You Don’t Have to be a Conspiracy Theorist (or Jack Bauer) to Want an Untraceable Cell Phone
If you’re lazy and don’t want to read it all, here’s the rundown:
- Buy a used GSM phone from a private seller WITHOUT an activated SIM card and WITHOUT GPS. (Recommendation: Nokia 1600)
- Buy a pre-paid SIM card for a carrier that does not require personal information. Buy it from a private seller if it must be shipped to you. If you buy it in person, pay cash–this will eliminate any possible ties back to you through the credit card receipt. (Recommendation: Net10’s lowest cost card available)
- Activate the SIM card using a pay phone or other anonymous phone (again, to eliminate any potential ties to you). If using Net10, you should not have to provide personal information. If your specific carrier requires personal information, choose another carrier. Providing false information can be illegal and I do not in any way suggest or endorse the idea.
- Use the phone as infrequently as possible, and only for calls which you think are of confidential nature. Dial *67XXXXXXXXXX (X’s indicated the desired destination number) to mask your number from the caller ID of the recipient–this will help to keep the fact that this number belongs to you a secret.
- When you run out of minutes or time on your pre-paid card, do not renew it. Throw it away and buy a brand new card with a brand new number. Not keeping any one number for very long keeps potential eavesdroppers from catching up to you.
- Do not give away your phone number. Use the phone for outgoing calls only.
Now for the meat and potatoes; well you’re reading it, aren’t you?
I’m not a conspiracy theorist, I promise. If you are…. well, first of all, God help you; secondly, you might still find this post interesting, but I wouldn’t bookmark me–you are probably better suited fulfilling your secret-agent fantasies elsewhere.
First off, I feel the need to explain myself for writing this. I know you’re saying to yourself, “I’m a practical person reading a blog meant for practical people, and some guy is trying to tell me I need an untraceable cell phone?!” Crazy sounding, I understand, but practical nonetheless.
Eavesdroppers don’t have to have targets.
Cell phones have weaknesses. They can be easy to trace, locate, and even tap/bug/intercept given that there is someone out there with the desire to do so. To borrow a military term, “high value targets” for this can include the likes of corporate executives, government officials, and so on. And, even if you don’t think that you are likely to be an intended target, there is still the possibility of becoming an unintended or chance victim, possibly leading to identity theft or worse.
My phone is military-spec, it’s not weak!
Your phone may be able to withstand a bullet or a ten foot drop, but this is the 21st century–weakness more often refers to holes in firewalls and 8-bit encryption more often than it does to lack of physical durability or strength. There are numerous ways for your phone to become compromised or for it to compromise you:
- Unencrypted signal
- Cell phone cloning
- (Un)authorized pinging
- Recorded call history
The most dangerous element of cell phone insecurity is the fact that many carriers and their associated phones do not encrypt voice signals or data transfer, leaving them open to close-range hackers. Listening to a cell phone signal is illegal, but not difficult with the right equipment. Before cell phones were prominent, the frequencies that they utilize were not federally restricted and it was perfectly legal for the public to tune in to these frequencies. Today, widely available radio frequency scanners have been manufactured in such a way that monitoring certain signals (from cell phones, cordless phones, etc) is not possible. This means that all a hacker needs to do is find himself a frequency scanner from the pre-cell phone era, and he can just as easily listen to you on your cell phone just as easily as he can the local fire department.
“For goodness sakes, Jim, make a decision!”
You are going to need to make a choice. Only GSM phones are unencrypted. (T-Mobile, AT&T (Cingular), and basically any phone with a “SIM card” are GSM-based.) CDMA phones (Sprint, Verizon, etc.), on the other hand, change channels so often and in such a way that makes them virtually impossible to listen-in to continuously. Sometimes carriers even offer additional levels of encryption sometimes referred to as “voice privacy.”
Sounds simple, right? Just trash your T-Mobile and go get a Sprint phone. SLOW DOWN, cowboy. Yes, CDMA phones are more secure in this way, but you can also sacrifice a lot of security with a CDMA phone. Read on.
Having a truly untraceable cell phone does, of course, require that your service provider be completely ignorant as to your identity. This means that you must not enter a contract (unless you yourself are an identity thief) as this would associate your name, address, credit card number, etc. with your phone number. Do this, and you lose anonymity, which is a paramount concept to an untraceable cell phone.
The solution, you must narrow down your options to pre-paid service providers.
Remember the choice I told you that you were going to have to make? Well, here it is: with a regular CDMA phone, you will have voice privacy in your immediate area. CDMA phones will prevent your neighbors or close-followers from hearing your calls and intercepting your text messages and any other data transfers. All you need for this is a regular run-of-the-mill cell phone from a CDMA carrier. The drawbacks? The phone number is associated with your name. Authorities can listen to your calls with a warrant (hopefully this is not of concern for you), information related to call history and cell phone usage can be subpoenaed, and you will generally leave a trail with use of the phone.
If you value secrecy of contacts, protection from overzealous ex-’s, or whatever (again, I’m not judging) and in my opinion, a more “untraceable” cell phone, then a (fairly specific) pre-paid GSM phone is what you need.
But, if you want to be as secure as possible, we must be specific:
Most of today’s phones are GPS-enabled and vulnerable to pinging (carrier sending out a signal that prompts your phone to return it’s coordinates to the carrier). Get a phone without GPS.
- My recommendation: Nokia 1600 (This phone tends to be cheap as well, so if you are so inclined as to pull a Jason Bourne and throw the phone in a public trash can instead of hanging up, you are welcome to.)
Your carrier will need to be okay with providing service sans personal identification.
- My recommendation: Net10
Don’t ever let your phone number become known.
- Take note that the *67 trick works nicely against civilian caller IDs. Don’t expect it to keep your number secret in all situations.
Alternate solutions to an untraceable cell phone:
- Get a secure cell phone.
- Live in a cave.
- Don’t call people.
- Come to the realization that you really probably don’t need one. (But it’s still fun!)
- Be a teenage girl and prompt your eavesdropper to commit suicide by never shutting up (sorry, teenage girls, nothing personal). But seriously. This is probably the most effective way. Stay tuned for an article about being a teenage girl.
Criminals are SO last year! Like O-M-G, totally!! (Sorry, I got carried away.)
I take no responsibility for misuse of this information. The intention of this blog is to assist people in self-protection. Unfortunately, overlap between self-protection and criminal activity do exist. If you are plotting nefarious activities, have fun going to jail–the police are smarter than you. Do not ask me how to commit crimes. I will fuck you up.
