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.
OC writeup by @Charger8232@lemmy.ml
Could have written this whole account verbatim. You’re not alone.
Recently I had a related experience when checking into a small hotel:
- I sent you a message to ask when you’d arrive
- Sorry about that, I didn’t see it because I’m not connected 24-7
- I thought maybe you’d had a problem
- Well I’m here now, I had a reservation, everything worked out fine
- It’s only polite to reply to messages
- But I didn’t see your message because I wasn’t connected
Etc. For many (most) people it seems it’s becoming all but unimaginable not to be connected and available to anyone who wants to contact them, round the clock. This is not healthy. The fact that a technology exists does not mean we have to adopt it.
Airplane mode doesn’t necessarily turn off the baseband radio, it can still work even if the application OS isn’t talking to it, so you can still be tracked. Also some phones actually have a mux on the camera/mic/GPS so that the baseband can talk to it even if the application OS is shutdown.
The fact that emergency calls still work suggests that it must be doing some minimal pinging.
But that will be root-level stuff, apps are not going to have access to it and apps are most of the game with privacy these days.
I don’t think pinging is necessary, it could just be temporarily turning off airplane mode when you go to make an emergency call.
But I was moreso pointing out that OP’s paranoia over not having a carrier is IMO a bit moot when the baseband is always on, as any tower that’s listening could still see them and track them at least by IMEI. There are some portable hotspots that have an IMEI randomization feature, although I would be worried that you could get banned from the network using that if you actually had service.
99,9999% of the time my phone is in airplane mode, and has been for years. Not a phone - phones.
How do you use signal without a phone number? To me that’s always been signal’s biggest weakness
By using SimpleX
You only need a number to sign up, you can throw the sim away afterwards.
Get a cheap/free sim card, sign up, and cancel. Risky, because someone else could get the number and steal your account.
Yeah exactly…risky…I meant without doing that
You can just get a free tier sim card if that exists in your country. I used an “As you go” sim, which is $10 upfront once, and then you pay for calls and data. Installed the SIM to get the signal registration setup, and then took it out and put it in a draw. Number is mind, cost is basically $0.
But realistically, a nation state actor wont struggle to get a sim with your number, they’ll just compel a mobile operator to give it to them. And even if they did, they dont get all your previous messages, they can just register the account. But you would immediately see it happening, as your phone would get disconnected. So the risk is pretty low.
To be clear, that SIM will expire after 2-4 months, somebody else will be assigned the number and they will be able to kick you off your account (though not access any undelivered messages).
To avoid this possibility you need to have ongoing access to the phone ID.
I don’t think it does expire, I still have the number listed in my account. Probably depends on the mobile operator?
Of course it expires. Otherwise the numbers would have run out decades ago. Depends on the contract but usually it’s around 4 months, you need to check the smallprint
It’s definitely not 4 months, I’ve had it well over a year. I had one before that that lasted 5+ years.
This is Australia though, our numbers are 04xx xxx xxx, which is 100 million numbers. For a population of 20-30m, no real risk of running out.
Unrelated to this but why do you have soo many accounts, I swear I see you everywhere
A few different reasons
- Promoting smaller instances, because of the volume of my posting it helps makes smaller instances more recognizable
- Making comms on fitting smaller instances (e.g. a programming comm id make on programming.dev)
- Mitigating against the imposter problem
- Better interconnecting smaller instances
I’ve seen their explanation once. From what I can recall, it’s to expose the existence of other instances. Many people join .world or .ml, not realizing that the point of the Fediverse isn’t to join the biggest or first instance you can find.
Thanks for the insight, I was just curious is all
I think I can hear them sigh over the Fediverse
I put my phone in Airplane mode after Trump won in November. Haven’t taken it off since.
I have an iPhone 3GS that hasn’t had a phone contract tied to it… ever. I used it for years telling my friends that they could text me as long as I was on wifi I’d get their messages.
My older iPhone SE (1st gen) is now the honorary “iPod Touch” and when I go out and don’t want to be hassled by calls, I take that with me instead of my current phone.
(The iPhone 3GS is now a nightstand that is hooked to a small speaker system that plays my sleep app sounds.)
I have always regretted getting rid of my landline.
Appropriate response: “None of your business, Alice.”
