In my dream, SIM cards were kept in a central “Proton SIM hub” of some sort. When someone dialed your number, the hub would reach out to you through an internet‑based app—such as SimpleX voice chat—without ever learning your personal identifying information. You’d answer the call, and the hub would then route the SIM‑based connection to you. Because you were using SimpleX together with a Mullvad VPN, there were no triangular antennas tracking your location. When you wanted to place a call, you’d paste the other party’s number into the Proton SIM chat in the SimpleX app, and the Proton SIM hub would dial that number from its SIM card, establishing a voice chat in SimpleX on your end while connecting a cellular call to the person you’re trying to reach.
Payments to the SIM provider were made in cash, just like Mullvad’s payment method. At present you can’t pay for Proton services with cash, but in the imagined scenario you could acquire a Proton SIM card without supplying any personally identifiable information or tying it to a Proton account.
Would this be feasible in practice?
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Would this be feasible in practice?
just today there was a post on fedi somewhere about the dude who started the Calyx Institute or whatever it’s called just launching a 100% anonymous cell service called Phreeli (as in freely) that only needs your zip code (for their taxes). they handle payments using a zero trust system of some kind, and you can pay using Monero if you want. runs off the T-Mobile network, so if that’s in your area it would work for you.
so yeah, it’s feasible.
At present you can’t pay for Proton services with cash
yes, you can. they tell you how on their website, but it requires mailing the cash to them, which has the obvious risk of the cash being lost in the mail. a better option would just be using bitcoin that you’ve laundered.
I dont know whether it was intentional from OP or not, but part of the issue with that is the connecting of your device network details to the SIM. In modern cellular networking, the KYC of your mobike plan is not at all necessary to completely deanonymize you. It sure doesn’t hurt to not have your carrier actively selling your personal KYC info already attached to your Messages, voice call info, and location, but it’s also in no way going to prevent it.
Your SIM has an IMSI and your device has an IMEI. These are required for your network service to work. You will never not interact with the cell network because of some VPN.
Not if the SIM is in a SIM farm owned by someone else and you’re just interacting with it over the internet, which is the scenario that OP was talking about.
over the internet
Yeah, that’s where I route my fiber optic cables through. I also hide my drugs there when searched. Nobody’s found any of it yet.
What.
There is a physical SIM or an eSIM (which registers with the device and network) in every cell-connected device.
You can interact with a SIM over the Internet, but you still need to, y’know, connect to the Internet.
If only there was a way to connect to the internet without using a mobile device. Oh well, I guess I’ll just sit and home and dream about it.
If you are connecting to the Internet without a mobile network device then why would you involve a SIM card? Do you understand the point of this post?
Because you want to receive calls and SMS/RCS. Do you?
Oh I get it. In this scenario you’re not solving a real problem, you’re committing fraud so you can run a robocall farm.
There is still no way to take triangulation out of ths chain, so OP is asking Proton to explicitly be a known facilitator of crime.
Why in the world are you jumping to conclusions that far out of the discussion? It’s like accusing someone who wants to make cash only transactions of trying to buy heroin to sell to kids in the preschool.
This exists in Canada, and it’s called jmp.chat. They use jabber, rather than simpleX, but they will optionally provide a server, which you could then bridge to your own server without needing port forwarding or anything like that.
They do take payments in monero, but for some reason you can’t create an account with only monero unless you contact support first…and they don’t do support by email, only phone/sms and jabber. There are public jabber servers, so it should be entirely possible, just inconvenient. They also take payment by mail, which I think includes cash.
I’m not sure the logistics of using jmp.chat outside of Canada, but I know it is somewhat possible to do in the US. Of course, there’s nothing forcing you to actually be in the same area as the service, but people who live in the same area as you might question the +1 phone number, and might get charged more by their provider.
Not just in Canada, it exists in the US too. They only offer US and Canadian numbers right now because of the partner carrier they use, but that “Proton SIM hub” is indeed an XMPP server. To make it even easier, they’ve also partnered with Snikket, and for the $5/month price of a phone number from JMP.chat, you can get a private dedicated personal XMPP server instance from Snikket. You’re free to do whatever you want with the Snikket XMPP instance (that’s XMPP related), and can create as many accounts as you want, and/or connect additional JMP.chat numbers to the same or different accounts on the server.
EDIT: They also take payment in Crypto or more traditional methods. It’s all prepaid flat-rate.
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