like to keep in touch with your friends and family, without them also being added to watch lists that cause all of their electronics to be confiscated every time the fly.
You are helping to get information out of China about human rights abuses about Tibet. Given that the Chinese government has done hacking deliberately targeting surveillance back doors of networking systems of US companies, you worry that they may be able to track you.
I'd be far more worried about the credit card transaction and ISP log from buying this online than I would be about a camera in the grocery store. Of course you could TOR the browsing or use a library computer. And maybe eventually they'll add support for non credit card payments that can't be tracked. But throwing on a hat and some sunglasses and heading to your neighborhood 7-11 seems a lot easier (and cheaper).