Yes, but even imperfect steps are in the right direction. My phone number is out there because of others (within 6 months it was obvious) but I do get FAR better results than before. Simply having a personal number and a number for businesses (JMP VoIP numbers are cheap) broke the biggest connection to my ID from a data broker persecive. Also using dedicated emails for every company/service was big in this.

Yeah, the IMEI is set to the hardware like a serial number for lack of a better description. That’s why if you want to protect that, you never put a SIM in your phone. Also, if you go that route you need to buy your phone cash or second hand. IMEIs are logged at purchase so if you buy with a credit card its instantly traceable to your name.

And yes, I presume you are not avoiding authorities and just want some basic privacy. That’s all I’m after, I don’t need to be a ghost.

This privacy game is a process, and it never stops. But if you take small steps all the time you always make progress. You’ll also figure out what your true threat profile is once you hit all the friction points. Its all theoretical until you put it into practice.

I didn’t follow your links, but I’m sure you found that IMEI is a device ID and IMSI is the sim ID. So, best way to deal with that is to never put a sim card in your phone. I’ve done that for a long time. Not going to lie, it works but it sucks so hard.

With a SIM in your phone, your carrier knows your device and can track you that way. Yes, every telco company that isn’t one of the big boys just licenses their networks. They are the “upstream” carrier or provider.

So basically, if we assume the privacy companies are legit in not tracking your IMEI then its still a problem because the upstream carrier can do it. But, as far as I can tell since you aren’t their direct customer they don’t do that (this is really big gray area here) because there’s no reason to. But the point is they can. So if the government wants you they can still find you. But because you’re 2 layers deep in the networks they don’t have good enough data to sell.

Rotating IMSI solves similar problems. These days your phone number is your ID, and the sim card it sits on has an ID. So on average they are equivalent since people don’t change phone number or sim cards frequently. But a rotating SIM helps prevent profiling you since you are constantly changing the way your identifier. It’d be like following a guy who changed clothes every block. You can still do it but it gets harder.

So yes, your sim can be seen calling Alice and Bob from your location. But tomorrow its a different sim calling Alice and Bob from your location. You’re not a ghost, authorities would be able to put together that sim 1 and sim 2 are both you. But its significantly harder to track history of all those sims. And for data brokers its nearly worthless because its a days worth of data. I actually don’t know what they do after it expires from you. Does it get deleted or migrated to somebody else? So today its me and tomorrow its you. That would also be good because it would poison the data.

I hear you. That does seem like the ideal scenario. I don’t think Cape will ever go there but the future isn’t written. I never thought I’d see a company like Cape in the first place, so there’s hope (however much of a tiny sliver it is).

Probably depends on the car. But I’ll say that it probably isn’t easy. The sim will pull out just like it pulls out of a phone. But getting to it is the tricky part. You have to open up your dash to get to it.

Excellent. You’re essentially confirming my initial feelings and experiences.

I’m testing group messaging now. I’ve had some issues with that on my VoIP number so that’s a big pain point for me. Waiting to hear back from people on if anything becomes unthreaded (especially from iPhone).

Technically you’re not wrong. But phreeli and calyx exist too though, so its hard to say.

I’m not sure what you mean by DIY, how do you diy your own telco network? Currently I’m doing my best but it takes multiple services and gives me suboptimal results. That’s part of the appeal here.

Skepticism is welcomed, as is your comment. But I’m not sure where to go from there.

So you want SMS inside of their app? That’s one of the features I like, that I’m not tied to their app. Messaging and calls are handled through my standard phone apps. The Cape app is for account management and settings, and the secondary SMS numbers.

Oh, that is actually a negative I came across. The secondary numbers don’t notify outside of the app. So that limits how they can be used - basically if you are expecting a OTA code then go look. But in their defense that feature is currently a beta test.

Speeds are OK. Nothing to scream at but also nothing where I noticed an issue. I have yet yo try to consume media on it though. My speed test came back at 10 Mbps but that’s what my other carrier is giving me.

Yes RCS is on the roadmap for this year. So hokdin breath there. I want it, but don’t currently have it so its clearly not a deal breaker to me.

You might want to look at just pulling the sim card (assuming its physical).

For long term (meaning transfer of vehicle) you might want to buy a second head unit. When you sell the car have it swapped out so none of your history is in it. Because even if you remove the sim it will still collect data, just not be able to send it back home.

There’s a lot of variables in threat model and budget though so I just mention these as options, not necessarily recommendations.

I’ve owned and driven multiple Hondas from those decades and still have an 00 model today as well as a modern model.

I don’t disagree with the prior comment, it is true. But at the same time its only part of the entire picture. My new model drives so much better. Engine is smoother, it handles better, it’s more comfortable etc… So take it all with a grain of salt. There’s a flip side to every coin.

Yes the shortcoming is always with the weakest link.

But most of my mail is inbound, so I have control over that. Plus I created sieve filters to automatically tag and organize my mail, including deletion of unimportant stuff like newsletters. Top that with a personal domain and I have everything how I like it.

Anecdotally, in the many years I’ve been with Proton I’ve gotten maybe 2 or 3 spam emails, and they went to the spam folder.

This is why despite me self hosting some things I don’t rely on vaultwarden. I’m a flawed person and my family has no idea about anything. I don’t need to stretch my imagination very far to think of a handful of reasons why it would fail my situation. I’ll gladly pay for a password manager to not have to deal with that.

They most likely won’t work. Just speculation, but I would imagine most software that “needs” information like GPS don’t care that its on or off, they care that they try to pull data and there is none.

At least they acknowledge that cookie consent does nothing and paywalls are ridiculous.

I tried, but my wife put a stop to it.

Finally!

Man I really wish people could report on Proton in a neutral manner. I think this information is really important, but the article is so skewed towards Proton being a deceptive company that I lose the real details reading it.

And the author makes claims like it being a pattern because Proton Mail says it can’t read your emails but they can read the plain text inbound emails before they encrypt them. Um…of course anybody can read unencrypted plain text emails before they get encrypted, and Proton straight out states that.

I think this is an issue, but given that there was no statement given by Proton or a sentence saying I reached out to proton but they declined to answer, I will need to wait for more information to have an opinion.

Thanks for sharing. I’ve not yet delved into reading it in depth but appreciate your goals and the fact that you documented it all.

Do you have to verify your identity? I know in the past you had that option but didn’t have to do it. But they just changed their terms of service so is this part of that?