JustAnotherKay,

My post was addressed at US residents engaging in “terrorism” by resisting the regime. We are being disappeared, deported, and imprisoned with zero due process or legal recourse simply for speaking out. Every day brings increasingly brazen impunity. You should definitely not use a phone if this is your situation. I did not intend this message for normal privacy fans in free places.

Hope you are well

From https://grapheneos.org/faq#cellular-tracking

“Connecting to your carrier’s network inherently depends on you identifying yourself to it and anyone able to obtain administrative access. Activating airplane mode will fully disable the cellular radio transmit and receive capabilities, which will prevent your phone from being reached from the cellular network and stop your carrier (and anyone impersonating them to you) from tracking the device via the cellular radio. The baseband implements other functionality such as Wi-Fi and GPS functionality, but each of these components is separately sandboxed on the baseband and independent of each other. Enabling airplane mode disables the cellular radio, but Wi-Fi can be re-enabled and used without activating the cellular radio again. This allows using the device as a Wi-Fi only device.”

This behavior has been independently verified by security researchers

Related discussion: https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/16284-request-for-opinions-on-airplane-mode-is-a-myth/1

MalReynolds,

So, your key takeaway seems to be getting an untraceable phone number.

Absolutely incorrect. I do not recommend using a phone at all. I do not recommend using services that require a phone number at all. I found the clearnet version for you to read: https://www.anarsec.guide/posts/nophones/

From my point of view the options are grapheneOS with no sim, permanently on airplane mode, or no “phone” at all.

The point of my post was purely to point out the challenges and problems, and to get people in /c/resist open to rethinking and making changes to their relationship with technology. Not to use phone numbers, monero, or XMPP. The bit about anonymous signal was a side tangent not the “key takeaway”. Please re-read if you are interested in engaging further.

You asked for feedback.

I did not post this here, the owner of the instance took it upon himself to make this post. I asked for feedback from active resisters who need help, not privacy forum posters.

Hope you are well

Tor is not a 100% bulletproof guarantee, but it is infinitely better than not using it. Keep in mind people stake their lives on Tor every day, and darknet marketplaces flourish. Like all things it’s an evolving cat and mouse game. If you want to stay up to date with the happenings in the darknet I recommend taking a look at Dread (darknet reddit).

http://dreadytofatroptsdj6io7l3xptbet6onoyno2yv7jicoxknyazubrad.onion/d/opsec/?sort=top&time=all

If you need the highest guarantees there are various things you can do to mitigate the risk including connecting via a network not connected to you at all, or to a TRUSTED ANONYMOUS (mullvad paid anonymously) VPN before tor, that way if your IP becomes known it is still a dead end. The latter is a complicated and controversial topic so I didn’t mention it in this post.

99% of people saying this don’t really know what they’re talking about and are just repeating stuff they heard, but it seems like a popular sentiment so I will look for some more resources to explain and put people’s minds at ease

The reality of the situation is unless you are a high value person of interest being specifically targeted you don’t need to worry much.

The main source of Anonymity: The Tor Network http://blog.nowherejezfoltodf4jiyl6r56jnzintap5vyjlia7fkirfsnfizflqd.onion/opsec/torvsvpns/index.html

Using Tor Safely: Tor through VPN or VPN through Tor? http://blog.nowherejezfoltodf4jiyl6r56jnzintap5vyjlia7fkirfsnfizflqd.onion/opsec/torthroughvpn/index.html

READ THESE UNTIL YOU UNDERSTAND THEM!!!

https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Tunnels/Introduction

https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Tunnels/Connecting_to_a_VPN_before_Tor

Excerpt:

"Keep in mind that it is still possible for you to get deanonymized sometimes if you’re unlucky to have all 3 nodes ran by the same entity. So it is not perfect, but it is definitely many times more trustworthy than having to trust a centralised entity providing you with a VPN connection.

As we have discussed previously, sometimes Anonymity is the difference-maker between Life and Death, especially for Journalism in censorship-heavy countries, Tor’s main attraction is that De-anonymization attacks are made to be as expensive as possible, even for state-actors.

Some people argue that Tor can’t be trusted, but as we have discussed previously, Governments need to be able to know what happened (lack of Privacy), and once they know what happened, they need to know who did it (lack of Anonymity), in order to enforce their laws. When that is the case, how come is there still so many illegal marketplaces with years of uptime on the Tor network ? One thing is for sure, these marketplaces are very high on international authorities’ priority list. If they are still there after all this time, It must be because the Tor network is protecting them from being discovered by the authorities isn’t it?

Even though i don’t recommend to use Tor for any illegal purposes, the fact that these marketplaces have remained in activity for such a long time are a clear testament to the resiliency of the Tor network."