this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2023
44 points (95.8% liked)

Privacy

31253 readers
676 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Related communities

Chat rooms

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I see a lot of recommendations for various services and products which are respect privacy, but I don't think I have seen any discussion around cell phone carriers (service providers). I am aware of some of the advantages of using VOIP as a phone service. However, if VOIP is not desired, what are good options for an US phone carrier which provides a physical SIM or eSIM?

I am guessing I have not seen this discussed because phone calls and SMS texts come with inherent insecurities and can always be associated to your phone number. However, I would assume some carriers sell users data more heavily than others. If anyone knows some recommendations, or can explain what to look for, many thanks.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Just as a heads-up: VOIP is more difficult to tap than conventional GSM calls are. What are your issues with VOIP?

What costs privacy in mobile networks is that the mobile operator has to know where you are (roughly) by design. They need to route your traffic to the antenna that's communicating with you after all. That's something that can't be mitigated.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Voip call quality is terrible, it is near unusable over mobile data IME, it adds latency etc.

I guess an intermediate measure might be to make all your phone calls through a forwarding proxy (e.g. implemented with Twilio API) so that all the mobile carrier sees is that your phone calls all go to the same number. Similarly you'd give out a VOIP DID number that forwards to your mobile, so all your incoming calls would appear to come from the same number.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Voip call quality is terrible, it is near unusable over mobile data IME, it adds latency etc.

Oh boy, welcome to the whacky world of phone telecom.

It's not an inherent VoIP issue, you can select any audio codec you want, including lossless CD quality if you want. The issue is you need to make sure your call will end up using the best supported in common from your VoIP provider and the carrier you're calling to. Some carriers try to make people believe other carriers are crap by restricting the good codecs to themselves and their customers, so everytime you call someone on the other carriers, it sounds like crap, and makes the users feel like clearly the other carrier has to be crap because it's fine when it's with the same carrier.

My VoIP calls show up as HD calls and sound identical to other VoLTE HD calls just fine though. I'm using Linphone for Android and voip.ms as the provider, no issues other than navigating all the settings on their website is... a bit of a mess. But hey, they let you configure near everything so.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

The codecs are built into the client (I'm using linphone) and they all sound like crap. Provider is vitelity.net but I have a twilio account so could try that. Also, they only work at all when the phone is online by wifi. Using the phone's mobile data is total fail. Too many dropouts etc.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

Never ever have issues with VoIP. Sounds like a local telecom issue.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Okay, maybe the carriers you used do really have a shitty codec in pl,ace then. Yet I don't see why this would be a privacy issue.