All the apps on your phone have access to the phone identifier. As well as other information, like your Google account. It’s pretty trivial to tie a phone to you.
As long as you keep to FOSS apps that you KNOW are private (you can tell which ones call home), you should be OK. For example, Lemmy with a throwaway email address, Simplex for communications, Mull with a shitload of blocks, Orbot with RethinkDNS, and so on, you’re golden. Buy your phone in a different country, on Ebay with a throwaway account and a prepaid credit card.
There’s a lot you can do to remain truly anonymous.
Now, my threat model does not require me to go to those extents, but you get the point.
If someone really wanted to find the person, I imagine they’d find where the signal is coming from for that device, and just narrow from there. If it always goes to/from where John works and lives, it might well be John’s phone.
where i live, you can buy a sim card that you can then charge by buying codes on kiosks. no identity needed, all cash
They got video of you buying them, though
They have your identity the moment you put the sim in the phone. The phone have unique identifiers that are recorded when sold.
Buy the phone used and/or with cash. And never put any SIM card in it that can be linked back to you or someone you know.
All the apps on your phone have access to the phone identifier. As well as other information, like your Google account. It’s pretty trivial to tie a phone to you.
As long as you keep to FOSS apps that you KNOW are private (you can tell which ones call home), you should be OK. For example, Lemmy with a throwaway email address, Simplex for communications, Mull with a shitload of blocks, Orbot with RethinkDNS, and so on, you’re golden. Buy your phone in a different country, on Ebay with a throwaway account and a prepaid credit card.
There’s a lot you can do to remain truly anonymous.
Now, my threat model does not require me to go to those extents, but you get the point.
If someone really wanted to find the person, I imagine they’d find where the signal is coming from for that device, and just narrow from there. If it always goes to/from where John works and lives, it might well be John’s phone.