Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff Lauren
Speaker 1: Vogelbon Here. You may hear about them on the news
Speaker 1: or in a movie with the suspect used a burner
Speaker 1: phone to contact the family after the kidnapping, or you
Speaker 1: might have seen them at a convenience store. Burner phones
Speaker 1: are cheap phones that come with pre paid minutes. These
Speaker 1: are simple devices that tend to resemble old flip phones,
Speaker 1: though they often have touchscreens and smartphone features as well.
Speaker 1: These burner phones come preloaded with a certain amount of
Speaker 1: call minutes or text messages, which can also be reloaded
Speaker 1: when exhausted. For the article, this episode is based on
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Spoke via email with Shanel Agarwal, a
Speaker 1: cyber expert who currently serves as a CCO for the
Speaker 1: software and web development company tech Ahead. He said people
Speaker 1: who want to remain private were anonymous for a variety
Speaker 1: of reasons, such as journalists, activists, or people engaging in
Speaker 1: illegal activities frequently use them. Other common users include those
Speaker 1: who want to keep their identity a secret. This can
Speaker 1: be great if, for example, a person trying to get
Speaker 1: out of a bad home situation doesn't want their texts
Speaker 1: or calls to be monitored by volatile members of the household,
Speaker 1: but on a larger scale. Even if you pay cash
Speaker 1: for the phone and the minutes, it doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: you're totally incognito to the powers that be. A cell
Speaker 1: phones can be easily tracked and mined for data by
Speaker 1: app developers, third party advertisers, and even local governments. In
Speaker 1: the United States, the legislative acts such as the Foreign
Speaker 1: Intelligence Surveillance Act and the infamous Patriot Act have given
Speaker 1: the federal and state governments great power when it comes
Speaker 1: to tracking and retrieving wireless communications. Ostensibly, these laws concerned
Speaker 1: matters of national security, but they've been used as a
Speaker 1: pretense numerous times by law enforcement to surveil the lives
Speaker 1: of ordinary citizens. In most cases, the acies invoking these
Speaker 1: acts aren't even required to obtain a formal search warrant.
Speaker 1: Some activist groups, such as the American Civil Liberties Union
Speaker 1: or ACLU, consider this to be a violation of the
Speaker 1: Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, which protects against unreasonable search
Speaker 1: and seizure. More recently, law enforcement agencies have added a
Speaker 1: tool known as the stingray to their arsenal. These devices
Speaker 1: have been suspected to be deployed during mass protests, including
Speaker 1: the Black Lives Matter demonstrations in twenty twenty. The stingray
Speaker 1: is essentially a small temporary cell tower that inserts itself
Speaker 1: as a bottleneck between mobile phones and their networks. If
Speaker 1: you're in range of a stingray, then your phone will
Speaker 1: automatically connect to it as if it were a legitimate tower.
Speaker 1: You'll be able to use mobile data as normal, but
Speaker 1: things like calls, text messages, and passwords may be covertly
Speaker 1: intercepted by the party but controls the antenna. Private companies
Speaker 1: can also declare open season on your mobile data. Given
Speaker 1: some smartphone apps some permissions to access things like your location,
Speaker 1: contact list, or microphone shady developers can then turn around
Speaker 1: and sell this data to advertisers and government entities as
Speaker 1: an underhanded way of making extra money. All that being said,
Speaker 1: burners do have their advantages. Normal cell phones usually require
Speaker 1: a carrier wireless plan, which comes with a contract that's
Speaker 1: tied to the user's legal name. This means any data
Speaker 1: scraped from your phone can easily be tied to your identity.
Speaker 1: Burner phones add an extra layer of protection because they
Speaker 1: can usually be purchased with cash and with no contract required.
Speaker 1: Agarwall said burner phones can be beneficial for keeping privacy
Speaker 1: and anonymity in certain situations, such as when dealing with
Speaker 1: sources as a journalist, or while going to a new
Speaker 1: country where local simcards may be necessary. To make sure
Speaker 1: that their anonymity and privacy continues, users of these phones
Speaker 1: will often disconnect or burn the dive after a certain
Speaker 1: amount of time, or even throw it away. If anonymous
Speaker 1: calls are still needed, they'll replace the phone with a
Speaker 1: new prepaid number. If a third party happens to be
Speaker 1: scraping the device for data, then this method ensures that
Speaker 1: their information stream will end when the phone is burned.
Speaker 1: Burner phones offer the strength of anonymity upon purchase, but
Speaker 1: otherwise they possess the same weaknesses as other phones. Agarwal said.
Speaker 1: While burner phones offer a higher level of anonymity compared
Speaker 1: to regular phones, they're not completely untraceable. Burner phones can
Speaker 1: be traced by law enforcement agencies using various methods such
Speaker 1: as call detail records, location tracking, surveillance, and stingray devices.
Speaker 1: But furthermore, if a third party has recordings of your
Speaker 1: calls and texts, it's possible that they could identify you
Speaker 1: using contextual information or simply by the sound of your voice.
Speaker 1: Law enforcement agencies also possess voice recognition technology that can
Speaker 1: assist in matching a voice to its source. It's because
Speaker 1: of these ever present surveillance methods that burning the phone
Speaker 1: every so often is important to staying anonymous. Agarwal said.
Speaker 1: These methods can reveal information regarding calls made and received
Speaker 1: by the burner phone, such as the time of day,
Speaker 1: the length of time, and the location. Law enforcement authorities
Speaker 1: have had some success in determining the identities of people
Speaker 1: using burner phones in several instances. Of course, if you
Speaker 1: log into your Facebook or TikTok account from your burner phone,
Speaker 1: or buy some goods from Amazon, that will certainly blow
Speaker 1: your cover. But burner phones are just one type of
Speaker 1: gadget that can be used to boost your cybersecurity. They
Speaker 1: aren't infallible, and they're best employed in conjunction with other methods,
Speaker 1: Agarwal said. For instance, encrypted messaging applications like Signal offer
Speaker 1: end to end encryption, which means that the only people
Speaker 1: who can read the messages are the sender and the recipient,
Speaker 1: not even the app providers. Themselves can access the information.
Speaker 1: In addition, making use of a virtual private network often
Speaker 1: known as a VPN can assist in preventing the parties
Speaker 1: from tracking your location data as well as the online
Speaker 1: activities that you participate in. Piling methods of data abstraction
Speaker 1: on top of each other will go a long way
Speaker 1: toward maintaining anonymity. Still, it's important to remember that none
Speaker 1: of them are perfect. At the end of the day,
Speaker 1: data can be tracked, the best encryption has the potential
Speaker 1: to be broken, and the only one hundred percent secure
Speaker 1: form of communication is face to face conversation with someone
Speaker 1: you trust. Today's episode is based on the article are
Speaker 1: burner phones really Untraceable? On how stuffworks dot com? Written
Speaker 1: by Talenthomer. Brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership
Speaker 1: with how stuffworks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang.
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