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 @[email protected]
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 messagesmessages except undelivered ones).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?
And the country. I had a number from a country I visited and it lasted 2 years. I’ve had multiple different ones over the years in the places I lived and it’s always varied from 6 months to a year. But a simple top up of even 1€ is enough to extend it again. And topping up can be done in cashbon multiple places.
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.
Given those figures, the numbers absolutely would have run out many years ago if every mobile contract was permanent and free of charge. The operators rent numbers from a central registry, just like with domains but with a much more finite namespace. There’s no way you still have access to a number “well over a year” after last paying anything for it. In any country. Perhaps there’s a misunderstanding.
It’s a small enough subset of the available plans that it clearly hasn’t been an issue. Every other plan in Aus would expire and age off as you’d expect, but these ones just don’t. Before the one I currently am holding, I was holding a number for my Grandma for ~5+ years until I cancelled it. The number was never connected during those years, and I kept paying a bill with $0 in charges.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_numbers_in_Australia#Mobile_phone_numbers_(04,_05)
There is a decent amount of unused numbers currently, and we have another 100m spare numbers ready for use, and haven’t needed to dip into them yet. I suspect part of the reason we haven’t run out is that because we can port numbers easily, there is a little less churn of the numbers, you can change plans without burning a number. No evidence to back that claim though.