Privacy for me has been incredibly rewarding, but when talking to people who haven’t been introduced to privacy, there are occasionally some moments that make it exhausting. One conversation in particular is one that I’ve had to go through dozens of times, and it always goes along these lines:
- Alice: Why is your phone in airplane mode? / What’s your phone number?
- Bob: I don’t have a carrier.
- Alice: But you have a phone.
- Bob: Yes.
- Alice: How do you not have a carrier?
- Bob: Phones can come without a carrier.
- Alice: What do you use it for?
- Bob: Everything you use yours for.
- Alice: How do you talk to people?
- Bob: Messaging apps over Wi-Fi.
- Alice: What if you don’t have Wi-Fi?
- Bob: Public Wi-Fi is everywhere. If I don’t have Wi-Fi, I likely don’t need to get in touch.
- Alice: What about emergencies?
- Bob: I can still contact emergency services.
Each time it happens, it has a unique flavor. One person accused me of lying and then fraud. I know people are just curious and don’t mean to be rude, but it makes me die a little inside every time someone asks. I’ve begun trying to sidestep the conversation entirely:
- Alice: Why is your phone in airplane mode?
- Bob: To save battery.
or:
- Alice: What’s your phone number?
- Bob: You can contact me with an app called Signal.
People seem to think that a phone automatically comes with a carrier and that it’ll stop working if you don’t have one. In reality, I’m saving hundreds of dollars per year while avoiding spam, fraud, breaches, surveillance, and being chronically online. People have a hard time coping with those who do things a little differently.
How are you using Signal without a phone number? - asking cause I genuinely would love to do so!
You can sign up using a VoIP number or a burner phone.
So then you still need to give them a phone number to get texted on signal?
Signal requires a phone number to register, but I can hand out my username without giving them the phone number I registered with.
if the number you registered with eventually gets recycled to someone who then uses it for Signal, will that affect your account?
Just keep in mind that the purpose of Airplane Mode is to prevent transmission. Your phone might still be receiving signals like GPS and WiFi SSIDs, which it can record to be transmitted later.
If you really don’t want to be tracked, leave it home.
Or own your device with a custom rom.
At least by turning on airplane mode they cannot track your location.
Do you use your phone for navigation when driving? Any good app recommendations for navigating without cellular data?
*Cycling, but yes. I use CoMaps.
I can second CoMaps. Works great when I’m somewhere and don’t have a local SIM.
Last time I checked, you can use GPS without carrier. GPS, and GNSS in general, is separate set of satellites. With cellular It’s just more precise since initial triangulation facilitated by cell towers. I recently was mid 5 hours flight and was able to see my location in google maps despite being in flight mode
Organic maps found on F Droid, download the state or area you want so is available offline. Won’t do traffic obviously, but gets you a to be.
Privacy but using public WiFi?..
My devices distrust any network, and I always use a VPN. It’s obviously not my first choice, but it can still be done safe enough.
If the wifi has firewall blocking non web ports, do you have a solution for those cases?
Mullvad VPN and others have “obfuscation” methods to mask your traffic as regular web traffic. If those don’t work, I can always connect to a proxy or Tor as a plan B, or see if any other Wi-Fi networks are available. I’ve never had this be an issue, but there are certainly options available.
I don’t have mullvadvpn but I use a different vpn that has obfuscation and I have tried every single setting within it but somehow some networks can still detect the vpn no matter what I try. I am not sure how they can do this.
The threat of public wifi isn’t as big of a deal as it used to be. Before widespread VPNs and when internet traffic was unencrypted, anything you transmitted could be read by someone else on the network. But nowadays all an eavesdropper would see is what websites you’re connecting to (without a VPN) or the VPN if you are using one. Happy to be corrected if I’m mistaken though
I would not be comfortable not having mobile signal. Public WiFi is not going to cut it. Even a 0.00001% chance that I’d miss an important call from my partner is no bueno for me.
You can still purchase an external cellular hotspot, which will be more private than a phone carrier.
Would using an old phone as an external cellular hotspot be almost just as private as using an application specific device?
I just looked at the video and wondered that since there kinda expensive (also I wouldn’t be able to use the calyx hotspots since I don’t live in the US)
There’s a bigger security risk because of a larger attack surface, and naturally phones can collect a lot more data than hotspots, but it depends on your threat model.
I guess it could be a decent consideration if I can find a way to anonymously get a sim, not really much point otherwise.
Woo hoo! Something new to be paranoid about!
I could probably have my phone on airplane mode all the time and no one would notice, I never pick up anyones calls to begin with.
you can use services like jmp.chat to get a reliable number anonymously for verifying anything that requires one
I made a website whose entire existence is dedicated to my “profile” (myname.com). So when someone asks for contact info, I send them there. It gives them the opportunity to contact me using their preferred method, as well as being able to easily find it in the future if they lose it or I change it.
It has:
- phone # (obv could be omitted)
- link to Signal
- link to ArcaneChat
- link to Matrix
- link to SimpleX
- my blog
- Mastodon
- Steam
- Zelle
- etc.
It’s also the first link that comes up, or one of the first, for most people, if they Google me. I also carry basically a business card, but without the business, with QR code and domain.
I also carry basically a business card, but without the business, with QR code and domain.
I wanted to do this and only put my contact for my SimpleX Chat, but good business cards are expensive!
Especially if you’re looking for that perfect shade of white.
they’re embossed, aren’t they?
Let’s see Paul Allen’s website
I got 250 of them from VistaPrint in 2019 for <$50 and still have a bunch left.
E: just checked and they are $18 for 50
This sounds like a great idea but I do worry about crawlers scraping this gold mine of personal details. Do you put the site behind a password that you include on the business card or something?
No, I don’t consider any of this to be private or valuable information.
oh wow. mine actually is airplane mode to save battery. TIL.
I considered this option, but public WiFi is not ubiquitous enough here (in France) for my usage, and I believe a SIM card is absolutely required even for emergency services, which is what ultimately turned me off the idea.
in France
My heart goes out to privacy enthusiasts in France. You guys are really going through it right now.
SIM card is absolutely required even for emergency services
For anyone wondering: while technically the cell towers might be able to accept emergency calls even without network authentication (which is what’s the SIM is for), there are countries/places that will still require an active SIM with the excuse of wanting to prevent hoax calls.
If you explain yourself, people take that as meaning it’s up for debate. Better to say “I like it that way”.
I considered swapping to a flip-phone but stopped because I need to be able to access my banking app when near ATM’s. My card only ever has the bare minimum amount of money on it so that theft isn’t a concern.
Something I’ve been investigating is setting up a meshtastic node at home with the expansion board. This gives me a 15-20km range for basic signal, which is more than enough for most stuff I want to do, and I can connect to other nodes in the area when needed.
I’d still need to add a temporary eSIM when traveling sometimes, but that can be a temporary thing.
phone is the new cigarettes for me. I was a long hair but never smoked. People would ask me for a smoke and I would say I don’t smoke and I would usually get a glare. Like I secretly had them on me. Just the other day someone asked if I could call their phone because I lost it and I said I don’t carry my pone when I walk the dog because im so close to home (I do not). Businesses want me to do something with an app and Im like I don’t use a smartphone (I have one for work but since I would not get one for personal reasons as far as im concerned I don’t have one because I don’t want to use it like that. I will use it as a camera but not to scan qr codes).
I really like this analogy, but the biggest one to me is the intentionally addictive nature of the media and information it provides. Like the specifically targeted nicotine hits smoking provides designed to be addictive, phones sooth, stimulate, and distract in new and yet similar ways leveraging cognitive biases and physiology. They also fuck up your mind and body in screwing sleep cycles, changing your attention threshold, and probably more. Might not be as bad as cancer, but they still have an impact.
I’m someone who likes to walk the path less traveled in general. And in general I’ve found that people don’t respond well to such things. Especially when you explain them in dept. “Oh they choose to be different huh? => let’s ridicule them to cover up our own insecurities”
I’ve learned through trial, error and ridicule that people need to earn the right to an explanation to these matters.
I’m not gonna explain to Joe Shmoe that I use Linux because I’m doing my part in not giving the uprise in fascism the steady flow of data they want to increase their influence over the world.
They’d never understand. They gotta earn that by proving they care about the topic.
Yeah something like “Nun of yer business.” works well.
Never explain yourself to people who don’t want to hear the explanation.
For nicer people something like “Its probably boring to you.” can work well. If they insist they can’t complain. :D
Public WiFi and privacy in the same sentence? lolololol! You use McAfee too?
Using public wifi with no protections is already pretty secure since most things are encrypted now days. Using a trusted vpn to encrypt all of your traffic makes it almost perfect, since no people in the same network as you can have the faintest clue as to what your doing.
edit: It’s probably not almost perfect but definetly far better than using mobile data.
My GrapheneOS phone is in airplane mode with cellular disabled and WiFi on.
