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Your Phone Number Is Compromised - The Sovereign Computing Show (SOV005)

Tuesday, February 18, 2025

You might not realize it but your phone number is undermining your privacy and digital sovereignty. In this episode of the Sovereign computing show, Jordan Bravo and Stephen DeLorme discuss the problems with the typical setup that most of use have with phone numbers, SIM cards, & cellular data. Then they detail steps you can take to fix the problem by decoupling phone numbers from service providers, using VoIP numbers, eSIMs, and other tools.

Chapters

  • 00:00 Embracing the Sovereign Computing Mindset
  • 00:50 Introduction to the Sovereign Computing Show
  • 01:05 Sponsorship and Community at ATL BitLab
  • 02:12 Discussion on UK Government's Demand to Apple
  • 04:56 Importance of Open Source and Decentralized Trust
  • 08:17 Approaching Phone Numbers in a Self-Sovereign Manner
  • 09:53 Decoupling Phone Numbers from Identity
  • 16:07 Using JMP.chat for Private Phone Numbers
  • 21:30 Privacy-Respecting Cellular Data Providers
  • 23:08 Switching to eSIM: A Simple Guide
  • 23:45 Privacy-Preserving Payment Methods
  • 24:14 Using Virtual Debit Cards for Privacy
  • 24:57 Challenges with Prepaid Visa Cards
  • 26:38 Mint Mobile: Data and Phone Number Separation
  • 27:24 Exploring Other Providers: US Mobile and Silent Link
  • 30:54 The Importance of Owning Your Phone
  • 32:38 Recap and Final Thoughts
  • 38:07 Listener Boosts and Feedback
  • 39:48 Closing Remarks and Support

Links

Transcript

[00:00:00]

Jordan Bravo: Welcome to the Sovereign Computing Show, presented by ATL BitLab. I'm Jordan Bravo, and this is a podcast where we teach you how to take back control of your devices. Sovereign Computing means you own your technology, not the other way around.

Stephen DeLorme: This episode is sponsored by ATL BitLab. ATL BitLab is Atlanta's freedom tech hacker space. We have co working desks, conference rooms, event space, maker tools, and tons of coffee. There is a very active community here in the lab. Every Wednesday night is Bitcoin night here in Atlanta. We also have meetups for cyber security, artificial intelligence, decentralized identity, product design, and more.

We offer day passes and nomad passes for people who need to use the lab only occasionally, as well as memberships for people who plan to use the lab more regularly, such as myself. One of the best things about having a BitLab membership isn't the amenities, it's the people. Surrounding yourself with a community helps you learn faster and helps you build better.

[00:01:00] Your creativity becomes amplified when you work in this space, that's what I think at least. If you're interested in becoming a member or supporting this space, please visit us at atlbitlab. com. That's A T L B I T L A B dot com. Alright, on to our show.

Jordan Bravo: Welcome to the Sovereign Computing Show. I'm Jordan Bravo and I'm here today with Stephen DeLorme.

Stephen DeLorme: Hey, how's it going?

Jordan Bravo: Today we're going to start off by looking at an article that came out in February of 2025.

And this is entitled UK secretly orders Apple to let it spy on iPhone users worldwide.

Stephen DeLorme: That's a week ago as of this recording. It's fresh.

Jordan Bravo: Yeah. So this just happened in the past week. And the gist of the article is that the UK government is demanding that Apple insert a back door into iOS on the iPhone.

[00:02:00] That would allow the UK government to basically. Break through the encryption and read all of the user data at any time on demand. Now, Apple is not allowed to comment on this. It's illegal for them to even bring this to light, but the way that the report was. leaked, was through a, according to this, a White House security advisor who confirmed the existence of the order.

So that's about the entire gist of the article. A couple more things. Apple does not, is not allowed to delay complying with the order while the appeal is ongoing and they are appealing it. So they have to act pretty quickly and

I think that's the major gist of it.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah, that sounds about right. It's a little scary. The author of this article thinks that they're probably going to go ahead with it. So for the UK government [00:03:00] to just compel apple to give all, give up all user data globally, that seems like a little bit of an overreach, to put it mildly. But the compromise here might just be okay. We will hand over all the user data to you for UK citizens. Which still wouldn't be good. And, it was funny kind of watching in the comments for this article, people say, Oh, maybe they'll just pull out of the UK.

And it's I don't know. I feel like if you're the CEO of a publicly traded company, you kind of have like a fiduciary responsibility to your shareholders. And I can't imagine I don't know. That's a really tough sell. It'd be like, we're going to pull out of an entire market just for a principal.

Jordan Bravo: Yeah, I'm trying to think what would the revenue loss be if they completely cut themselves off from the UK market? I don't have an answer to that. I'm just thinking of how many billions of dollars that would be lost revenue

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah, because some countries don't use iPhone as much and so

like, you know

latin America [00:04:00] and like India and Asia, I think the Androids are much more common.

I imagine the UK is probably also a big iPhone market. That would be quite a hit for a company.

Jordan Bravo: What are the takeaways from this article that we in the sovereign computing realm Should care about or would care about?

Stephen DeLorme: If you're, relying on somebody else's server, then, you're a little bit at their mercy. I think it highlights the importance of open source.

If you are concerned about the encryption, the privacy of your messages, cause even though I like Apple personally, and they certainly talk a big game about privacy. We have to take their word for it. And like I've said before, I think they have a financial incentive outside of selling data.

Even if they have the best of intentions it doesn't matter to some degree because somebody can come in and compel them to, to change that. So that's another thing that highlights the importance of open source, I [00:05:00] think.

Jordan Bravo: And for me, that's the crux of the issue.

Apple is a single point of failure in this instance. And even if they, like you said, had the best of intentions and they don't want to, they might be compelled to by the UK government, such that they do have to basically violate the compact they made with their users when their users thought they were getting end to end encryption.

If you were to, what would an alternative look like? An alternative scenario would be an open source, open protocol with end to end encryption. That is not controlled by a single entity, or if it is controlled by a single entity that could be easily ported to another client. So for example, the UK government, they can go after Apple because Apple is an incorporated entity, a legal entity, but you can't go after PGP because PGP, for example, is just a protocol it's an encryption algorithm.

And you can't stop it. We [00:06:00] know that back in the nineties, the government, the US government actually did try to stop PGP and ultimately they failed.

Stephen DeLorme: And now they're recommending we use it.

Jordan Bravo: Exactly. So this is a good, I would say it's a good example of why you want to go with things where you're not putting all of your trust in a company to do what's right, or to not be compelled by a government or some other entity.

Stephen DeLorme: But rather going with an option where there is no one that can be compelled, it's a decentralized trust model, let's say,

Some services have warrant canaries, which for anyone listening, who's never heard of these are like services, like a message you put on your website that might say something like we have never been asked by a government agency to hand over user data.

Stephen DeLorme: Because they might not be in a situation where if it's like a secret order, they're not allowed to say that a government agency asked them for user data, but they are allowed to say we have [00:07:00] never been asked by a government agency for user data. And then if they are asked, they can take that thing off of their website.

Long winded way of saying, that'd be hilarious if Apple had a warrant canary on their website. If like beautiful, like pristine Apple website, like if you scrolled all the way down to the bottom of the page, had like a warrant canary at the bottom or something like that'd be cool.

Jordan Bravo: Yeah, I would like to see the combination of Apple aesthetics and the cypher punk ethos.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Jordan Bravo: Okay. I think we've said all there is to say about this article today, what we're going to talk about is tangentially related to Apple in that the iMessage encryption that's used by default for iPhone users is tied to your phone number.

And what we're going to talk about today is. How to approach phone numbers in a more self sovereign manner. First, what are the problems with phone numbers? There's [00:08:00] a one, there's a finite number of phone numbers, which means, there's what, 10 digits in a phone number. So there's only a certain number of phone numbers that can be generated.

They can only be generated by centralized entities, the phone companies, whereas compare this to emails and domain names, right? There's a near infinite number of domain names and near infinite number of email addresses within those domain names. And they're. Relatively easy to spin up and they're exceedingly cheap for any individual to acquire Dozens of them or hundreds of them if they so choose whereas phone numbers you have to Get you have to rent a phone number from an entity that is tasked with Holding them and buying them.

They're handed out. I think in the u. s they're regulated by the FCC the phone numbers themselves and then the You Telecom companies rent those phone numbers out or buy them in bulk. And then [00:09:00] we, as the consumers, we rent them. We get them for a period of time, but we don't actually own them.

The next problem with phone numbers is that they are intimately tied to our identities, but they don't have to be the way that most of us use them naively. So what we go to our phone, excuse me, we go to our mobile provider, let's say one of these big telecoms like AT& T, Verizon, et cetera.

And we say, I want the following company. I want a phone, I want a phone number, and I want data. And I'm going to pay you with my credit card, or you're going to bill me. And here's all of my user data, my, my name, my address, my credit card, my, typically you have to have a bank account and, billing options and all that

If any of you listened to our previous episode about email and about decoupling email, this is a similar concept where, A [00:10:00] single provider is acting as multiple services for you.

So the phone number consists of, or a phone provider consists of multiple things where you can't, the person who is issuing the phone number to you, that you're renting it from, that doesn't have to be the same entity that you are getting your data from. In other words, your SIM card, and then that doesn't have to be the same entity either as as you're getting your device from and typically people just get it the all three from the same entity. So we're going to talk about how to decouple those today and the benefits that will provide and specific tools you can use to do that.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah, and I don't know if this is maybe a little bit of a distraction, but maybe it might be worth a throwback to the mess of the episode about private messaging.

I know you were worried after that episode that you came across like too much of a Signal fanboy and that we didn't spend time addressing the controversy of Signal requiring a phone [00:11:00] number, which kind of relates to this.

Jordan Bravo: And so in the Cypherpunk and Sovereign Computing community, Signal is criticized, and rightly so, for acquiring a U. S., or rather, any phone number in order to sign up for their service. And the reason is that for a lot of people, it's very difficult to acquire a phone number in a private manner. In other countries, I know it's even more difficult. In the U. S., we don't have it quite as tightly regulated. But for the average person, they would have no idea how to get a private phone number, I would guess.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah.

Jordan Bravo: And so by with Signal requiring a phone number, those of you who are using Signal, you can actually benefit from decoupling your phone number even further, because you can use a whole separate number just for your Signal registration, and that's not going to be tied to your identity in any way.

So you can have a pretty private and self sovereign communication stack right there using a Private [00:12:00] number and signal that's registered with.

Stephen DeLorme: So I

uh,

read

uh,

the art of invisibility by Kevin Mitnick, the famous hacker, read several of his books and art of invisibility is like a guide to privacy.

It's about 10 years old at this point. So it might be, there's, I'm sure there's some technical details that's getting a little bit dated, but he talks about private phone numbers in his book. And one of the first things he talks about is. Basically if I remember correctly going to I don't know, find some gas station or something to go find that sells cell phones buying it there with cash, but then raises the concern like well, you're on security's camera. So then goes into this whole story about you could find a homeless person and you could pay them in cash. And as long as the phone isn't too expensive and you agree to pay them enough to perform the task for you, then the homeless person can just go and buy the phone for you.

Sounds a little strange, but I guess that's a possibility. Or then goes as far as to suggest I think even telling somebody like, Hey, look, I really need [00:13:00] to buy a phone, but like my ex works in that store and I don't want things to be awkward. Can you, I'll pay you to go into that store and buy me a cell phone with this cash.

I don't want them to see my name on the card either. Just like we're, it's, if you really don't want to be seen buying a cell phone on a security camera, I guess that's the steps you have to do. Is that what we're getting into today.

Jordan Bravo: We have some better options than that.

One more thing I wanted to point out is so buying it with a mask and in the post COVID era where it's become socially acceptable to wear a mask.

All the time in public people in the cypherpunk and privacy communities, they say, take advantage of that, put on a COVID mask and go into a cell phone store with a hat on and sunglasses and a COVID mask. And nobody's going to blink twice and you can just buy it with cash and that's pretty private, but that is not what I'm recommending today.

We have much better methods. You don't have to actually physically go anywhere.

Stephen DeLorme: I think what might be important to maybe [00:14:00] address first is that In addition to having the phone number of the data, you first need a phone that's compatible with that stuff, right?

Like you need a phone where you could swap out the SIM card, I would imagine, right?

Jordan Bravo: That's right. Let's talk about the hardware

first. You're gonna want a phone that supports eSIMs. E SIM, I think the E stands for electronic, because it's not a actual physical SIM card that you have to slip in there.

It's whatever chip is in SIM cards, it's just built into the phone and you can actually reprogram it with different numbers. So make sure that your phone supports eSIM. That's ESIM. Typically the E is lowercase and SIM is all ca uppercase and most modern phone smartphones have this feature. I know that the iPhone does.

I know that the Google Pixel does probably Samsung's latest phone does. . But once you have a phone that is compatible with eSIMs. [00:15:00] What you want to do next is let's go through how to get a phone number because you might, you probably already have a phone number and you're probably already getting data through that same provider that issued you that phone number.

So let's first talk about how you can add a phone number without tying it to the data. My favorite recommendation for this one is a service called jmp. chat. And what jmp. chat does Is they issue phone numbers, but it's over, over the internet. So you can think of these as VoIP numbers.

And it uses the XMPP protocol. The XMPP protocol is a open messaging protocol. If you remember back in the day, it might've been called Jabber. And Google talk was actually built on top of XMPP. Google talk had its heyday. And then now I guess people don't really use it that much.

But that's what JMP. chat is using under the hood. [00:16:00] And with JMP. chat, you can buy as many phone numbers as you want. You probably want to start out with one just to get the hang of it, but you might want multiple. You can use one for, let's say, So you for when you sign up for a business, maybe your doctor's office, that kind of thing.

Maybe a third one that you expect spam to that you can give out more easily. And with JMP. chat you can pay for it in a private fashion. So they accept credit cards and debit cards the same way as most people. But you can also pay for it with Bitcoin. And for me that's my favorite. They even accept lightning, I believe We are now looking at the JMP dot chat website for those of you who are just listening and Stephen is browsing around showing some of the flow, but once you have that number picked out and you pay for it, you [00:17:00] can then put it on any device when I say any device.

Any device. You are not tied to a single phone. This can run on your laptop, it can run on your Android, iOS, et cetera, and you can have it on multiple devices. So if you've ever enjoyed the feature of the Apple ecosystem where your iPhone and your Mac OS laptop or desktop have a good syncing where somebody text messages you and it pops up on both your phone and your computer at the same time.

You can get that with JMP. chat. And that's because you can install the client on your laptop, let's say, and you also have it running on your phone. And it'll sync across both. So right there, what you've gained is the ability to decouple the phone, the text message client from the device itself. And you've decoupled your phone number from your identity.

Stephen DeLorme: And so I got some questions on that. So XMPP and [00:18:00] Jabber, are those synonyms?

Jordan Bravo: They are, yes.

Stephen DeLorme: And so I can get a Jabber client, which is a piece of software that speaks to Jabber protocol and I could get it for a phone or I can get it for a desktop. And then I guess, let me see if my understanding of how this works with SIMs and all of that.

So like in the U. S. I would, pay for a SIM card. And I might come bundled with the phone and the plan I buy it with, or I might buy the phone hardware by the SIM card separately loaded onto the eSIM. Now, at that point, I'm basically paying for a plan and in the U S it's going to be, it's going to have a certain number of SMS messages, a certain number of phone minutes, maybe unlimited even.

And then there's going to be data. And so typically, I think the phone communications are going over a different protocol than the data. I might be wrong on that, but so there, it has a data plan and it like measures minutes versus like [00:19:00] gigabytes of like data transfer a little bit differently, I think on the plan.

With JMP, if I were to install that on my phone, instead of going to the regular phone app, I would go to the JMP app or another Jabber compatible application. And when I make a call, it's actually going over data or it's going over Wi Fi. But the point is it's going over internet communications.

It's not using the like traditional cellular calling technologies.

Jordan Bravo: That's right. It's using VoIP, voice over IP. And so it might be, might make it clear if I give the following example. You could sign up for a JMP dot chat number and never use a phone. Let's say you don't even own a phone. You could just sign up for it, pay, and then install the client on your laptop.

And you could text and voice call through the JMP client. So it's actually not going over the traditional. Telephone, telecom, rails.

Stephen DeLorme: Could I, just out of curiosity, could I use JMP to get a signal number as well? [00:20:00] Or to get a signal username?

Jordan Bravo: Absolutely. I do that. Huh.

Stephen DeLorme: Very cool.

Jordan Bravo: So that, that is the number part.

And the ability to text and call over that number. Now, remember you have to have internet. So if you're on your laptop, you have to be connected to wifi or whatever. And let's say you are on your phone. Let's say you were on a phone that didn't have a SIM card. You could be on wifi on that phone and still be browsing the web, using GMP.

But let's talk about the SIM card itself. And what is the point of the SIM card? The SIM card is for actually getting data. So the SIM card isn't necessary for the phone number, as we've just demonstrated with JMP, but the SIM card is necessary to get cellular data. And so what you can do is you can get a cellular data provider that is more privacy respecting in that you don't have to completely KYC yourself and sign up for it by having reoccurring billing and, [00:21:00] your full name and number and blood type and firstborn child and all that. And a couple, I'm going to give a couple of.

Recommendations here. The first is Mint Mobile. A lot of people have heard of Mint Mobile. It's got Ryan Reynolds as the owner slash he's in the commercials. He's advertising it. It's a prepaid plan. And Mint Mobile is one of these companies that's referred to as an MVNO, Mobile Virtual Network Operator, and that's just a fancy term for a company that they overlay their network on top of one of the main networks.

The main networks in the United States are AT& T Verizon, and what's the third one?

Stephen DeLorme: Would it be T Mobile maybe?

Jordan Bravo: T Mobile, thank you. So those three own the infrastructure, and then you have all these other companies that buy or rent. Bandwidth on them and then they resell it [00:22:00] to consumers. So mint that's what mint mobile does.

They're typically a lot less expensive and there are typically much more friendly to privacy.

Stephen DeLorme: And so if I go here, I'm going to, I can prepay for a SIM card of a certain quantity. And then I guess I could just go to a met mobile store since you said you don't even actually have to replace the physical chip.

I could just go to the mobile store and they would take care of it there.

Jordan Bravo: Even better. You don't have to go to a store. You can do it all from the website. If you have an eSIM . You simply, you create the account, you pay for it, and then they give you a certain code . And they give you instructions and they say, okay, go into your phone settings, go to eSIM settings, put this code in, and you're up and running.

Stephen DeLorme: Oh, very cool.

Jordan Bravo: No need to go to a store, no need to wear a covid mask and sunglasses, or ask a homeless person to do it for you. . Now the, when you pay for it. If [00:23:00] you are using your traditional credit or debit card, there is a link there to your data. So your identity is being coupled with your data.

There's a couple of approaches there. One of them is using a virtual debit card provider. This is one called Privacy, Pay with Privacy. The website is privacy. com. And this is a really great service. We don't have time to go over all the details today. But if you're not familiar with privacy. com, essentially you sign up for free and connect your debit account and then you get unlimited virtual debit cards that you can spin up with any name, any address.

So you can, if you have an account with privacy. com, you then go over to Mint Mobile and when it comes time to pay, you just use a virtual card and you put in some nonsense for the name and address and Boom. That's a pretty private way to do it. If you wanted to get even more private about it, there's a little bit less convenience here, but you can purchase with cash at a grocery [00:24:00] store or whatever.

You prepaid visa cards, and then you can use those prepaid visa cards on net mobile.

And that's a really good way of decoupling your identity.

Stephen DeLorme: And I agree with that. But one thing I have noticed is I have observed over the past several years, like, like I feel like 10 years ago, you could just go buy gift cards, visa gift cards for cash, but now I feel like even for small amount ones, they want to see your driver's license and stuff like that.

Jordan Bravo: It's weird how these KYC sort of rules are arbitrarily enforced that. Various merchants.

Stephen DeLorme: I think it has to do sometimes with state laws, city laws, all that kind of stuff. It may also have to do with a merchants like internal loss prevention things like there might be something that's like totally legal to sell something a certain way, but if they have a, if they know that it might statistically be involved in like a scam later on down the line, then they're going to put controls in place to try and prevent it.

Um, like I remember like when I used to work at GameStop a long time ago, it's like we had to be real like cautious [00:25:00] about people trying to resell us games that they stole from Best Buy and stuff like that. So there was all kind of like internal controls and policies in place about like, you know, the game has to be unwrapped.

And it's like, you know, you can't, it can't be wrapped when it comes in our store, buy it because if it is wrapped, that might be a signal. And it's not illegal to buy a wrapped game. It might be a signal that it was stolen. And then you're going to have to deal with the legal overhead later on of a detective coming to your store and blah, blah, blah.

So yeah, it could be loss prevention, state law, federal law, who knows.

Jordan Bravo: That makes sense. So going back to Mint Mobile you can go that route. You could try with visa cards, with prepaid visa cards. That's a little bit too inconvenient for most people, but I would say even if you're paying for it with a traditional card that's tied to your name, this is still a huge step up.

Because as we're going to see, once you get that Mint Mobile eSIM activated, you then have data on your phone. Mint Mobile is going to give you a phone number too, but the trick [00:26:00] here, and this is very important, do not use that phone number for anything. In fact, just forget that it even exists. Don't write it down.

I mean, sure. It's going to be in your Mint mobile account, but pretend that it doesn't exist and then don't give it to anybody. Now you're only going to use your JMP phone number. Or if you get it from somewhere else, wherever, whatever VOIP number you've got, that's your phone number that you will use for people to contact you, et cetera.

The Mint Mobile is strictly for the data. And so that's how you're going to get your mobile data. So now you've got your data, your phone and your phone number, and these are all decoupled from each other. Before we move on to a different topic, I want to say on the topic of These providers, there are two more.

So Mint Mobile is one that we talked about. US Mobile is another one. I've also used this and they are pretty good. They have decent prices and privacy respecting. In all other aspects, they're very similar to Mint Mobile. So if you were to, if you're interested in doing this one, it's the same [00:27:00] process.

And then the last provider I want to, data provider I want to talk about is called Silent Link. And that is that. Silent dot link. And this one is, this is taking it a step up with your privacy. This was created by a real cypher punk guy. I don't even know his real name. He's appeared on podcasts, but he's got a thick Russian accent and he talks about he's, he says that he's been in the telecom industry for a long time and he knows how it works.

And the idea here is so you can do the same thing that we just talked about with Buying your data, your E SIM from either Mint Mobile or US Mobile. But you, this one is really focused on privacy. You can pay with Bitcoin, including Lightning. You can pay with Monero USDT or any crypto as they say on their website.

Of course, I have tried with on chain Bitcoin. I've tried it with Lightning. I've not tried it with anything else. And on [00:28:00] top of being able to pay with Bitcoin. It uses a special feature of the network where it is roaming, which sounds like this harkens back to when we had to pay for our long distance calling or roaming, it's like, Oh no, I'm on roaming.

It's going to be expensive. Nowadays that doesn't really mean the same thing, but what the benefit of being on roaming is that the U S telecom infrastructure is They actually don't have legal access to roaming user data.

So

Stephen DeLorme: What ?

Jordan Bravo: Yeah, so normally like if you buy it from Mint Mobile uh, when you if, if the, let's say NSA or, or CIA or, or FBI, some three letter agency wants to surveil and they say, Hey, we're just gonna blanket surveil this.

And we have this cell phone tower in the middle of downtown Atlanta, and we just want to see everything coming through. They can identify all the different companies that each phone number is associated with. That one's AT& T, that [00:29:00] one's Verizon, that one's T Mobile. And then if they need to, they can knock on T Mobile's door, metaphorically speaking, and they can say, Hey, give us all of the data on this, on the user that's associated with this phone number.

When you use a silent Link, they can't do that. They see that it's owned by some foreign entity. And that entity is in Eastern Europe, I think. And they don't have any recourse there.

And I see they also will sell you one that have a no number.

That's right. And that's actually the one that I get.

So I do the data only, which is really nice. It's it's 9 one time and then you refill your balance as you go. And I would say that it's a pretty good experience. The only downside is that it's a little bit slower than Mint Mobile or US Mobile that I've noticed. But I'm sticking with it for now.

And if I find that it's too slow for me in the future, maybe I'll go back to one of those others.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah. Yeah. Huh. That's really cool. [00:30:00] I'm just looking at the website for anybody listening. Huh. That is really cool.

Jordan Bravo: So let's recap real quick on the different pieces there because we threw a lot of information out there.

So it might be overwhelming, but the idea here is you're going to have three different sources that you're getting the physical phone from and you can buy, Oh, we didn't really talk about that, but in case people don't know, you can buy a phone pretty much anywhere. You can go to best buying, you can pay with cash, get one brand new.

You can buy one online. But the idea is the more private, the better, and you don't, what you don't want to do is be renting your phone from your mobile provider.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah. Cause that's probably, you probably can't even change the eSIM if you're still on a payment plan, right?

Jordan Bravo: Yeah. And most providers lock their phone.

So when you go to buy a phone, make sure you're getting the unlocked [00:31:00] one. It's. Very common. So this isn't like something that you'll have trouble finding, but just make sure you specify that it's the unlocked version.

Stephen DeLorme: Got it. Got it.

Jordan Bravo: So, So there's the physical phone. That's one piece of the puzzle.

There's going to JMP dot chat, and that's getting you a VoIP number. Again you can use other VoIP providers. I just find that JMP is far above the best one because they have really great pricing and they're very privacy respecting and they're versatile too. You can use it on nearly any device.

And then, so that's the second leg of the stool. And then the third leg of the stool is the data itself. And that's going to be through the provider that we just talked about, whether that's Mint Mobile, US Mobile, Silent Link, or I'm sure there are others out there as well.

Stephen DeLorme: That seems like a pretty good stack for taking back the phone privacy there.

It doesn't actually sound that hard when you lay it all out.

Jordan Bravo: And this is incredibly powerful because normally the way, when you have the, [00:32:00] All three pieces from the same provider who knows your identity as most of us do, until we go down this sovereign computing journey, your phone number is an incredibly sensitive piece of data.

And we don't even really think of it that way. So we give it out willy nilly and it's all over the place. So it's really easy to, your phone number is basically like an ID number for you. And it's used everywhere. It's in all kinds of databases. So you can just imagine that if your phone number is sitting there with.

Your name and your email address. Those three things are almost like a fingerprint that can be used to identify you in any technology space.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah. I imagine the hard part for some people might be the appeal of that low monthly payment on a provider's uh, phone plan where, you know, you're looking at the price of a new, a brand new phone and it's a thousand dollars plus, and then you.

See one, it's like, oh well, it's a plan. And it's it's only 30 a month and it seems a lot more appealing and, it might be locked down [00:33:00] and all that, but, you know, privacy will um, come at a cost. Good things will come at a cost. So that that, that, that seems like the first hump to get over is just, owning your hardware outright instead of being on a rental thing.

And then, from there, it just seems okay, all you got to do is Choose. Do you want to buy your eSIM data? Where do you want to get that from? Do you want to get it from that mobile or us mobile or silent link? And then, get a JMP dot chat number. And then do you find like paying for these services?

I imagine that since a lot of this is, you know, Um, some of these services, except Bitcoin and all that, it's probably much more difficult to do like automated payments and all that.

Jordan Bravo: Yeah I, you pay in advance, so I'm topping it up. The first time I did it for the prepaid data, I bought three months worth because I didn't know if I would like it.

That's the minimum amount for mint. And then after I had a wonderful experience after three months, I said, you know what? I'm just going to buy a year's worth. [00:34:00] And you get a discount and then you don't have to think about it for a year.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah. And so if that doesn't sound too hard, it's one of those things we really, that's the next piece of like modern convenience.

You have to forsake a little bit. Um, And uh, uh, to, to go on this part of the journey, like you have to, you know, be like, okay well, I'm going to sacrifice a little bit of convenience in terms of just, you know, sleeping easy at night, knowing that all my bills are being automatically paid off by credit card.

And instead you have to I guess put calendar alarms for a year in the future or like 11 months in the future to reminder, pay off, pay for met noble, reminder, pay for JMP dot chat, these kinds of things.

Jordan Bravo: That's right. And. Mint mobile and others will message you. You can set your threshold for when you have X number of minutes or data remaining, it'll message you or not even data, because if it's unlimited and it's a time based thing, it'll message you and say, Hey, your thing expires in one week.

Do you want to renew? [00:35:00] So they do make it a little easier, but there's no doubt that it's less convenient than just having re reoccurring billing where it's completely automated. But going back to the thing about renting versus owning, this is something I would encourage everybody to really embrace the sovereign computing mindset, which is the opposite of the world economic forum mindset.

You will own nothing and be happy. In sovereign computing, you will own. Everything that you have uh, purchased, you know, you will, you will own what you, what you've earned. And so you're giving up a lot when you rent these devices from AT& T and these other providers and you say, you know what, I'm going to just be totally a slave to AT& T.

I'm going to be locked in. And what do I get out of it? I get to upgrade 12 months or so

Stephen DeLorme: Whoa, upgrades!

Jordan Bravo: Yeah. It's like they're dangling this. This little toy in front of us and saying, [00:36:00] Hey, don't worry about all of your data and being locked in and censored and surveilled. Like you get a shiny new phone every 12 months and we're just lapping it up so you can hear from my tone.

I have a little bit of disdain, a little bit of disdain for this approach, but I just think they're treating us like children. So let's. Let's act like adults. Let's reclaim some of our dignity. Let's own the things that we use all the time. We don't have to rent everything. We don't always need the latest shiny.

And Hey, maybe you are into the latest phone. You want the latest phone every year. That's fine. Just buy a new one and sell your old one. Remember when we used to do that?

Stephen DeLorme: Do you think this guy got an AT& T upgrade?

Jordan Bravo: I think he got uh, Yeah, he looks like he's happy with his latest model phone.

Stephen DeLorme: We're looking at the world economic forum.

You'll own nothing and you'll be happy for people just listening. It's a very happy kind of brainwashed guy smiling into the camera.

Jordan Bravo: Yeah. So I'll get off my soapbox now, but that's me preaching the sovereign computing mindset and approach. So technology can only get us so [00:37:00] far if we don't choose to.

Enact any of these approaches where we're not going to be able to take back any of our self sufficiency, self sovereignty and dignity in computing.

Stephen DeLorme: That sounds good. And that sounds easier than I thought. So I'm curious to start playing around with JMP now.

Jordan Bravo: Let's go to boosts.

Do we have any boost today?

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah.

Let's navigate to fountain. fm, which is where you can boost in. You can boost in from any podcast. 2. 0 enabled app, but this is quite an easy interface to use. The go to one. You go to fountain. fm or any podcast 2. 0 player. You search for ATL bit lab podcast. Let me double check because I might need to go back to a couple of episodes here.

So I think we already read the boosts from episode one, reclaiming your digital freedom, let me double check if any materialized on episode 2 mastering calendars and contacts. We did get one boost. [00:38:00]

Jordan Bravo: All right. Keith Sharp boosts in with 21, 212 stats. And Keith says, All right, all right, all right. Good content, fellas.

And then he posts a link to the Fountain FM

Stephen DeLorme: I think that's the episode we're on. Ah, okay. He just wanted to make sure we knew what episode we were saying was, he was saying was good content. Sweet. Thanks, Keith.

Jordan Bravo: Yes. Thank you, Keith, for your boost. And thank you for those of you who streamed in as well.

Boost in and let us know, what did you think about today's episode? What do you think about the topic? Are you interested in moving to a more decoupled phone number experience? Are you going to try any of these self sovereign steps? Does it seem like too much work? Does it seem too confusing? Boost in and let us know.

You can do that again on fountain. fm and search for the ATL BitLab podcast, or you can go to atlbitlab. com slash podcast. And you can see all of the info there. You can donate as well.

Stephen DeLorme: Awesome. [00:39:00] Anything else any final closing thoughts before we wrap up or.

Jordan Bravo: That's it.

Thanks everybody. See you next time.

Stay sovereign.

Stephen DeLorme: Yup, later.

Hey, thanks for listening. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you want to learn more about anything that we discussed, you can look for links in the show notes that should be in your podcast player, or you can go to atlbitlab. com slash podcast. On a final note, if you found this information useful and you want to help support us, you can always send us a tip in Bitcoin.

Your support really helps us so that we can keep bringing you content like this. All right. Catch you later.