UpPhone | Unplugged Cell Phone

[Sportin' Wood]

Does anyone have experience with these phones, or have you heard about them yet?

Unplugged

Your home for privacy

www.unplugged.com

I'm starting to get paranoid and watch what I say around my iPhone. I heard about these on a Podcast (PBD) that Erik Prince was doing. I miss my old blackberry.

https://defensereview.com/unplugged-up-phone-the-most-secure-and-private-smartphone-ever/

Erik Prince wants to sell you a “secure” smartphone that’s too good to be true

MIT Technology Review obtained Prince’s investor presentation for the “RedPill Phone,” which promises more than it could possibly deliver.

www.technologyreview.com

Discuss

 

[monkeyswrench]

From a "not-so-distant" past life, I was taught to leave your phone a good distance away when speaking of things of a delicate nature. Distance is relative to the "delicacy" of what may be spoken of, or may transpire. Then again, I've never been a businessman. Big brother is a reality, not just Orwell's nightmare.

My daughter's major is along the lines of this stuff. She's been seeing how big tech does things, as well as the government. She's obviously younger, and thus quite a bit more tech savvy than myself, and even she's surprised about what can be done.

 

[Singleton]

The amount of security apps I have on my iPhone from work is insane. Only approved apps can be installed (no FB, TikTok, etc). Yet safari has no tracking

 

[rivermobster]

This article is a year and a half old...

And they Still haven't delivered a product!

Haven't we learned our lesson on buying things, sight unseen, yet?

Unplugged

Your home for privacy

www.unplugged.com

 

[Sportin' Wood]

This article is a year and a half old...

And they Still haven't delivered a product!

Haven't we learned our lesson on buying things, sight unseen, yet?

Unplugged

Your home for privacy

www.unplugged.com

I'm not an early adopter by nature, yet I'm interested. Seriously wish my Blackberry ball was not gummed up, I would see if I could get that restarted.

I don't trust that it is just a different version of the same thing listening in.

 

[Racey]

Does anyone have experience with these phones, or have you heard about them yet?

Unplugged

Your home for privacy

www.unplugged.com

I'm starting to get paranoid and watch what I say around my iPhone. I heard about these on a Podcast (PBD) that Erik Prince was doing. I miss my old blackberry.

https://defensereview.com/unplugged-up-phone-the-most-secure-and-private-smartphone-ever/

Erik Prince wants to sell you a “secure” smartphone that’s too good to be true

MIT Technology Review obtained Prince’s investor presentation for the “RedPill Phone,” which promises more than it could possibly deliver.

www.technologyreview.com

Discuss

If anyone can pull it off it's Prince.

 

[rivermobster]

I'm not an early adopter by nature, yet I'm interested. Seriously wish my Blackberry ball was not gummed up, I would see if I could get that restarted.

I don't trust that it is just a different version of the same thing listening in.

I miss Some things about my old BlackBerry too.

But I Definitely don't miss that stupid ball and having to have it in a ziplock bag out at the dunes!

No moving parts is a good thing.

 

[rivermobster]

If anyone can pull it off it's Prince.

Correct me if I am wrong, but...

Unless he is Also building his own cellular network, the ISP/cell provider, is still gonna know and track everything you do?

 

[Racey]

Correct me if I am wrong, but...

Unless he is Also building his own cellular network, the ISP/cell provider, is still gonna know and track everything you do?

Not with an encrypted messaging or phone app like Threema etc... they can also utilize rolling hardware addresses to obfuscate the device.

Many ways around the system if you know how it works.

The blackberries eventually ditched the ball for a little touch pad that didn't jam btw

 

[rivermobster]

Not with an encrypted messaging or phone app like Threema etc... they can also utilize rolling hardware addresses to obfuscate the device.

Many ways around the system if you know how it works.

The blackberries eventually ditched the ball for a little touch pad that didn't jam btw

I know. But I was out before that. I got tired of waiting 5 minutes for the Damm thing to boot up!

So you have a legit account with a provider and then just disappear off the grid behind a "fake IP" address?

Makes sense, maybe?

I'm still not sure how a cell tower is gonna give access to an unknown cell signal?

 

[Dalton]

just got back to a burner flip phone only

 

[monkeyswrench]

just got back to a burner flip phone only

Always keep a spare. If nothing else, incase I destroy the normal phone working.

 

[Racey]

I know. But I was out before that. I got tired of waiting 5 minutes for the Damm thing to boot up!

So you have a legit account with a provider and then just disappear off the grid behind a "fake IP" address?

Makes sense, maybe?

I'm still not sure how a cell tower is gonna give access to an unknown cell signal?

Cell towers have to abide by something similar to CLEC, they have to give competitive access to companies at a fair compensation. So like Cricket wireless may actually use T mobile or ATT towers, the Att system doesn't recognize your phones hardware address as valid, but the phone tells it that it's a cricket phone and to check their system for authentication, and then billing.

When this handoff occurs for authentication the cricket system could use a hash function to validate your phone with a hardware address that appears different every time to the ATT or Tmobile system, but is decoded by crickets system as being you.

This is just one way you could thwart tracking. It's not completely full proof, but makes it much more difficult to pin you down.

 

[rivermobster]

Cell towers have to abide by something similar to CLEC, they have to give competitive access to companies at a fair compensation. So like Cricket wireless may actually use T mobile or ATT towers, the Att system doesn't recognize your phones hardware address as valid, but the phone tells it that it's a cricket phone and to check their system for authentication, and then billing.

When this handoff occurs for authentication the cricket system could use a hash function to validate your phone with a hardware address that appears different every time to the ATT or Tmobile system, but is decoded by crickets system as being you.

This is just one way you could thwart tracking. It's not completely full proof, but makes it much more difficult to pin you down.

CLEC vs. ILEC's...

That makes sense how they could connect to the tower.

And you're thinking two encrypted phones could skate along the ILEC without being detected?

It does make sense, but just like anything, if it starts happening regularly, someone or something is gonna pick up on that shit.

No matter how good they try and hide it.

 

[Andy B.]

What about android phones?

 

[sintax]

gonna be coming in hot with some unpopular opinions so be warned...

gotta ask it, why?

if the goal is to not have your phone spying on you, get something like an old flip phone or a Lightphone. As far as the encryption nonense, theres no mention of what they're doing technically, so thats almost a non-starter for me. Are they doing something you cant do elsewhere for free, prob not. Are they epoxying they chips so they cant be extracted and scanned, maybe?

Trading one highly vulnerable OS for a fork of another, that now an even smaller team of engineers will be working on, which is bound to have more zero day exploits due to the lack of coverage and eyes

at the end I just come back to why, I understand not wanting to have people in your business tracking you, but if you're that worried, why do you use anything but cash, any internet or email, any telecommunications (including land lines), drive most modern cars (onstar, sync, hondalink, starlink, bmw assist, i could go on...), walk in a public space in most major metro areas.

sorry dudes, we're in deep. Turns out Kaczynski might have been a prophet after all.

end of unpopular opinions!

 

[rivermobster]

gonna be coming in hot with some unpopular opinions so be warned...

gotta ask it, why?

if the goal is to not have your phone spying on you, get something like an old flip phone or a Lightphone. As far as the encryption nonense, theres no mention of what they're doing technically, so thats almost a non-starter for me. Are they doing something you cant do elsewhere for free, prob not. Are they epoxying they chips so they cant be extracted and scanned, maybe?

Trading one highly vulnerable OS for a fork of another, that now an even smaller team of engineers will be working on, which is bound to have more zero day exploits due to the lack of coverage and eyes

at the end I just come back to why, I understand not wanting to have people in your business tracking you, but if you're that worried, why do you use anything but cash, any internet or email, any telecommunications (including land lines), drive most modern cars (onstar, sync, hondalink, starlink, bmw assist, i could go on...), walk in a public space in most major metro areas.

sorry dudes, we're in deep. Turns out Kaczynski might have been a prophet after all.

end of unpopular opinions!

Not unpopular at all with me...

Kaczynski and Snowden both nailed it.

To me this phone is nothing but an overpriced gimmick designed to empty your wallet.

Kinna interesting, but nothing more than that.

 

[Sportin' Wood]

gonna be coming in hot with some unpopular opinions so be warned...

gotta ask it, why?

if the goal is to not have your phone spying on you, get something like an old flip phone or a Lightphone. As far as the encryption nonense, theres no mention of what they're doing technically, so thats almost a non-starter for me. Are they doing something you cant do elsewhere for free, prob not. Are they epoxying they chips so they cant be extracted and scanned, maybe?

Trading one highly vulnerable OS for a fork of another, that now an even smaller team of engineers will be working on, which is bound to have more zero day exploits due to the lack of coverage and eyes

at the end I just come back to why, I understand not wanting to have people in your business tracking you, but if you're that worried, why do you use anything but cash, any internet or email, any telecommunications (including land lines), drive most modern cars (onstar, sync, hondalink, starlink, bmw assist, i could go on...), walk in a public space in most major metro areas.

sorry dudes, we're in deep. Turns out Kaczynski might have been a prophet after all.

end of unpopular opinions!

Those are very fair questions. I appreciate the conversation.

My personal position:
I still need to be in the system for work, so no getting around that as I will have company issued devices. Some day I will retire and I would like to become a grayman.
I've become accustomed to specific device features that I'm not yet willing to give up, but I recognize the trade I am making.
Some of the items you point out I am either removing from my life or preparing to remove.
By the time everyone gets on board with flying under the radar, the rules will be such to prevent it. We already may be there.

I wish I would not have tossed those basic flip phones. I can't even remember the name of the good one, Maybe made by Erikson? If anyone has a resource for buying restored basic phones, that might solve my needs.

Edit: Living in a cabin in the Montana wildness sounds perfect, BTW

 

[rivermobster]

Those are very fair questions. I appreciate the conversation.

My personal position:
I still need to be in the system for work, so no getting around that as I will have company issued devices. Some day I will retire and I would like to become a grayman.
I've become accustomed to specific device features that I'm not yet willing to give up, but I recognize the trade I am making.
Some of the items you point out I am either removing from my life or preparing to remove.
By the time everyone gets on board with flying under the radar, the rules will be such to prevent it. We already may be there.

I wish I would not have tossed those basic flip phones. I can't even remember the name of the good one, Maybe made by Erikson? If anyone has a resource for buying restored basic phones, that might solve my needs.

Edit: Living in a cabin in the Montana wildness sounds perfect, BTW

You should watch Snowden. And remember that was Years ago now.

 

[Andy B.]

I would still have my flip phone but need the android for work, 4-5 more years( maybe sooner)then permanent retirement!
Can't wait to go back to a flip phone!!!

 

[rivermobster]

I would still have my flip phone but need the android for work, 4-5 more years( maybe sooner)then permanent retirement!
Can't wait to go back to a flip phone!!!

There was a whole lot of sarcasm in what @sintax posted...

No matter what you do, you're not hiding from anyone anymore.

And when you watch Snowden, Remember AI wasn't even a thing back then. The computing power available today is night and day from what it was back then.

This movie is more than SEVEN years old and it's been over TEN years since he revealed what he knew.

 

[Romans9]

Best place to hide is in plain sight.

 

[DaveH]

Those are very fair questions. I appreciate the conversation.

My personal position:
I still need to be in the system for work, so no getting around that as I will have company issued devices. Some day I will retire and I would like to become a grayman.
I've become accustomed to specific device features that I'm not yet willing to give up, but I recognize the trade I am making.
Some of the items you point out I am either removing from my life or preparing to remove.
By the time everyone gets on board with flying under the radar, the rules will be such to prevent it. We already may be there.

I wish I would not have tossed those basic flip phones. I can't even remember the name of the good one, Maybe made by Erikson? If anyone has a resource for buying restored basic phones, that might solve my needs.

Edit: Living in a cabin in the Montana wildness sounds perfect, BTW

3g was shut down in 2022. so those old phones you would want wouldnt work on any 4 or 5g network today.

if i wanted a phone for to hide behind, i would pay someone to get a prepaid phone in their name, ang get a new one every few months.

 

[Sportin' Wood]

Perhaps this solves some of my most immediate needs.

https://slnt.com/collections/teams-top-picks/products/privacy-plus-starter-kit

Incoming calls and texts would then be blocked as well. Maybe not the end of the world since we all seemed to manage when we did not have supercomputers in our pockets. I bet 90% of my device use is non value add, so perhaps an added benifit to unplug. The real solution is to stop using my phone altogether.

 

[CBDemented]

The phone is out, and can be purchased. I've seen it and been able to play with it for a short amount of time, and there are a couple of reviews available on Youtube. I didn't have enough time to form an opinion, but so far nobody has been massively impressed. It shows promise, especially for a first edition phone. It's got alot of quirks, and although it says you can choose to have an iPhone or Android experience when you set up the phone, if you're not an Android user or at least familiar, it's going to drive you nuts. It just isn't an iPhone.
It's built in VPN, which you will have to pay for after the 1st year free, is going to cost you half your bandwidth. Not a deal killer, but it's obviously not using one of the newer protocols. Prince in his pitch deck on the phone said the server farms are undisclosed globally with one being seagoing and connected to Starlink.

There is no such thing as an untraceable cell phone. Period. Full stop. Any cell phone, regardless of type, has an IEMI, and that is what the infrastructure uses to determine the uniqueness of the device. If a cell finds two of the same, the first one that is connected will be considered real and the 2nd one a jammer. Without getting into a very long conversation on how/when/why, even without a SIM, when powered on, a phone can still connect to a tower because of the Emergency Call feature required of all phones, and based on signal strength and distance (in the case of a 4G signal) the tower will switch it to the best cell on the tower. If you move at all, and connect to more than that first tower, you narrow down the search. It's not GPS accurate, but the more cells you connect to the easier it is to track the phone. There's always latitude and longitude of the phone, and nothing short of turning it off with the kill switch is going to change that...it's the way the system is designed.

However...when they say no tracking, they're not talking about that (even if it is implied). They're talking about tracking through data collection. That's what the phone is designed to minimize or eliminate. It uses it's own app store, which has a fairly decent list of the most used apps, and reports that they will port apps that are missing upon request, if possible. The problem is that a lot of apps require Google Services to run, so some of the ones that they ported either won't work because they aren't completely up to date, or just because they require the Google Play store. There's also the fact that TikTok is available in the UP store, which seems to be antithetical to the intention of the device.
Unplugged's COO/CTO is Ran Karpen, a veteran of the Israeli version of the NSA, and former employee of Communitake who started the NSO group (Hacker for hire group). So they have a solid tech lead who definitely knows how cellular security works, but in the end, how successful this phone will be will come down to how much money Prince is willing to put into it. Maintaining a fork of Android, with the massive number of security updates that that requires, is going to cost a great deal and take a great deal of resources. Prince has both, and he's giving these phones away to some really powerful people who buy into the hype ("Military Grade Encryption" is a meaningless buzzword they use. The military uses the same encryption methods the rest of us do) so he may get more backers and dump the right resources into it. Certainly if Elon gets on board, this could become the new hot thing, but I'd wait for version 2 before I'd buy one personally. I'd also like to see the lifespan. If they aren't going to provide updates for phones for at least the same 6 years the big players are doing, then that's problematic, just as having to use their VPN and store, which you have to pay for after a year, is.

 

[lbhsbz]

I’m not important enough in the world for anyone to really give a fuck what I have to say….so they can waste their time tracking me all they want.

 

[napanutt]

I’m not important enough in the world for anyone to really give a fuck what I have to say….so they can waste their time tracking me all they want.

If you spend money on goods and services you’re important.