The cynic in me immediately thinks it's a honeypot to trap privacy-conscious individuals.
I'll look it up. But I suspect it'll be just another case of a company pinky-swearing to respect your privacy, like Apple.
I just assume every ad on reddit is a scam. Seems to be the trend over there.
Hell half of the front page posts seem to be ads anymore
100% honeypot
Big encrochat vibes
Something can't be both "100%" and vibes based lol
Unless you mean "I am 100% basing the following opinion on vibes".
You need evidence. Please don't respond with more vibes.
I am sure it is a honeypot, they will work with feds. I base that on the people behind it.
Also it reminds me a lot of encrochat which had similar vibes about it.
This is depressing. Trial by vibes. I'm going to live in the woods.
Im not basing anything on vibes, this is how venture capital funded operations work.
If you expect some rich assholes to keep your chats secure and not cave after the slightest preasure, you're going to get taken for a ride.
Which is why it's a honey pot it's basically for gullible people.
I can't believe I need to explain to someone that claiming you don't need evidence to declare something to be true is faith based on vibes. Tiktok has truly broken the younger generations brains.
It looks like a honeypot, and wtf is a "private cell network"? How are they gonna do that? SMS and phone calls aren't E2EE
I've seen this ad here in Australia where cell towers are essentially all owned by a single telecomm (Telstra), who leases them out. No idea how their cell network could be private given that info
Gonna guess a company that has no problem engaging with Reddit's invasive targeted ad system is not that privacy conscious.
Jmp.chat provides sim activations for xmr but honestly no matter what anything with a cell radio is being logged by its upstream carrier.
If you want a truely private number, use jmp.chat with a separate xmpp server over something like mullvad.
For what its worth, the sim swap protection might be worth it considering how many services force you to use SMS for 2fa, and they seem to ask for less data than usual.
Is it better than your average carrier? Maybe. Is any SMS/phone call coming out of your personal number something you should consider private from the government? Probably not.
Its still going to have to go over the big boy carriers, and its still probably going to be tied to a phone number several institutions will know is yours if its your main number.
If it isn't, use jmp.chat, alongside a good XMPP provider and VPN, or forego the PSTN all-together.
"Is any SMS/phone call coming out of your personal number something you should consider private from the government? Probably not."
Well your phone calls themselves -- the actual conversation -- shouldn't be accessible without a warrant for a wire tap, that's pretty longstanding precedent in the U.S. Cell phone location information is also protected by a warrant (Carpenter v. U.S.), but pen registers (logs of who you call) do not require a warrant (Smith v. Maryland). I'm not sure if governments are prevented from purchasing data from carriers, just as any data broker could do. Additionally, who knows if governments are secretly collecting phone call and cell phone data and storing it, but only accessing it once they have a warrant. It's impossible to know what's fully happening on the back end between big telco companies and the gov't.
Either way, at the end of the day, whether you have Cape or some other service, if you're at the level of the government getting a warrant for your data any legitimate company is going to comply. That's why the best thing is to have a company that can only turn over limited amounts of data because that's all they have.
By the cops or FBI maybe. The NSA is absolutely recording any and all phone calls that touch five eyes phone networks. That's what Snowdon warned us all about.
Collecting and monitoring are two different things. If NSA is still dragnetting communications in the post-Snowden era, it’s likely storing and then accessing when something gives the reason. The sheer volume of communication data is far too large to monitor everything.
The sheer volume of communication data is far too large to monitor everything.
By people, sure. Run it through a magical analytical algorithm that flags stuff for people to look? Or if that's still too much everywhere, they could focus it on a certain area's towers and process that data. Will it catch everything or not generate false positives? No, it's not perfect, but I could see it helping them and being done.
I doubt an agency like this would just hoard the info and not proactively use.
It's also like $100 a month.
True, expensive. Prosper to offset no selling customer data.
I refuse to believe they didn't do this for their benefit. Especially at the price tag. I feel the same about Proton. The minute the government knocks without a warrant they'll still turn you over.
I think their tech works, they're used by the army. The founder was the cofounder of Palantir, which I think is worth noting. Their focus is on US government use first and the average consumer second.
Yeah it looks like the cell network is the consumer facing product
Cell providers such as Telekom, Verizon, Yettel etc. have to provide Lawful Interception support for countries' law enforcement agencies, and these are implemented in a way, that not even the cell providers is aware when a said subscriber / user is being listened on.
Otherwise I would guess a cell provider can't operate in that country if it isn't willing to provide this support?
And almost every cell provider that is small is only piggybacking of one of the big 3.
I don't have an issue with telcos complying with lawful warrants, which is what Lawful Interception requires. but if your telco can only turn over limited amounts of data because that's all it has access to, then that's a plus.
Separately, do you have a source that telcos are unaware when LE is wiretapping? LE would likely need the assistance of the telco to do so and the telco should require the warrant.
https://cyberscoop.com/cape-phone-privacy-calea-tracking/
Good article which points to a few promising aspects. They seem to have their own phones (as of Nov 24) as part of this. Second, that their market is "high risk" individuals. So people with money, it sounds like. If the pricing reflects a market for governments, celebs, and crypto bros trying to not get SIM swap attacked, then it's not likely a honeypot for Feds. Maybe.
I hate the idea of only being allowed to use their phones, but that might just be their "easy mode" for idiot celebrities or government contracts. If they can give me a physical SIM, I'm interested.
I would not be an early adopter. Hang and see who isn't a plant that joins.
The feds have already pulled a similar stunt with another manufacturer+software combo. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Trojan_Shield#Distribution_and_usage)
The only thing that makes this smell legit is the fact that it is a provider and probably only eSIMs. But even then, this is not very good opsec to be deliberately using a marketed product that will likely have an identifier for their cell traffic. Graphene works as well as it does because it runs of pre-existing hardware to be more inconspicuous.
So, they have their own phone that is for high risk individuals and is not available to the general public. Then, separately they have their own mobile network that you can use with any regular phone and they sell Pixels on their website (for $50, you can have them pre-load GraphineOS). The AD i posted is for their cellular network, which is not related to their own first-party device.
It's a good call to post, but waaay too soon IMO too bother with it. It might simply be flash in the pan marketing for VC funding and not work. It might be a total scam. It might be legit and poorly run. It might be the real deal. It's hard to say without more data.
You should not use a phone with preloaded graphene without first checking the hash. It's also kind of insane to charge $50 for it, when Graphene's web installer just has you click buttons to install. You can even use another phone to do it.
100% agree. I would definitely not have them install graphene for you. Do it yourself so you know what’s in the installation
The best answer
This is probably a question for the Graphene forums
Could be a honeypot.
That's always the concern with privacy-focused services, especially if they're not open source or audited.
But if we think about the practical application -- who needs a honeypot for cell phone services? Carriers already collect so much data (location, telemetry, payment, government-issued ID, etc) and sell it willingly to whoever wants to buy. How could Cape be any worse? lol. If they adhere to any of their stated policies it seems like a plus, no?
Additionally, at least to me, Cape is not marketing the way the Anom phone did, where it trying to gain adopting by nefarious users. That's my take - I'm not advocating for Cape since I don't really know much about them, but I'm trying to put things in context.
Previously discussed three months ago at lemmy.ml/post/33176527. Not sure how to format that link correctly though…
So, how is this supposed to work? From what I can gather at a quick glance it appears to be a VPN of some sorts but for cellular data?
You get you phone number through them and they act as your carrier and then they use other telcos that have the physical infrastructure to service calls/data. Not that different from how Mint or other virtual networks operate, but Cape alleges to collect little data about its users and not to sell any user data.
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.
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