Cape

DeletedUser265

Anybody considering this, ATM not available in the UK / EU I think.
www.cape.co/Cape.co

de0u

DeletedUser265 It's sort of interesting... it does seem as if the company as such may be retaining less information about customers, but it appears a phone number is required to sign up. And, though they are unusually up front about it compared to other MBNOs, their carrier partner collects plenty of data: https://www.cape.co/privacy-policy#retention_of_personal_information

It is unclear who is eligible for the higher level of service that includes IMEI rotation. If it turns out to be reserved for police and elected officials, I suspect that won't apply to most readers of this forum.

Jakelson

de0u is the phone number required for sign-up? Or is that the number you would be porting over or the new number you would be getting?

DeletedUser265

And $99 per month does sound expensive.
Probably a better option than Signal for Trump circle of comrades.

New2MeOS

Just saw a video from Liron Segev about this; I think they are strictly bring your own device. Seems like a pretty innovative system to layer more privacy. They have federal customers and supposedly their TOS says they don't sell data. It's based on the US Cellular network, which in America means it will work almost everywhere. They have international roaming but no idea what that'd cost. They do throttle you after 50GB, FWIW.

de0u

New2MeOS I think they are strictly bring your own device.

That's not what their FAQ page says.

Q: Does a Cape phone plan come with a phone?

A: You can bring your own device! Cape works with most recent, eSIM compatible, iPhones and Androids.
For individuals with elevated threat profiles, Cape Obscura comes with a pre-configured Android phone.

de0u

Jakelson Is the phone number required for sign-up? Or is that the number you would be porting over or the new number you would be getting?

Here is their privacy policy (at the moment -- their web pages seem to be moving around): https://www.cape.co/privacy-summary

Beyond that, I haven't signed up with them, so I don't know exactly what they require for customers in which circumstances during the sign-up process.

My impression is that being a Cape subscriber means creating a data trail similar to being a customer of a regular cellular carrier, but the data is somewhat split across multiple parties. Their materials are very up-front about their cellular carrier collecting the standard cellular tracking information, for example, and they indicate Cape themselves keeps 60 days of location data (see the "Location" and "Call Detail Records" rows of the table). It appears that their payment processor, Stripe, collects standard credit-card information from customers, but Cape indicates that much of the information (name, address) remains with Stripe.

If the cellular carrier has the standard detailed location track for the device, and if Stripe has standard information about the payer, but neither the carrier nor Stripe has both the identity information and the location information, that may be an improvement -- in theory, breaches should be less damaging. Of course, the government can put the pieces together, and Cape's privacy policy does mention longer record retention during fraud investigations.

ciawa85

dose anyone have experience with renagate sim from unpluged phone , i was interested if you can use with a pixel phone?

chzrnr

I'm test driving Cape right now. I started on iOS and it ran fine. It has some shortcomings on iOS, like group messages with both iOS and android users will be broken apart, no international roaming, no WiFi calling, and no IMSI rolling (brand new this past week).

I've since switched to GrapheneOS which they wholeheartedly support and it works well. If you buy a Pixel from their store, they'll take $300 off your bill over six months, reducing it to $15. They'll also contrbute to the GrapheneOS project. They do not support RCS, but I expect that they assume as a customer seeking such a service that you'll be using a secure messaging service.

Porting numbers in and out are completely painless with no questions asked in either direction. The system is fully automated and you'll never have to talk to a rep trying to upsell you or whatever. If you do port out, plan for it. Once you initiate the port out, it has to be completed within six hours. I did port my iPhone back to VZW, and bought a Pixel 9 Pro XL and put it on Cape with a new number. If you do want to port your number in to the system, you need to do it when signing up. You'll be assigned a temporary number immediately until the automated porting process completes. Your phone will then be assigned the ported number and the temporary number will be returned. If you want to do it later, simply cancel your account and create a new one. I've done this several times between iOS, pixel 7a and Pixel 9. Note, however, unless you're coordinating by his with their support team, its $99 each time. After canceling your account, it remains active until the end of the billing cycle. If you delete the eSim, however, you have a lot more work ahead of you if you change your most and and decide to reactivate.

Their service is still very much in public beta and they're not shy telling you that. So keep that in mind going in.

Their support team is U.S. based and exceptional. My interactions with them were through chat feature in the required companion app that resides on your phone. I do believe there is support through email as well.

The device mention in an earlier post that you may have seen a couple YTers discussing is likely their Obscura product which is not currently available to the general public. It has additional obscurity features not found in the public beta that I'm currently using. But as I mentioned, they did just introduce IMSI rolling in the android product which is a cool feature born from Obscura.

Their blogs and tech briefs are very well written and informative. They discuss a lot of the common questions folks ask about the majority mobile operating systems and carriers.

Well, I typed a lot more than I thought I would! Short story is that in its current state it is a usable carrier that meets its mission of a minimal KYC carrier with unique security technologies on the back end. On the client (phone) side, the features favor android, but they're working to bring feature parity to iOS devices.

I will continue my experiment for the foreseeable future.