Survey: Do you use your SIM card or VoIP for legacy calls/sms?

treenutz68

I have been reading Michael Bazzell's latest Extreme Privacy book in which he highly recommends GrapheneOS. He (along with a few others like Naomi Brockwell and The Hated One) strongly suggest using your (ideally non-kyc) SIM card for data services only and never using the SIM card for making legacy phone calls/sms but instead to use e2ee messengers like Signal whenever possible. When necessary, they recommend using VoIP services for legacy calls/sms.

AFAIK, the SIM provider can collect your location from cell tower pings, all call history, and sms history (including content of messages). By using a VoIP provider, the SIM provider will only have the cell tower location data and the VoIP provider will have the call history/sms history.

While I appreciate the content Bazzell, Brockwell, TheHatedOne put out, they are also in the business of selling privacy in one way or another. I want to hear what people, particularly those who use GrapheneOS daily, do in their daily lives as we have to typically balance privacy with usability.

Can you quickly respond to if you use your SIM card phone number for legacy calls/sms or do you utilize your SIM solely for data and use alternatives like VoIP for communication? If you would care to share a little about your logic of doing so, that would also be great.

[deleted]

treenutz68

treenutz68 I want to hear what people, particularly those who use GrapheneOS daily

It depends on your threat model.
https://youtu.be/wVyu7NB7W6Y

A data only sim with a VoIP number.

Viewpoint0232

treenutz68 By using a VoIP provider, the SIM provider will only have the cell tower location data and the VoIP provider will have the call history/sms history.

I don't really see the point. Someone still knows your location (the SIM provider for data) and someone still has access to your SMS and Call logs (the VoIP provider). Okay, you split the data in two, but it's still the same data given out, isn't it? What's the threat model it protects you from?

tilion_silverbow

treenutz68 I use 4 VoIP numbers with a data only sim. (all provided by jmp.chat) Each number has a different purpose: one exclusively for registration with Signal, one for trash (like in store shopping, my barber), one for more important services (the doctor, the bank), and one for friends/family that refuse to talk on encrypted messaging apps.

My threat model isn't hiding from focused attacks by the government. It's trying as much as I can to resist surveillance capitalism and its monetization of my data. Going with somebody like jmp.chat -- who respects my privacy -- instead of a big carrier that sells my data, and splitting up my numbers to make me a little harder to profile -- these seem like they would help with my threat model.

missing-root

Lol I dont think anyone here uses legacy phone calls and SMS by choice.

Simply all those boomers out there think it is a fine way to contact, message, send codes, get updates, etc.

And Signal already allows finding people via phone number...

treenutz68

missing-root

Yeah I think we all prefer e2ee communications, but to be more specific the question is, for when you do need to use legacy calls/sms (for example, my doctor's office won't contact me via signal or my brokerage demands a legacy number for 2fa codes), do you use your SIM card number or use VoIP services?

treenutz68

[deleted]

Thanks, do you mind sharing what VoIP setup you use and if you use google play services or not?

[deleted]

treenutz68

https://discuss.grapheneos.org/?q=voip%20

treenutz68

Viewpoint0232

Hmm, I'm not exactly sure, that is part of the reason I am asking the question. I pointed to three privacy advocates who all seem to share the same opinion of not using SIM for legacy calls/sms, but by no means does that mean they are the absolute source of truth.

One scenario I guess I could imagine is lets say you are involved in a court case where the opposing side subpoenas the phone records for your phone number relevant to the case. If that was a VoIP line, your location history would not become part of the record while your sms/call history (if you and the VoIP provider have not deleted this information) would become part of the record. Is that an important use case, I don't know, I guess it could be in some circumstance?

Another scenario, a business rival/ex-wife/etc... hires a PI to do research on you for whatever purpose. They know your publicly known phone number (assume it is VoIP in this case). The PI may be able to access/purchase data associated with your phone number. However, they would not be able to access your historical location data. Perhaps relevant?

A few semi-relevant links, but these are more pertaining to law enforcement/feds:

https://www.pogo.org/analysis/police-quietly-obtain-private-location-data-with-a-checkbook-and-not-a-warrant
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/08/how-law-enforcement-around-country-buys-cell-phone-location-data-wholesale
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/06/how-federal-government-buys-our-cell-phone-location-data
https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/new-records-detail-dhs-purchase-and-use-of-vast-quantities-of-cell-phone-location-data
https://www.wired.com/story/fbi-purchase-location-data-wray-senate/
https://therecord.media/fcc-fines-carriers-selling-customer-data

treenutz68

tilion_silverbow

Thanks for sharing your setup! That actually sounds quite nice. Am I right in understanding you have to pay around $5/month/number so you pay $20/month for phone service? I like this idea and really like jmp.chat but they simply don't give me enough voice minutes per month in an affordable way. I unfortunately have to take a lot of business voice calls and tend to use 60-100 minutes at least per day of voice minutes.

But thanks for sharing and I'll look into some way to perhaps replicate this.

treenutz68

tilion_silverbow

Oh yeah, one other thing I was gonna mention to you as I was researching your setup and potentially replicating it myself. I see that jmp.chat charges $6.99/gb + $5.50/year for the data only sim. I don't know if you've looked at silent.link but its also a non-kyc e-sim provider and in the US/Europe costs around $1.25-$2.00/gb. Perhaps you can save a little bit if it meets your standards!

tilion_silverbow

treenutz68 You pay $5/month for the first number. Every additional number after that is $2.45.

Yeah, if you're using that many minutes, jmp.chat would get pricy. I almost never make legacy calls, so it's not an issue for me.

tilion_silverbow

treenutz68 Thanks, I'll take a look! I use very little mobile data (5gb lasts me like half a year), but any savings are good savings :)

Viewpoint0232

treenutz68

Yeah I think Silentlink eSIM for data + jmp.chat VoIP for calls/SMS, both paid with Monero, is the way to go in terms of privacy and anonymity, although you can still be identified through IMEI and IMSI and all the other metadata

treenutz68

Viewpoint0232

True, I guess in the scenarios I am thinking of, someone will use your phone number as the "search term" to try and get information about you as they likely do not know your IMEI/IMSI. So if they try to gather as much data as possible from the phone number, they would at most get call logs and sms history, but zero location data.

Who knows if the juice is worth the squeeze here or not... perhaps this is just going a little too far. I also am not sure if the silentlink esim (where I turn off 5g and limit to lte) + jmp.chat VoIP over always on VPN simply has too much latency to even have a good quality phone call.

Onlyfun

used sim until yesterday, now switching to voip Jmp to be exact