Privacy stalwart Nicholas Merrill spent a decade fighting an FBI surveillance order. Now he wants to sell you phone service—without knowing almost anything about you.
Archived version: https://archive.is/20251205050710/https://www.wired.com/story/new-anonymous-phone-carrier-sign-up-with-nothing-but-a-zip-code/
seems like it’ll still keep some demographic and payment info out of the data resale market though, no?
It’s good to reduce the number of parties that can be accountable for leaks.
If the authorities that can triangulate the locations of everyone’s phone numbers are the only ones that should be able to identify you, then at least you know who any ID leaks are coming from. That data being resold on the market should at least make those authorities look worse than if they were just letting random people get away with it.
At the same time, if it’s being oversold as more of an absolute privacy thing, making promises it can’t deliver, that makes the whole thing dubious to trust.