Mishaal Rahman / Android Authority
TL;DR
- A new MVNO called Phreeli allows you to sign up with only a ZIP code, which its founder claims is legal in all 50 states.
- It operates on T-Mobile’s network, but does not store names, addresses, or payment details.
- Founder Nicholas Merrill says the goal is to break the link between a person’s phone identity and their personal data.
If you’ve ever felt uneasy about how much your phone company knows about you, you might soon have a more private option. Nicholas Merrill is best known for fighting an FBI surveillance order for more than a decade. He has now launched Phreeli, a new mobile carrier that lets you sign up with nothing more than your ZIP code.
As Wired reports, Phreeli (pronounced like ‘freely’) runs on T-Mobile’s network, but the real headline is what it refuses to collect. The company doesn’t ask for your name, address, or any other information that could be linked to your phone number. Merrill states that the level of anonymity is legal in every US state, and the ZIP code is provided solely for tax purposes.
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Your payments for this new MVNO are handled through a system Merrill calls Double-Blind Armadillo, which uses zero-knowledge cryptography to confirm you’ve paid without tying your card to your line. You can also use privacy-centric cryptocurrency like Zcash or Monero. Everything is prepaid because, by design, Phreeli has no way to bill you later. If you want conveniences like account recovery or a physical SIM, you can share an email or a shipping address, which the company says it deletes after use. Otherwise, you can download an eSIM directly through a Tor-hosted site.
The aim is to break the long-running link between phone activity and personal identity. US carriers routinely know which phones hit which towers and when, and that information has been handed to law enforcement and sold to data brokers in the past. Phreeli can’t stop your OS or apps from tracking you, but it removes much of the carrier relationship, which is one of the biggest identity factors.
Merrill’s motivation goes back to 2004, when he was handed a secret FBI National Security Letter demanding data on a customer and spent years fighting the order and its gag. He later founded the Calyx Institute, which developed privacy tools such as a de-Googled Android fork and a no-logs VPN.
The service won’t stop every kind of misuse, and Merrill admits some people will take advantage of the anonymity. However, he says Phreeli will clamp down on spam-like behavior by limiting call and text volume. And while it relies on T-Mobile’s towers, he argues that separating identity from activity still marks a meaningful improvement for everyday phone service.
Merrill doesn’t want to use the term ‘burner phones’ due to the connotations of that term; he just wants you to have access to a phone and cell service without revealing everything about yourself.
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