The IMEI can’t be changed. That’s the serial number of the cellular modem

Edit: reviewing the link you shared in another comment that looks plausible. Just be warned good luck on any kind of warranty or insurance claims if you change IMEIs. I used to work for a cell phone manufacturer and we used the IMEI to both identify roughly when the device was purchased to make determining warranty status dead simple, and to identify devices as they went through the repair process.

Additionally carriers will often blacklist IMEIs for activation (usually on devices which were financed but never paid off) so that’s another potential opportunity for trouble

This is correct. But if you don’t work in the field, it’s fine.

You don’t have to know how to bottle wine if you’re not a wine maker. You don’t need to know how to build a dam if you’re not an engineer. You don’t have to learn everything about the architecture of an OS if you’re a user and not a programmer. Let the kids use their devices without knowing obscure shit, just like people let us wear clothes without knowing how to sew. There are things we should all know how to do - changing a light bulb is cheaper if you don’t call an electrician every time it needs to be done. But there are things that are so opaque at first sight that they need to be performed by people with specialized knowledge. And it’s okay to not have that knowledge if you’re not in that field.

Yes, there are 1-2 generations where everyone was learning how computers work. But there were also quite a few generations where everyone was learning how agriculture and farming works - you know, to survive. And I’ll be damned if I wanna have my kids birth a cow or install Linux on their PC. Unless for some godforsaken reason they decide that’s their job.

That explains why cars got so much worse once Boomers were no longer their primary market.

This is not an area of law I stay up to date on, but that did not used to be the case. Is that a rather new development?

Last I knew most courts were holding that since customers are sharing this information with third parties (sharing with their phone companies, Apple and Google, Facebook, etc.), giving everything away anyway, most individuals have waived any claim to an expectation of privacy. The right to privacy is founded upon reasonable expectations. I did hear about some pushback on that, more recently, but not from the Court of Appeals from DC, which has jurisdiction over appeals taken from federal agencies, prior to the Supreme Court. I’d be grateful to be shown otherwise. About time, if true.

I think those just need to move to have their own independent sites instead of basing their operations on social media. Ultimately what they’re doing is entirely legal, but it’s way too easy for some asshat billionaire to pull some strings to get them pulled from a platform.

Just like how the moment their videotape rental history was exposed, that was when privacy became an absolute must in the case of video rental services.

I see your point. I have no illusions that democracy is healthy in modern times. Perhaps not ever? We don’t even live in a democracy any more, we live in a corporatocracy.

But doing nothing will solve nothing.

edited to add: In fact, it’s our complacency that our corporate masters depend on. Corporate news is designed to overwhelm you. Advertising is designed to lull you to sleep. Together, they make it seem like there’s nothing you can do. But that’s not true. You can do something. Maybe not the things I suggested, but something. It will make a difference, even if it only makes a small difference for a few people. Isn’t that better than nothing?

What else would you suggest to do about it?

you can essentially already do this with TrackMeNot and AdNauseam

This was part of the fictional operating system in the book Little Brother. I think it inspired similar features in a particular real life Linux build too

does it though? if everyone is sharing their advertising data under the covers no amount of ML could correct it.

think of it like a tor network for advertisement tracking.

you’re going to Walmart, I’m going to Target. but according to our phones, I’m at Walmart and you’re at Target. now scale it up to thousands or even millions of users sharing their advertising trackers.

I agree but not because it’s “trends” but because this system forces us to have short attention spans by presenting us with a massive deluge of information about horrible things happening everywhere (many of which are caused either directly or indirectly by that very system) so we have basically no choice but to keep shifting our focus and updating our threat assessments or risk becoming totally overwhelmed and falling behind or burning out.

What about an app that spoofs location?

That would be a better approach, of course.

It’s a good start tho

This sort of surveillance is only possible because of the mobile advertising ecosystem. Location data is sometimes used to build profiles on device users and better target advertisements to them. Much of that advertising relies on a MAID, the unique advertising ID, on a phone. The MAID acts as the digital glue between a device and its associated data.

But that same underlying system, of Google and Apple linking a unique identifier on the phone to a user’s activity, allows Babel Street and others to build their mass monitoring products. In many cases, a device’s MAID is also displayed inside Babel Street.

So periodically refresh / replace your ad id as well.

You can turn this wifi and bt scanning/‘location accuracy improvements’ off though, at least on android. It’s tucked away in the settings but once it’s done, it’s done.

Having just done that for the first time I feel confident in saying anyone who’s still using facebook or Xitter or tiktok or whatever - is not going to do that. I wish they would but that’s an order of magnitude more technical than where they are.

Why stop at phones? Practically every car made today has a 4g modem and gps module onboard.

Depends on where you are really. Small towns everything is cash or a phonecall to a person from any phone (it’s really like stepping back in time about 15 years) but in larger cities you might find yourself required to use an app to unlock your apartment or office door or buy a train ticket or pay for a parking space, or buy a bus ticket or hail a taxi. In work I’ve needed a phone for 2FA in my last 3 jobs (granted in IT that’s probably for the best) and in college they distribute resources on the school website via big in-person QR codes.

While every single one of those things almost always has a non-smartphone option, it increases friction significantly, and then you’re the annoying person who is slowing everything down by not doing something the way everyone else does, however in a workplace they’ll often simply provide you with a phone because that’s easier than going to the trouble of ensuring every edgecase is covered and ensuring fair compensation for requiring you to have a phone.

Unfortunately yes, and I would go even a step further and say a smart phone is a basic necessity. More and more companies and even government services are operating on the assumption that everyone has a smart phone. I have encountered various services where if a person didn’t have a smart phone they literally can’t use it. I even have personal experience with it.

My landlord uses a company for payments that can only be interacted with via an app on a smart phone. There is no web portal option. There is no option to mail a check. There is no option to setup a direct bank transfer. I was essentially strong armed into it since the place itself was (and still is) better than almost anything else I saw and is a reasonable price.

Yes Boomer

I’m almost 50 myself, come on

Considering nearly everything requires a phone number and also rejects VoIP numbers? Yes. A phone is required now to participate in society.

Yes, imho, and increasingly so.
In an environment where the vast majority has one people act like everyone has one (eg restaurants having qr links to menus).

Even EU ruled as much (eg my company phone is my own personal device regardless of ownership & my privacy is protected differently than eg my work PC or laptop).

And even if this wasn’t the case, why would you need to opt out of having a mobile phone just to get basic privacy?

You can answer this yourself. Get rid of your phone and see. If you beleive it’s not a necessity, don’t say “yeah I could do these alternative things to get by”. Actually do it. I hope you’re not job-shopping

if you’re talking about the supreme court, as in the SCOTUS, they’re long past pretending they give the slightest fuck about the bill of rights.

The US Supreme Court has had an antagonistic relationship to the forth and fifth amendments to the Constitution of the United States since before I was a kid in the 1970s since they often interfered with efforts to round up nonwhites. But after the 9/11 attacks and the PATRIOT ACT, SCOTUS has been shredding both amendments with carve-out exceptions.

Then Law Enforcement uses tech without revealing it in court, often lying ( parallel reconstruction ) to conceal questionable use, and the courts give them the benefit of the doubt.

You sure it’s still not phoning home? How do you know “off” is really “off” anymore with a modern phone? It’s not like an old flip phone that you can just pop the battery out. Sure it sounds paranoid, but we’re literally talking about something that used to be the realm of crackpots and cranks - “the government is tracking all of us 24/7!” Well, it seems that’s actually literally the case now.