GrapheneOS Phone IMEI Randomizer

GrapheneOS

NetRunner88 This makes you heavily stand out from regular phone users and you can be fairly easily tracked based on that due to how few people are using that setup.

NetRunner88

GrapheneOS

Maybe, in any case imho it is less suspect from a physical perspective than having 5-6 phones on me in Faraday bags.
I believe that if there is enough people doing it (changing imei when changing sim/esim) therefore it will become less suspect.

argante

GrapheneOS Many laptops and almost every modern car have such a built-in LTE modem. If someone knows what they are doing, they can build profiles that imitate such laptops or cars. It is important that such a mobile modem is used outside of permanent locations (work, home). Each profile should also be used for a relatively short time. Profiles should be rotated or treated as temporary.

orydeatemi

NetRunner88 unless a major manufacturer starts doing it automatically, there won't be enough critical mass.

In fact (and however...), the most solid argument I can think of for implementing IMEI spoofing on GrapheneOS is to allow for a more common phone than the Pixel line to be presented to the carrier by default (pixels are much less common than iThings or Redmis). But even that isn't always useful, since some countries will log your IMEI when you buy a SIM, and/or blacklist your phone after a certain duration if you don't register it.

phone-company

Viewpoint0232 but the Imei is listed in network….. so your Phone can be blacklisted or redlisted or whatever 🤷

NetRunner88

orydeatemi
There plenty of e-waste with valid imei we could use.
Which country ask for imei when you buy a sim ? 🤔
That's not the case in EU (21 countries now)

argante

orydeatemi But even that isn't always useful, since some countries will log your IMEI when you buy a SIM

If you activate your phone at home and connect it to your own network, Google, thanks to your location and knowledge about your WiFi, registers that you bought a Pixel phone and its number and IMEI. Thanks to this, you can unlock the phone to install GOS, but the information that you have this phone with this IMEI has already leaked.

orydeatemi

NetRunner88 Which country ask for imei when you buy a sim ? 🤔

Lebanon comes to mind, but there are others.

NetRunner88 That's not the case in EU (21 countries now)

Without injecting politics into this, as a number of the more nonchalant inhabitants of a certain large western country that borders Canada and Mexico are rudely waking up to, it's not always the best idea to threat model based on the assumption that the adversary will follow the rule of law, that the rule of law will be in your favour, or that said law can't change quite rapidly.

NetRunner88

orydeatemi

Oh yeah I understand too well what you mean, without going the political route obviously, it is the same in EU too.. But sometimes you can find help in contradictory laws, or sometimes between local and European laws.

Anyway we all know that gov agency anywhere in the world will not follow rules/laws for sure. We have multiple proof of that

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