February 18, 2025 • 40 mins
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.
Show Notes: https://atlbitlab.com/podcast/your-phone-number-is-compromised
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
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jordan Bravo (00:00):
I would encourage everybody to really embrace the sovereign
(00:02):
computing mindset, which is the oppositeof the world economic forum mindset.
You will own nothing and be happy.
In sovereign computing, youwill own what you've earned.
And so you're giving up a lot whenyou rent these devices from AT&T
and these other providers and yousay, you know what, I'm going to
(00:25):
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 my phoneevery 12 months or so
Stephen DeLorme (00:34):
Whoa, upgrades!
Jordan Bravo (00:36):
Yeah.
It's like they're dangling this littletoy in front of us and saying, "Hey, don't
worry about all of your data and beinglocked in and censored and surveilled.
Like you get a shiny new phone every 12months" and we're just lapping it up.
Welcome to the Sovereign ComputingShow, presented by ATL BitLab.
I'm Jordan Bravo, and this is apodcast where we teach you how to
(00:58):
take back control of your devices.
Sovereign Computing means you own yourtechnology, not the other way around.
Stephen DeLorme (01:06):
This episode is sponsored by ATL BitLab.
ATL BitLab is Atlanta'sfreedom tech hacker space.
We have co working desks,conference rooms, event space,
maker tools, and tons of coffee.
There is a very activecommunity here in the lab.
Every Wednesday night isBitcoin night here in Atlanta.
We also have meetups for cyber security,artificial intelligence, decentralized
(01:26):
identity, product design, and more.
We offer day passes and nomad passesfor people who need to use the lab only
occasionally, as well as membershipsfor people who plan to use the lab
more regularly, such as myself.
One of the best things abouthaving a BitLab membership isn't
the amenities, it's the people.
Surrounding yourself with acommunity helps you learn faster
and helps you build better.
(01:48):
Your creativity becomes amplifiedwhen you work in this space,
that's what I think at least.
If you're interested in becominga 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 (02:05):
Welcome to the Sovereign Computing Show.
I'm Jordan Bravo and I'm heretoday with Stephen DeLorme.
Stephen DeLorme (02:10):
Hey, how's it going?
Jordan Bravo (02:12):
Today we're going to start off by looking at an article
that came out in February of 2025.
And this is entitled UK secretlyorders Apple to let it spy
on iPhone users worldwide.
Stephen DeLorme (02:24):
That's a week ago as of this recording.
It's fresh.
Jordan Bravo (02:28):
Yeah.
So this just happened in the past week.
And the gist of the article is that theUK government is demanding that Apple
insert a back door into iOS on the iPhone.
That would allow the UKgovernment to basically.
(02:48):
Break through the encryption and read allof the user data at any time on demand.
Now, Apple is not allowedto comment on this.
It's illegal for them to even bring thisto light, but the way that the report was.
leaked, was through a, according tothis, a White House security advisor who
(03:11):
confirmed the existence of the order.
So that's about the entiregist of the article.
A couple more things.
Apple does not, is not allowed to delaycomplying with the order while the appeal
is ongoing and they are appealing it.
So they have to act pretty quickly and
(03:34):
I think that's the major gist of it.
Stephen DeLorme (03:37):
Yeah, that sounds about right.
It's a little scary.
The author of this articlethinks that they're probably
going to go ahead with it.
So for the UK government to just compelapple to give all, give up all user
data globally, that seems like a littlebit of an overreach, to put it mildly.
But the compromise heremight just be okay.
We will hand over all the userdata to you for UK citizens.
(04:00):
Which still wouldn't be good.
And, it was funny kind of watching in thecomments 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 ofa publicly traded company, you
kind of have like a fiduciaryresponsibility 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 ofan entire market just for a principal.
Jordan Bravo (04:24):
Yeah, I'm trying to think what would the revenue
loss be if they completely cutthemselves off from the UK market?
I don't have an answer to that.
I'm just thinking of how many billionsof dollars that would be lost revenue
Stephen DeLorme (04:39):
Yeah, because some countries don't use iPhone as much and so
like, you know
latin America and like India and Asia, Ithink the Androids are much more common.
I imagine the UK is probablyalso a big iPhone market.
That would be quite a hit for a company.
Jordan Bravo (04:56):
What are the takeaways from this article that we in the
sovereign computing realm Shouldcare about or would care about?
Stephen DeLorme (05:07):
If you're, relying on somebody else's server, then,
you're a little bit at their mercy.
Um, I think it highlights theimportance of open source.
If you are concerned about the encryption,the privacy of your messages, cause even
though I like Apple personally, and theycertainly talk a big game about privacy.
We have to take their word for it.
(05:28):
And like I've said before, Ithink they have a financial
incentive outside of selling data.
Even if they have the best ofintentions it doesn't matter to some
degree because somebody can come inand compel them to, to change that.
So that's another thing that highlightsthe importance of open source, I think.
Jordan Bravo (05:46):
And for me, that's the crux of the issue.
Apple is a single point offailure in this instance.
And even if they, like you said, had thebest of intentions and they don't want
to, they might be compelled to by theUK government, such that they do have to
basically violate the compact they madewith their users when their users thought
they were getting end to end encryption.
(06:08):
If you were to, what wouldan alternative look like?
An alternative scenario wouldbe an open source, open protocol
with end to end encryption.
That is not controlled by a singleentity, or if it is controlled
by a single entity that could beeasily ported to another client.
So for example, the UK government,they can go after Apple because Apple
(06:31):
is an incorporated entity, a legalentity, but you can't go after PGP
because PGP, for example, is just aprotocol it's an encryption algorithm.
And you can't stop it.
We know that back in the nineties,the government, the US government
actually did try to stop PGPand ultimately they failed.
Stephen DeLorme (06:53):
And now they're recommending we use it.
Jordan Bravo (06:56):
Exactly.
So this is a good, I would say it'sa good example of why you want to go
with things where you're not puttingall of your trust in a company to do
what's right, or to not be compelledby a government or some other entity.
But rather going with an optionwhere there is no one that can be
(07:17):
compelled, it's a decentralizedtrust model, let's say,
Stephen DeLorme (07:21):
Some services have warrant canaries, which for anyone
listening, who's never heard of theseare like services, like a message you put
on your website that might say somethinglike we have never been asked by a
government agency to hand over user data.
Because they might not be in asituation where if it's like a secret
order, they're not allowed to saythat a government agency asked them
(07:42):
for user data, but they are allowedto say we have never been asked by
a government agency for user data.
And then if they are asked, they cantake that thing off of their website.
Long winded way of saying, that'dbe hilarious if Apple had a
warrant canary on their website.
If like beautiful, like pristine Applewebsite, like if you scrolled all the
(08:03):
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 (08:08):
Yeah, I would like to see the combination of Apple
aesthetics and the cypher punk ethos.
Stephen DeLorme (08:13):
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
Jordan Bravo (08:17):
Okay.
I think we've said all there is to sayabout this article today, what we're
going to talk about is tangentiallyrelated to Apple in that the iMessage
encryption that's used by default foriPhone users is tied to your phone number.
And what we're goingto talk about today is.
(08:38):
How to approach phone numbersin a more self sovereign manner.
First, what are theproblems with phone numbers?
There's a one, there's a finite numberof phone numbers, which means, there's
what, 10 digits in a phone number.
So there's only a certain number ofphone numbers that can be generated.
They can only be generated bycentralized entities, the phone
(09:01):
companies, whereas compare thisto emails and domain names, right?
There's a near infinite number of domainnames and near infinite number of email
addresses within those domain names.
And they're.
Relatively easy to spin up and they'reexceedingly cheap for any individual
to acquire Dozens of them or hundredsof them if they so choose whereas phone
(09:25):
numbers you have to Get you have to renta 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 bythe FCC the phone numbers themselves and
then the You Telecom companies rent thosephone numbers out or buy them in bulk.
(09:45):
And then we, as theconsumers, we rent them.
We get them for a period of time,but we don't actually own them.
The next problem with phone numbers isthat they are intimately tied to our
identities, but they don't have to bethe way that most of us use them naively.
So what we go to our phone, excuseme, we go to our mobile provider,
(10:08):
let's say one of these big telecomslike AT& T, Verizon, et cetera.
And we say, I want the following company.
I want a phone, I want aphone number, and I want data.
And I'm going to pay you with my creditcard, or you're going to bill me.
And here's all of my user data, my,my name, my address, my credit card,
(10:33):
my, typically you have to have a bankaccount and, billing options and all that
If any of you listened to ourprevious episode about email and about
decoupling email, this is a similarconcept where, A single provider is
acting as multiple services for you.
So the phone number consists of, ora phone provider consists of multiple
(10:56):
things where you can't, the personwho is issuing the phone number to
you, that you're renting it from, thatdoesn't have to be the same entity
that you are getting your data from.
In other words, your SIM card, and thenthat doesn't have to be the same entity
either as as you're getting your devicefrom and typically people just get it
(11:16):
the all three from the same entity.
So we're going to talk about howto decouple those today and the
benefits that will provide andspecific tools you can use to do that.
Stephen DeLorme (11:27):
Yeah, and I don't know if this is maybe a little bit
of a distraction, but maybe it mightbe worth a throwback to the mess of
the episode about private messaging.
I know you were worried after thatepisode that you came across like
too much of a Signal fanboy and thatwe didn't spend time addressing the
controversy of Signal requiring a phonenumber, which kind of relates to this.
Jordan Bravo (11:48):
And so in the Cypherpunk and Sovereign Computing community, Signal is
criticized, and rightly so, for acquiringa U. S., or rather, any phone number
in order to sign up for their service.
And the reason is that for a lot ofpeople, it's very difficult to acquire
a phone number in a private manner.
(12:11):
In other countries, I knowit's even more difficult.
In the U. S., we don't haveit quite as tightly regulated.
But for the average person, theywould have no idea how to get a
private phone number, I would guess.
Stephen DeLorme (12:23):
Yeah.
Jordan Bravo (12:24):
And so by with Signal requiring a phone number, those of you
who are using Signal, you can actuallybenefit from decoupling your phone number
even further, because you can use a wholeseparate number just for your Signal
registration, and that's not going tobe tied to your identity in any way.
So you can have a pretty privateand, and self sovereign, uh,
(12:45):
communication stack right thereusing a Private number and
signal that's registered with.
Stephen DeLorme (12:51):
So I
uh,
read
uh,
the art of invisibility by KevinMitnick, the famous hacker, read
several of his books and art ofinvisibility 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'ssome technical details that's getting
a little bit dated, but he talks aboutprivate phone numbers in his book.
And one of the firstthings he talks about is.
(13:13):
Basically if I remember correctlygoing to I don't know, find some gas
station or something to go find thatsells cell phones buying it there with
cash, but then raises the concern likewell, you're on security's camera.
So then goes into this whole storyabout you could find a homeless
person and you could pay them in cash.
And as long as the phone isn'ttoo expensive and you agree to pay
(13:35):
them enough to perform the task foryou, then the homeless person can
just go and buy the phone for you.
Sounds a little strange, butI guess that's a possibility.
Or then goes as far as to suggest Ithink even telling somebody like, Hey,
look, I really need 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 gointo that store and buy me
(13:55):
a cell phone with this cash.
I don't want them to seemy name on the card either.
Just like we're, it's, if you reallydon't want to be seen buying a cell
phone on a security camera, I guessthat's the steps you have to do.
Is that what we're getting into today.
Jordan Bravo (14:09):
We have some better options than that.
One more thing I wanted to point outis so buying it with a mask and in
the post COVID era where it's becomesocially acceptable to wear a mask.
All the time in public people in thecypherpunk and privacy communities,
they say, take advantage of that,put on a COVID mask and go into
(14:31):
a cell phone store with a hat onand sunglasses and a COVID mask.
And nobody's going to blink twiceand you can just buy it with cash
and that's pretty private, but thatis not what I'm recommending today.
We have much better methods.
You don't have to actuallyphysically go anywhere.
Stephen DeLorme (14:47):
I think what might be important to maybe address first is that
In addition to having the phone numberof the data, you first need a phone
that's compatible with that stuff, right?
Like you need a phone where you could swapout the SIM card, I would imagine, right?
Jordan Bravo (15:00):
That's right.
Let's talk about the hardware
first.
You're gonna want a phonethat supports eSIMs.
E SIM, I think the E standsfor electronic, because it's
not a actual physical SIM cardthat 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 reprogramit with different numbers.
(15:22):
So make sure that yourphone supports eSIM.
That's ESIM.
Typically the E is lowercase and SIMis all ca uppercase and most modern
phone smartphones have this feature.
I know that the iPhone does.
I know that the Google Pixel doesprobably Samsung's latest phone does.
(15:44):
. But once you have a phonethat is compatible with eSIMs.
What you want to do next is let's gothrough how to get a phone number because
you might, you probably already have aphone number and you're probably already
getting data through that same providerthat issued you that phone number.
So let's first talk about howyou can add a phone number
without tying it to the data.
(16:07):
My favorite recommendation forthis 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 aopen messaging protocol.
(16:30):
If you remember back in the day,it might've been called Jabber.
And Google talk was actuallybuilt on top of XMPP.
Google talk had its heyday.
And then now I guess peopledon't really use it that much.
But that's what JMP.
chat is using under the hood.
And with JMP.
chat, you can buy as manyphone numbers as you want.
(16:54):
You probably want to start outwith 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 fora business, maybe your doctor's
office, that kind of thing.
Maybe a third one that you expect spamto that you can give out more easily.
And with JMP.
(17:14):
chat you can pay for itin a private fashion.
So they accept credit cards and debitcards 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 believeWe are now looking at the JMP dot
(17:35):
chat website for those of you who arejust listening and Stephen is browsing
around showing some of the flow, butonce you have that number picked out
and you pay for it, you can then putit on any device when I say any device.
Any device.
You are not tied to a single phone.
(17:56):
This can run on your laptop, it can runon your Android, iOS, et cetera, and
you can have it on multiple devices.
So if you've ever enjoyed the featureof the Apple ecosystem where your iPhone
and your Mac OS laptop or desktop have agood syncing where somebody text messages
(18:16):
you and it pops up on both your phoneand your computer at the same time.
You can get that with JMP.
chat.
And that's because you can install theclient 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 theability to decouple the phone, the text
(18:37):
message client from the device itself.
And you've decoupled your phonenumber from your identity.
Stephen DeLorme (18:45):
And so I got some questions on that.
So XMPP and Jabber, are those synonyms?
Jordan Bravo (18:50):
They are, yes.
Stephen DeLorme (18:52):
And so I can get a Jabber client, which is a piece
of software that speaks to Jabberprotocol and I could get it for a
phone or I can get it for a desktop.
And then I guess, let me seeif my understanding of how this
works with SIMs and all of that.
So like in the U. S. Iwould, pay for a SIM card.
(19:13):
And I might come bundled with thephone and the plan I buy it with, or I
might buy the phone hardware by the SIMcard separately loaded onto the eSIM.
Now, at that point, I'm basically payingfor a plan and in the U S it's going to
be, it's going to have a certain numberof SMS messages, a certain number of
phone minutes, maybe unlimited even.
(19:33):
And then there's going to be data.
And so typically, I think the phonecommunications are going over a
different protocol than the data.
I might be wrong on that, but sothere, it has a data plan and it like
measures minutes versus like gigabytesof like data transfer a little bit
differently, I think on the plan.
With JMP, if I were to install that onmy phone, instead of going to the regular
(19:56):
phone app, I would go to the JMP app oranother Jabber compatible application.
And when I make a call, it's actuallygoing over data or it's going over Wi Fi.
But the point is it's goingover internet communications.
It's not using the like traditionalcellular calling technologies.
Jordan Bravo (20:13):
That's right.
It's using VoIP, voice over IP.
And so it might be, might make itclear if I give the following example.
You could sign up for a JMP dotchat number and never use a phone.
Let's say you don't even own a phone.
You could just sign up for it, pay, andthen install the client on your laptop.
And you could text and voicecall through the JMP client.
(20:37):
So it's actually not goingover the traditional.
Telephone, telecom, rails.
Stephen DeLorme (20:43):
Could I, just out of curiosity, could I use JMP
to get a signal number as well?
Or to get a signal username?
Jordan Bravo (20:50):
Absolutely.
I do that.
Huh.
Stephen DeLorme (20:51):
Very cool.
Jordan Bravo (20:53):
So that, that is the number part.
And the ability to textand call over that number.
Now, remember you have to have internet.
So if you're on your laptop, you haveto be connected to wifi or whatever.
And let's say you are on your phone.
Let's say you were on a phonethat didn't have a SIM card.
You could be on wifi on that phone andstill be browsing the web, using GMP.
(21:14):
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 necessaryfor the phone number, as we've just
demonstrated with JMP, but the SIMcard is necessary to get cellular data.
And so what you can do is you can geta cellular data provider that is more
(21:38):
privacy respecting in that you don'thave to completely KYC yourself and sign
up for it by having reoccurring billingand, your full name and number and blood
type and firstborn child and all that.
And a couple, I'm goingto give a couple of.
Recommendations here.
The first is Mint Mobile.
(22:00):
A lot of people have heard of Mint Mobile.
It's got Ryan Reynolds as the ownerslash he's in the commercials.
He's advertising it.
It's a prepaid plan.
And Mint Mobile is one of thesecompanies that's referred to as an
MVNO, Mobile Virtual Network Operator,and that's just a fancy term for a
(22:21):
company that they overlay their networkon top of one of the main networks.
The main networks in the United States areAT& T Verizon, and what's the third one?
Stephen DeLorme (22:36):
Would it be T Mobile maybe?
Jordan Bravo (22:37):
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 thenthey resell it to consumers.
So mint that's what mint mobile does.
They're typically a lot lessexpensive and there are typically
much more friendly to privacy.
Stephen DeLorme (23:01):
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 goto a met mobile store since you
said you don't even actually haveto replace the physical chip.
I could just go to the mobile storeand they would take care of it there.
Jordan Bravo (23:16):
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 certaincode . And they give you instructions
and they say, okay, go into your phonesettings, go to eSIM settings, put this
code in, and you're up and running.
Stephen DeLorme (23:35):
Oh, very cool.
Jordan Bravo (23:37):
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 you are using your traditionalcredit or debit card, there
is a link there to your data.
So your identity is beingcoupled with your data.
There's a couple of approaches there.
(23:58):
One of them is using avirtual debit card provider.
This is one calledPrivacy, Pay with Privacy.
The website is privacy.
com.
And this is a really great service.
We don't have time to goover all the details today.
But if you're not familiar with privacy.
com, essentially you sign up for free andconnect your debit account and then you
(24:20):
get unlimited virtual debit cards that youcan spin up with any name, any address.
So you can, if you havean account with privacy.
com, you then go over to Mint Mobile andwhen it comes time to pay, you just use a
virtual card and you put in some nonsensefor the name and address and Boom.
That's a pretty private way to do it.
If you wanted to get even more privateabout it, there's a little bit less
(24:44):
convenience here, but you can purchasewith cash at a grocery store or whatever.
You prepaid visa cards, andthen you can use those prepaid
visa cards on net mobile.
And that's a really good wayof decoupling your identity.
Stephen DeLorme (24:57):
And I agree with that.
But one thing I have noticed is I haveobserved over the past several years,
like, like I feel like 10 years ago, youcould just go buy gift cards, visa gift
cards for cash, but now I feel like evenfor small amount ones, they want to see
your driver's license and stuff like that.
Jordan Bravo (25:12):
It's weird how these KYC sort of rules are
arbitrarily enforced that.
Various merchants.
Stephen DeLorme (25:21):
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 merchantslike internal loss prevention things
like there might be something that'slike totally legal to sell something
a certain way, but if they have a, ifthey know that it might statistically
be involved in like a scam later on downthe line, then they're going to put
controls in place to try and prevent it.
(25:42):
Um, like I remember like when I used towork at GameStop a long time ago, it's
like we had to be real like cautious aboutpeople trying to resell us games that they
stole from Best Buy and stuff like that.
So there was all kind of like internalcontrols 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 itis wrapped, that might be a signal.
(26:05):
And it's not illegalto buy a wrapped game.
It might be a signal that it was stolen.
And then you're going to have to deal withthe 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 (26:18):
That makes sense.
So going back to Mint Mobileyou can go that route.
You could try with visa cards,with prepaid visa cards.
That's a little bit too inconvenientfor most people, but I would say
even if you're paying for it with atraditional card that's tied to your
name, this is still a huge step up.
Because as we're going to see, once youget that Mint Mobile eSIM activated,
(26:43):
you then have data on your phone.
Mint Mobile is going to give you aphone number too, but the trick here,
and this is very important, do notuse 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 mobileaccount, but pretend that it doesn't
exist and then don't give it to anybody.
Now you're only going touse your JMP phone number.
(27:06):
Or if you get it from somewhere else,wherever, whatever VOIP number you've got,
that's your phone number that you willuse for people to contact you, et cetera.
The Mint Mobile is strictly for the data.
And so that's how you'regoing to get your mobile data.
So now you've got your data, yourphone and your phone number, and these
are all decoupled from each other.
Before we move on to a differenttopic, I want to say on the topic of
(27:29):
These providers, there are two more.
So Mint Mobile is onethat we talked about.
US Mobile is another one.
I've also used this andthey are pretty good.
They have decent pricesand privacy respecting.
In all other aspects, they'revery similar to Mint Mobile.
So if you were to, if you're interestedin doing this one, it's the same process.
(27:49):
And then the last provider Iwant 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 takingit a step up with your privacy.
This was created by areal cypher punk guy.
I don't even know his real name.
He's appeared on podcasts, but he'sgot a thick Russian accent and he
(28:13):
talks about he's, he says that he'sbeen in the telecom industry for a
long time and he knows how it works.
And the idea here is so you can do thesame thing that we just talked about
with Buying your data, your E SIMfrom either Mint Mobile or US Mobile.
But you, this one isreally focused on privacy.
You can pay with Bitcoin,including Lightning.
(28:36):
You can pay with Monero USDT or anycrypto as they say on their website.
Of course, I have triedwith on chain Bitcoin.
I've tried it with Lightning.
I've not tried it with anything else.
And on top of being ableto pay with Bitcoin.
It uses a special feature of the networkwhere it is roaming, which sounds like
(28:57):
this harkens back to when we had topay 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 thesame thing, but what the benefit of
being on roaming is that the U S telecominfrastructure is They actually don't
have legal access to roaming user data.
(29:19):
So
Stephen DeLorme (29:19):
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, orCIA 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 themiddle of downtown Atlanta, and we just
(29:40):
want to see everything coming through.
They can identify all thedifferent companies that each
phone number is associated with.
That one's AT& T, that one'sVerizon, that one's T Mobile.
And then if they need to, they canknock on T Mobile's door, metaphorically
speaking, and they can say, Hey, giveus all of the data on this, on the user
that's associated with this phone number.
When you use a silentLink, they can't do that.
(30:04):
They see that it's ownedby some foreign entity.
And that entity is inEastern Europe, I think.
And they don't have any recourse there.
And I see they also will sellyou 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 yourefill your balance as you go.
(30:28):
And I would say that it'sa pretty good experience.
The only downside is that it's alittle 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 slowfor me in the future, maybe I'll
go back to one of those others.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Huh.
That's really cool.
(30:49):
I'm just looking at thewebsite for anybody listening.
Huh.
That is really cool.
Jordan Bravo (30:55):
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 theidea here is you're going to have three
different sources that you're gettingthe physical phone from and you can
buy, Oh, we didn't really talk aboutthat, but in case people don't know, you
can buy a phone pretty much anywhere.
(31:16):
You can go to best buying, you canpay 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 yourphone from your mobile provider.
Stephen DeLorme (31:33):
Yeah.
Cause that's probably, you probablycan't even change the eSIM if you're
still on a payment plan, right?
Jordan Bravo (31:41):
Yeah.
And most providers lock their phone.
So when you go to buy a phone, makesure you're getting the unlocked one.
It's.
Very common.
So this isn't like somethingthat you'll have trouble finding,
but just make sure you specifythat it's the unlocked version.
Stephen DeLorme (31:55):
Got it.
Got it.
Jordan Bravo (31:57):
So, So there's the physical phone.
That's one piece of the puzzle.
There's going to JMP dot chat, andthat's getting you a VoIP number.
Again you can use other VoIP providers.
I just find that JMP is far abovethe best one because they have really
great pricing and they're very privacyrespecting and they're versatile too.
You can use it on nearly any device.
(32:19):
And then, so that's thesecond leg of the stool.
And then the third leg ofthe stool is the data itself.
And that's going to be throughthe 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 (32:35):
That seems like a pretty good stack for taking
back the phone privacy there.
It doesn't actually sound thathard when you lay it all out.
Jordan Bravo (32:43):
And this is incredibly powerful because normally the way,
when you have the, All three piecesfrom the same provider who knows
your identity as most of us do, untilwe go down this sovereign computing
journey, your phone number is anincredibly sensitive piece of data.
And we don't even reallythink of it that way.
(33:04):
So we give it out willy nillyand it's all over the place.
So it's really easy to, your phone numberis 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 yourphone number is sitting there with.
Your name and your email address.
Those three things are almost likea fingerprint that can be used to
(33:25):
identify you in any technology space.
Stephen DeLorme (33:28):
Yeah.
I imagine the hard part for some peoplemight be the appeal of that low monthly
payment on a provider's uh, phone planwhere, you know, you're looking at the
price of a new, a brand new phone and it'sa 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 itseems a lot more appealing and, it might
be locked down and all that, but, youknow, privacy will um, come at a cost.
(33:52):
Good things will come at a cost.
So that that, that, that seemslike the first hump to get over is
just, owning your hardware outrightinstead of being on a rental thing.
And then, from there, it just seemsokay, 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 thatmobile or us mobile or silent link?
(34:14):
And then, get a JMP dot chat number.
And then do you find likepaying 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'sprobably much more difficult to do
like automated payments and all that.
Jordan Bravo (34:30):
Yeah I, you pay in advance, so I'm topping it up.
The first time I did it for the prepaiddata, 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 awonderful experience after three
months, I said, you know what?
I'm just going to buy a year's worth.
And you get a discount and then youdon't have to think about it for a year.
Stephen DeLorme (34:53):
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 partof the journey, like you have to, you
know, be like, okay well, I'm going tosacrifice a little bit of convenience in
terms of just, you know, sleeping easy atnight, knowing that all my bills are being
(35:13):
automatically paid off by credit card.
And instead you have to I guessput calendar alarms for a year in
the future or like 11 months in thefuture to reminder, pay off, pay
for met noble, reminder, pay forJMP dot chat, these kinds of things.
Jordan Bravo (35:29):
That's right.
And.
Mint mobile and others will message you.
You can set your threshold for whenyou have X number of minutes or data
remaining, it'll message you or not evendata, because if it's unlimited and it's
a time based thing, it'll message you andsay, Hey, your thing expires in one week.
Do you want to renew?
So they do make it a little easier,but there's no doubt that it's less
(35:52):
convenient than just having re reoccurringbilling where it's completely automated.
But going back to the thing aboutrenting versus owning, this is something
I would encourage everybody to reallyembrace the sovereign computing
mindset, which is the opposite ofthe world economic forum mindset.
You will own nothing and be happy.
(36:13):
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 yourent these devices from AT&T and these
other providers and you say, you knowwhat, I'm going to just be totally a
(36:35):
slave to AT&T I'm going to be locked in.
And what do I get out of it?
I get to upgrade my phoneevery 12 months or so
Stephen DeLorme (36:42):
Whoa, upgrades!
Jordan Bravo (36:44):
Yeah.
It's like they're dangling this.
This little toy in front of usand saying, Hey, don't worry about
all of your data and being lockedin and censored and surveilled.
Like you get a shiny new phone every12 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 thinkthey're treating us like children.
(37:04):
So let's.
Let's act like adults.
Let's reclaim some of our dignity.
Let's own the thingsthat we use all the time.
We don't have to rent everything.
We don't always need the latest shiny.
And Hey, maybe you areinto 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 (37:23):
Do you think this guy got an AT& T upgrade?
Jordan Bravo (37:26):
I think he got uh, Yeah, he looks like he's happy
with his latest model phone.
Stephen DeLorme (37:31):
We're looking at the world economic forum.
You'll own nothing and you'll behappy for people just listening.
It's a very happy kind of brainwashedguy smiling into the camera.
Jordan Bravo (37:40):
Yeah.
So I'll get off my soapbox now, butthat's me preaching the sovereign
computing mindset and approach.
So technology can only get usso far if we don't choose to.
Enact any of these approaches wherewe're not going to be able to take
back any of our self sufficiency, selfsovereignty and dignity in computing.
Stephen DeLorme (38:00):
That sounds good.
And that sounds easier than I thought.
So I'm curious to startplaying around with JMP now.
Jordan Bravo (38:07):
Let's go to boosts.
Do we have any boost today?
Stephen DeLorme (38:10):
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 isquite 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 needto go back to a couple of episodes here.
(38:34):
So I think we already read the boostsfrom episode one, reclaiming your
digital freedom, let me double checkif any materialized on episode 2
mastering calendars and contacts.
We did get one boost.
Jordan Bravo (38:49):
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 alink to the Fountain FM
Stephen DeLorme (39:04):
I think that's the episode we're on.
Ah, okay.
He just wanted to make sure we knewwhat episode we were saying was,
he was saying was good content.
Sweet.
Thanks, Keith.
Jordan Bravo (39:10):
Yes.
Thank you, Keith, for your boost.
And thank you for those ofyou who streamed in as well.
Boost in and let us know, what didyou think about today's episode?
What do you think about the topic?
Are you interested in moving to a moredecoupled phone number experience?
Are you going to try any ofthese self sovereign steps?
Does it seem like too much work?
Does it seem too confusing?
(39:32):
Boost in and let us know.
You can do that again on fountain.
fm and search for the ATL BitLabpodcast, 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 (39:47):
Awesome.
Anything else any final closingthoughts before we wrap up or.
Jordan Bravo (39:51):
That's it.
Thanks everybody.
See you next time.
Stay sovereign.
Stephen DeLorme (39:55):
Yup, later.
Hey, thanks for listening.
I hope you enjoyed this episode.
If you want to learn more aboutanything that we discussed, you can
look for links in the show notesthat should be in your podcast
player, or you can go to atlbitlab.
com slash podcast.
On a final note, if you foundthis information useful and you
(40:15):
want to help support us, you canalways send us a tip in Bitcoin.
Your support really helps us so that wecan keep bringing you content like this.
All right.
Catch you later.
I would encourage everybody to really embrace the sovereign
(00:02):
computing mindset, which is the oppositeof the world economic forum mindset.
You will own nothing and be happy.
In sovereign computing, youwill own what you've earned.
And so you're giving up a lot whenyou rent these devices from AT&T
and these other providers and yousay, you know what, I'm going to
(00:25):
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 my phoneevery 12 months or so
Stephen DeLorme (00:34):
Whoa, upgrades!
Jordan Bravo (00:36):
Yeah.
It's like they're dangling this littletoy in front of us and saying, "Hey, don't
worry about all of your data and beinglocked in and censored and surveilled.
Like you get a shiny new phone every 12months" and we're just lapping it up.
Welcome to the Sovereign ComputingShow, presented by ATL BitLab.
I'm Jordan Bravo, and this is apodcast where we teach you how to
(00:58):
take back control of your devices.
Sovereign Computing means you own yourtechnology, not the other way around.
Stephen DeLorme (01:06):
This episode is sponsored by ATL BitLab.
ATL BitLab is Atlanta'sfreedom tech hacker space.
We have co working desks,conference rooms, event space,
maker tools, and tons of coffee.
There is a very activecommunity here in the lab.
Every Wednesday night isBitcoin night here in Atlanta.
We also have meetups for cyber security,artificial intelligence, decentralized
(01:26):
identity, product design, and more.
We offer day passes and nomad passesfor people who need to use the lab only
occasionally, as well as membershipsfor people who plan to use the lab
more regularly, such as myself.
One of the best things abouthaving a BitLab membership isn't
the amenities, it's the people.
Surrounding yourself with acommunity helps you learn faster
and helps you build better.
(01:48):
Your creativity becomes amplifiedwhen you work in this space,
that's what I think at least.
If you're interested in becominga 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 (02:05):
Welcome to the Sovereign Computing Show.
I'm Jordan Bravo and I'm heretoday with Stephen DeLorme.
Stephen DeLorme (02:10):
Hey, how's it going?
Jordan Bravo (02:12):
Today we're going to start off by looking at an article
that came out in February of 2025.
And this is entitled UK secretlyorders Apple to let it spy
on iPhone users worldwide.
Stephen DeLorme (02:24):
That's a week ago as of this recording.
It's fresh.
Jordan Bravo (02:28):
Yeah.
So this just happened in the past week.
And the gist of the article is that theUK government is demanding that Apple
insert a back door into iOS on the iPhone.
That would allow the UKgovernment to basically.
(02:48):
Break through the encryption and read allof the user data at any time on demand.
Now, Apple is not allowedto comment on this.
It's illegal for them to even bring thisto light, but the way that the report was.
leaked, was through a, according tothis, a White House security advisor who
(03:11):
confirmed the existence of the order.
So that's about the entiregist of the article.
A couple more things.
Apple does not, is not allowed to delaycomplying with the order while the appeal
is ongoing and they are appealing it.
So they have to act pretty quickly and
(03:34):
I think that's the major gist of it.
Stephen DeLorme (03:37):
Yeah, that sounds about right.
It's a little scary.
The author of this articlethinks that they're probably
going to go ahead with it.
So for the UK government to just compelapple to give all, give up all user
data globally, that seems like a littlebit of an overreach, to put it mildly.
But the compromise heremight just be okay.
We will hand over all the userdata to you for UK citizens.
(04:00):
Which still wouldn't be good.
And, it was funny kind of watching in thecomments 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 ofa publicly traded company, you
kind of have like a fiduciaryresponsibility 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 ofan entire market just for a principal.
Jordan Bravo (04:24):
Yeah, I'm trying to think what would the revenue
loss be if they completely cutthemselves off from the UK market?
I don't have an answer to that.
I'm just thinking of how many billionsof dollars that would be lost revenue
Stephen DeLorme (04:39):
Yeah, because some countries don't use iPhone as much and so
like, you know
latin America and like India and Asia, Ithink the Androids are much more common.
I imagine the UK is probablyalso a big iPhone market.
That would be quite a hit for a company.
Jordan Bravo (04:56):
What are the takeaways from this article that we in the
sovereign computing realm Shouldcare about or would care about?
Stephen DeLorme (05:07):
If you're, relying on somebody else's server, then,
you're a little bit at their mercy.
Um, I think it highlights theimportance of open source.
If you are concerned about the encryption,the privacy of your messages, cause even
though I like Apple personally, and theycertainly talk a big game about privacy.
We have to take their word for it.
(05:28):
And like I've said before, Ithink they have a financial
incentive outside of selling data.
Even if they have the best ofintentions it doesn't matter to some
degree because somebody can come inand compel them to, to change that.
So that's another thing that highlightsthe importance of open source, I think.
Jordan Bravo (05:46):
And for me, that's the crux of the issue.
Apple is a single point offailure in this instance.
And even if they, like you said, had thebest of intentions and they don't want
to, they might be compelled to by theUK government, such that they do have to
basically violate the compact they madewith their users when their users thought
they were getting end to end encryption.
(06:08):
If you were to, what wouldan alternative look like?
An alternative scenario wouldbe an open source, open protocol
with end to end encryption.
That is not controlled by a singleentity, or if it is controlled
by a single entity that could beeasily ported to another client.
So for example, the UK government,they can go after Apple because Apple
(06:31):
is an incorporated entity, a legalentity, but you can't go after PGP
because PGP, for example, is just aprotocol it's an encryption algorithm.
And you can't stop it.
We know that back in the nineties,the government, the US government
actually did try to stop PGPand ultimately they failed.
Stephen DeLorme (06:53):
And now they're recommending we use it.
Jordan Bravo (06:56):
Exactly.
So this is a good, I would say it'sa good example of why you want to go
with things where you're not puttingall of your trust in a company to do
what's right, or to not be compelledby a government or some other entity.
But rather going with an optionwhere there is no one that can be
(07:17):
compelled, it's a decentralizedtrust model, let's say,
Stephen DeLorme (07:21):
Some services have warrant canaries, which for anyone
listening, who's never heard of theseare like services, like a message you put
on your website that might say somethinglike we have never been asked by a
government agency to hand over user data.
Because they might not be in asituation where if it's like a secret
order, they're not allowed to saythat a government agency asked them
(07:42):
for user data, but they are allowedto say we have never been asked by
a government agency for user data.
And then if they are asked, they cantake that thing off of their website.
Long winded way of saying, that'dbe hilarious if Apple had a
warrant canary on their website.
If like beautiful, like pristine Applewebsite, like if you scrolled all the
(08:03):
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 (08:08):
Yeah, I would like to see the combination of Apple
aesthetics and the cypher punk ethos.
Stephen DeLorme (08:13):
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
Jordan Bravo (08:17):
Okay.
I think we've said all there is to sayabout this article today, what we're
going to talk about is tangentiallyrelated to Apple in that the iMessage
encryption that's used by default foriPhone users is tied to your phone number.
And what we're goingto talk about today is.
(08:38):
How to approach phone numbersin a more self sovereign manner.
First, what are theproblems with phone numbers?
There's a one, there's a finite numberof phone numbers, which means, there's
what, 10 digits in a phone number.
So there's only a certain number ofphone numbers that can be generated.
They can only be generated bycentralized entities, the phone
(09:01):
companies, whereas compare thisto emails and domain names, right?
There's a near infinite number of domainnames and near infinite number of email
addresses within those domain names.
And they're.
Relatively easy to spin up and they'reexceedingly cheap for any individual
to acquire Dozens of them or hundredsof them if they so choose whereas phone
(09:25):
numbers you have to Get you have to renta 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 bythe FCC the phone numbers themselves and
then the You Telecom companies rent thosephone numbers out or buy them in bulk.
(09:45):
And then we, as theconsumers, we rent them.
We get them for a period of time,but we don't actually own them.
The next problem with phone numbers isthat they are intimately tied to our
identities, but they don't have to bethe way that most of us use them naively.
So what we go to our phone, excuseme, we go to our mobile provider,
(10:08):
let's say one of these big telecomslike AT& T, Verizon, et cetera.
And we say, I want the following company.
I want a phone, I want aphone number, and I want data.
And I'm going to pay you with my creditcard, or you're going to bill me.
And here's all of my user data, my,my name, my address, my credit card,
(10:33):
my, typically you have to have a bankaccount and, billing options and all that
If any of you listened to ourprevious episode about email and about
decoupling email, this is a similarconcept where, A single provider is
acting as multiple services for you.
So the phone number consists of, ora phone provider consists of multiple
(10:56):
things where you can't, the personwho is issuing the phone number to
you, that you're renting it from, thatdoesn't have to be the same entity
that you are getting your data from.
In other words, your SIM card, and thenthat doesn't have to be the same entity
either as as you're getting your devicefrom and typically people just get it
(11:16):
the all three from the same entity.
So we're going to talk about howto decouple those today and the
benefits that will provide andspecific tools you can use to do that.
Stephen DeLorme (11:27):
Yeah, and I don't know if this is maybe a little bit
of a distraction, but maybe it mightbe worth a throwback to the mess of
the episode about private messaging.
I know you were worried after thatepisode that you came across like
too much of a Signal fanboy and thatwe didn't spend time addressing the
controversy of Signal requiring a phonenumber, which kind of relates to this.
Jordan Bravo (11:48):
And so in the Cypherpunk and Sovereign Computing community, Signal is
criticized, and rightly so, for acquiringa U. S., or rather, any phone number
in order to sign up for their service.
And the reason is that for a lot ofpeople, it's very difficult to acquire
a phone number in a private manner.
(12:11):
In other countries, I knowit's even more difficult.
In the U. S., we don't haveit quite as tightly regulated.
But for the average person, theywould have no idea how to get a
private phone number, I would guess.
Stephen DeLorme (12:23):
Yeah.
Jordan Bravo (12:24):
And so by with Signal requiring a phone number, those of you
who are using Signal, you can actuallybenefit from decoupling your phone number
even further, because you can use a wholeseparate number just for your Signal
registration, and that's not going tobe tied to your identity in any way.
So you can have a pretty privateand, and self sovereign, uh,
(12:45):
communication stack right thereusing a Private number and
signal that's registered with.
Stephen DeLorme (12:51):
So I
uh,
read
uh,
the art of invisibility by KevinMitnick, the famous hacker, read
several of his books and art ofinvisibility 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'ssome technical details that's getting
a little bit dated, but he talks aboutprivate phone numbers in his book.
And one of the firstthings he talks about is.
(13:13):
Basically if I remember correctlygoing to I don't know, find some gas
station or something to go find thatsells cell phones buying it there with
cash, but then raises the concern likewell, you're on security's camera.
So then goes into this whole storyabout you could find a homeless
person and you could pay them in cash.
And as long as the phone isn'ttoo expensive and you agree to pay
(13:35):
them enough to perform the task foryou, then the homeless person can
just go and buy the phone for you.
Sounds a little strange, butI guess that's a possibility.
Or then goes as far as to suggest Ithink even telling somebody like, Hey,
look, I really need 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 gointo that store and buy me
(13:55):
a cell phone with this cash.
I don't want them to seemy name on the card either.
Just like we're, it's, if you reallydon't want to be seen buying a cell
phone on a security camera, I guessthat's the steps you have to do.
Is that what we're getting into today.
Jordan Bravo (14:09):
We have some better options than that.
One more thing I wanted to point outis so buying it with a mask and in
the post COVID era where it's becomesocially acceptable to wear a mask.
All the time in public people in thecypherpunk and privacy communities,
they say, take advantage of that,put on a COVID mask and go into
(14:31):
a cell phone store with a hat onand sunglasses and a COVID mask.
And nobody's going to blink twiceand you can just buy it with cash
and that's pretty private, but thatis not what I'm recommending today.
We have much better methods.
You don't have to actuallyphysically go anywhere.
Stephen DeLorme (14:47):
I think what might be important to maybe address first is that
In addition to having the phone numberof the data, you first need a phone
that's compatible with that stuff, right?
Like you need a phone where you could swapout the SIM card, I would imagine, right?
Jordan Bravo (15:00):
That's right.
Let's talk about the hardware
first.
You're gonna want a phonethat supports eSIMs.
E SIM, I think the E standsfor electronic, because it's
not a actual physical SIM cardthat 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 reprogramit with different numbers.
(15:22):
So make sure that yourphone supports eSIM.
That's ESIM.
Typically the E is lowercase and SIMis all ca uppercase and most modern
phone smartphones have this feature.
I know that the iPhone does.
I know that the Google Pixel doesprobably Samsung's latest phone does.
(15:44):
. But once you have a phonethat is compatible with eSIMs.
What you want to do next is let's gothrough how to get a phone number because
you might, you probably already have aphone number and you're probably already
getting data through that same providerthat issued you that phone number.
So let's first talk about howyou can add a phone number
without tying it to the data.
(16:07):
My favorite recommendation forthis 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 aopen messaging protocol.
(16:30):
If you remember back in the day,it might've been called Jabber.
And Google talk was actuallybuilt on top of XMPP.
Google talk had its heyday.
And then now I guess peopledon't really use it that much.
But that's what JMP.
chat is using under the hood.
And with JMP.
chat, you can buy as manyphone numbers as you want.
(16:54):
You probably want to start outwith 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 fora business, maybe your doctor's
office, that kind of thing.
Maybe a third one that you expect spamto that you can give out more easily.
And with JMP.
(17:14):
chat you can pay for itin a private fashion.
So they accept credit cards and debitcards 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 believeWe are now looking at the JMP dot
(17:35):
chat website for those of you who arejust listening and Stephen is browsing
around showing some of the flow, butonce you have that number picked out
and you pay for it, you can then putit on any device when I say any device.
Any device.
You are not tied to a single phone.
(17:56):
This can run on your laptop, it can runon your Android, iOS, et cetera, and
you can have it on multiple devices.
So if you've ever enjoyed the featureof the Apple ecosystem where your iPhone
and your Mac OS laptop or desktop have agood syncing where somebody text messages
(18:16):
you and it pops up on both your phoneand your computer at the same time.
You can get that with JMP.
chat.
And that's because you can install theclient 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 theability to decouple the phone, the text
(18:37):
message client from the device itself.
And you've decoupled your phonenumber from your identity.
Stephen DeLorme (18:45):
And so I got some questions on that.
So XMPP and Jabber, are those synonyms?
Jordan Bravo (18:50):
They are, yes.
Stephen DeLorme (18:52):
And so I can get a Jabber client, which is a piece
of software that speaks to Jabberprotocol and I could get it for a
phone or I can get it for a desktop.
And then I guess, let me seeif my understanding of how this
works with SIMs and all of that.
So like in the U. S. Iwould, pay for a SIM card.
(19:13):
And I might come bundled with thephone and the plan I buy it with, or I
might buy the phone hardware by the SIMcard separately loaded onto the eSIM.
Now, at that point, I'm basically payingfor a plan and in the U S it's going to
be, it's going to have a certain numberof SMS messages, a certain number of
phone minutes, maybe unlimited even.
(19:33):
And then there's going to be data.
And so typically, I think the phonecommunications are going over a
different protocol than the data.
I might be wrong on that, but sothere, it has a data plan and it like
measures minutes versus like gigabytesof like data transfer a little bit
differently, I think on the plan.
With JMP, if I were to install that onmy phone, instead of going to the regular
(19:56):
phone app, I would go to the JMP app oranother Jabber compatible application.
And when I make a call, it's actuallygoing over data or it's going over Wi Fi.
But the point is it's goingover internet communications.
It's not using the like traditionalcellular calling technologies.
Jordan Bravo (20:13):
That's right.
It's using VoIP, voice over IP.
And so it might be, might make itclear if I give the following example.
You could sign up for a JMP dotchat number and never use a phone.
Let's say you don't even own a phone.
You could just sign up for it, pay, andthen install the client on your laptop.
And you could text and voicecall through the JMP client.
(20:37):
So it's actually not goingover the traditional.
Telephone, telecom, rails.
Stephen DeLorme (20:43):
Could I, just out of curiosity, could I use JMP
to get a signal number as well?
Or to get a signal username?
Jordan Bravo (20:50):
Absolutely.
I do that.
Huh.
Stephen DeLorme (20:51):
Very cool.
Jordan Bravo (20:53):
So that, that is the number part.
And the ability to textand call over that number.
Now, remember you have to have internet.
So if you're on your laptop, you haveto be connected to wifi or whatever.
And let's say you are on your phone.
Let's say you were on a phonethat didn't have a SIM card.
You could be on wifi on that phone andstill be browsing the web, using GMP.
(21:14):
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 necessaryfor the phone number, as we've just
demonstrated with JMP, but the SIMcard is necessary to get cellular data.
And so what you can do is you can geta cellular data provider that is more
(21:38):
privacy respecting in that you don'thave to completely KYC yourself and sign
up for it by having reoccurring billingand, your full name and number and blood
type and firstborn child and all that.
And a couple, I'm goingto give a couple of.
Recommendations here.
The first is Mint Mobile.
(22:00):
A lot of people have heard of Mint Mobile.
It's got Ryan Reynolds as the ownerslash he's in the commercials.
He's advertising it.
It's a prepaid plan.
And Mint Mobile is one of thesecompanies that's referred to as an
MVNO, Mobile Virtual Network Operator,and that's just a fancy term for a
(22:21):
company that they overlay their networkon top of one of the main networks.
The main networks in the United States areAT& T Verizon, and what's the third one?
Stephen DeLorme (22:36):
Would it be T Mobile maybe?
Jordan Bravo (22:37):
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 thenthey resell it to consumers.
So mint that's what mint mobile does.
They're typically a lot lessexpensive and there are typically
much more friendly to privacy.
Stephen DeLorme (23:01):
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 goto a met mobile store since you
said you don't even actually haveto replace the physical chip.
I could just go to the mobile storeand they would take care of it there.
Jordan Bravo (23:16):
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 certaincode . And they give you instructions
and they say, okay, go into your phonesettings, go to eSIM settings, put this
code in, and you're up and running.
Stephen DeLorme (23:35):
Oh, very cool.
Jordan Bravo (23:37):
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 you are using your traditionalcredit or debit card, there
is a link there to your data.
So your identity is beingcoupled with your data.
There's a couple of approaches there.
(23:58):
One of them is using avirtual debit card provider.
This is one calledPrivacy, Pay with Privacy.
The website is privacy.
com.
And this is a really great service.
We don't have time to goover all the details today.
But if you're not familiar with privacy.
com, essentially you sign up for free andconnect your debit account and then you
(24:20):
get unlimited virtual debit cards that youcan spin up with any name, any address.
So you can, if you havean account with privacy.
com, you then go over to Mint Mobile andwhen it comes time to pay, you just use a
virtual card and you put in some nonsensefor the name and address and Boom.
That's a pretty private way to do it.
If you wanted to get even more privateabout it, there's a little bit less
(24:44):
convenience here, but you can purchasewith cash at a grocery store or whatever.
You prepaid visa cards, andthen you can use those prepaid
visa cards on net mobile.
And that's a really good wayof decoupling your identity.
Stephen DeLorme (24:57):
And I agree with that.
But one thing I have noticed is I haveobserved over the past several years,
like, like I feel like 10 years ago, youcould just go buy gift cards, visa gift
cards for cash, but now I feel like evenfor small amount ones, they want to see
your driver's license and stuff like that.
Jordan Bravo (25:12):
It's weird how these KYC sort of rules are
arbitrarily enforced that.
Various merchants.
Stephen DeLorme (25:21):
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 merchantslike internal loss prevention things
like there might be something that'slike totally legal to sell something
a certain way, but if they have a, ifthey know that it might statistically
be involved in like a scam later on downthe line, then they're going to put
controls in place to try and prevent it.
(25:42):
Um, like I remember like when I used towork at GameStop a long time ago, it's
like we had to be real like cautious aboutpeople trying to resell us games that they
stole from Best Buy and stuff like that.
So there was all kind of like internalcontrols 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 itis wrapped, that might be a signal.
(26:05):
And it's not illegalto buy a wrapped game.
It might be a signal that it was stolen.
And then you're going to have to deal withthe 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 (26:18):
That makes sense.
So going back to Mint Mobileyou can go that route.
You could try with visa cards,with prepaid visa cards.
That's a little bit too inconvenientfor most people, but I would say
even if you're paying for it with atraditional card that's tied to your
name, this is still a huge step up.
Because as we're going to see, once youget that Mint Mobile eSIM activated,
(26:43):
you then have data on your phone.
Mint Mobile is going to give you aphone number too, but the trick here,
and this is very important, do notuse 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 mobileaccount, but pretend that it doesn't
exist and then don't give it to anybody.
Now you're only going touse your JMP phone number.
(27:06):
Or if you get it from somewhere else,wherever, whatever VOIP number you've got,
that's your phone number that you willuse for people to contact you, et cetera.
The Mint Mobile is strictly for the data.
And so that's how you'regoing to get your mobile data.
So now you've got your data, yourphone and your phone number, and these
are all decoupled from each other.
Before we move on to a differenttopic, I want to say on the topic of
(27:29):
These providers, there are two more.
So Mint Mobile is onethat we talked about.
US Mobile is another one.
I've also used this andthey are pretty good.
They have decent pricesand privacy respecting.
In all other aspects, they'revery similar to Mint Mobile.
So if you were to, if you're interestedin doing this one, it's the same process.
(27:49):
And then the last provider Iwant 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 takingit a step up with your privacy.
This was created by areal cypher punk guy.
I don't even know his real name.
He's appeared on podcasts, but he'sgot a thick Russian accent and he
(28:13):
talks about he's, he says that he'sbeen in the telecom industry for a
long time and he knows how it works.
And the idea here is so you can do thesame thing that we just talked about
with Buying your data, your E SIMfrom either Mint Mobile or US Mobile.
But you, this one isreally focused on privacy.
You can pay with Bitcoin,including Lightning.
(28:36):
You can pay with Monero USDT or anycrypto as they say on their website.
Of course, I have triedwith on chain Bitcoin.
I've tried it with Lightning.
I've not tried it with anything else.
And on top of being ableto pay with Bitcoin.
It uses a special feature of the networkwhere it is roaming, which sounds like
(28:57):
this harkens back to when we had topay 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 thesame thing, but what the benefit of
being on roaming is that the U S telecominfrastructure is They actually don't
have legal access to roaming user data.
(29:19):
So
Stephen DeLorme (29:19):
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, orCIA 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 themiddle of downtown Atlanta, and we just
(29:40):
want to see everything coming through.
They can identify all thedifferent companies that each
phone number is associated with.
That one's AT& T, that one'sVerizon, that one's T Mobile.
And then if they need to, they canknock on T Mobile's door, metaphorically
speaking, and they can say, Hey, giveus all of the data on this, on the user
that's associated with this phone number.
When you use a silentLink, they can't do that.
(30:04):
They see that it's ownedby some foreign entity.
And that entity is inEastern Europe, I think.
And they don't have any recourse there.
And I see they also will sellyou 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 yourefill your balance as you go.
(30:28):
And I would say that it'sa pretty good experience.
The only downside is that it's alittle 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 slowfor me in the future, maybe I'll
go back to one of those others.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Huh.
That's really cool.
(30:49):
I'm just looking at thewebsite for anybody listening.
Huh.
That is really cool.
Jordan Bravo (30:55):
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 theidea here is you're going to have three
different sources that you're gettingthe physical phone from and you can
buy, Oh, we didn't really talk aboutthat, but in case people don't know, you
can buy a phone pretty much anywhere.
(31:16):
You can go to best buying, you canpay 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 yourphone from your mobile provider.
Stephen DeLorme (31:33):
Yeah.
Cause that's probably, you probablycan't even change the eSIM if you're
still on a payment plan, right?
Jordan Bravo (31:41):
Yeah.
And most providers lock their phone.
So when you go to buy a phone, makesure you're getting the unlocked one.
It's.
Very common.
So this isn't like somethingthat you'll have trouble finding,
but just make sure you specifythat it's the unlocked version.
Stephen DeLorme (31:55):
Got it.
Got it.
Jordan Bravo (31:57):
So, So there's the physical phone.
That's one piece of the puzzle.
There's going to JMP dot chat, andthat's getting you a VoIP number.
Again you can use other VoIP providers.
I just find that JMP is far abovethe best one because they have really
great pricing and they're very privacyrespecting and they're versatile too.
You can use it on nearly any device.
(32:19):
And then, so that's thesecond leg of the stool.
And then the third leg ofthe stool is the data itself.
And that's going to be throughthe 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 (32:35):
That seems like a pretty good stack for taking
back the phone privacy there.
It doesn't actually sound thathard when you lay it all out.
Jordan Bravo (32:43):
And this is incredibly powerful because normally the way,
when you have the, All three piecesfrom the same provider who knows
your identity as most of us do, untilwe go down this sovereign computing
journey, your phone number is anincredibly sensitive piece of data.
And we don't even reallythink of it that way.
(33:04):
So we give it out willy nillyand it's all over the place.
So it's really easy to, your phone numberis 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 yourphone number is sitting there with.
Your name and your email address.
Those three things are almost likea fingerprint that can be used to
(33:25):
identify you in any technology space.
Stephen DeLorme (33:28):
Yeah.
I imagine the hard part for some peoplemight be the appeal of that low monthly
payment on a provider's uh, phone planwhere, you know, you're looking at the
price of a new, a brand new phone and it'sa 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 itseems a lot more appealing and, it might
be locked down and all that, but, youknow, privacy will um, come at a cost.
(33:52):
Good things will come at a cost.
So that that, that, that seemslike the first hump to get over is
just, owning your hardware outrightinstead of being on a rental thing.
And then, from there, it just seemsokay, 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 thatmobile or us mobile or silent link?
(34:14):
And then, get a JMP dot chat number.
And then do you find likepaying 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'sprobably much more difficult to do
like automated payments and all that.
Jordan Bravo (34:30):
Yeah I, you pay in advance, so I'm topping it up.
The first time I did it for the prepaiddata, 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 awonderful experience after three
months, I said, you know what?
I'm just going to buy a year's worth.
And you get a discount and then youdon't have to think about it for a year.
Stephen DeLorme (34:53):
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 partof the journey, like you have to, you
know, be like, okay well, I'm going tosacrifice a little bit of convenience in
terms of just, you know, sleeping easy atnight, knowing that all my bills are being
(35:13):
automatically paid off by credit card.
And instead you have to I guessput calendar alarms for a year in
the future or like 11 months in thefuture to reminder, pay off, pay
for met noble, reminder, pay forJMP dot chat, these kinds of things.
Jordan Bravo (35:29):
That's right.
And.
Mint mobile and others will message you.
You can set your threshold for whenyou have X number of minutes or data
remaining, it'll message you or not evendata, because if it's unlimited and it's
a time based thing, it'll message you andsay, Hey, your thing expires in one week.
Do you want to renew?
So they do make it a little easier,but there's no doubt that it's less
(35:52):
convenient than just having re reoccurringbilling where it's completely automated.
But going back to the thing aboutrenting versus owning, this is something
I would encourage everybody to reallyembrace the sovereign computing
mindset, which is the opposite ofthe world economic forum mindset.
You will own nothing and be happy.
(36:13):
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 yourent these devices from AT&T and these
other providers and you say, you knowwhat, I'm going to just be totally a
(36:35):
slave to AT&T I'm going to be locked in.
And what do I get out of it?
I get to upgrade my phoneevery 12 months or so
Stephen DeLorme (36:42):
Whoa, upgrades!
Jordan Bravo (36:44):
Yeah.
It's like they're dangling this.
This little toy in front of usand saying, Hey, don't worry about
all of your data and being lockedin and censored and surveilled.
Like you get a shiny new phone every12 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 thinkthey're treating us like children.
(37:04):
So let's.
Let's act like adults.
Let's reclaim some of our dignity.
Let's own the thingsthat we use all the time.
We don't have to rent everything.
We don't always need the latest shiny.
And Hey, maybe you areinto 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 (37:23):
Do you think this guy got an AT& T upgrade?
Jordan Bravo (37:26):
I think he got uh, Yeah, he looks like he's happy
with his latest model phone.
Stephen DeLorme (37:31):
We're looking at the world economic forum.
You'll own nothing and you'll behappy for people just listening.
It's a very happy kind of brainwashedguy smiling into the camera.
Jordan Bravo (37:40):
Yeah.
So I'll get off my soapbox now, butthat's me preaching the sovereign
computing mindset and approach.
So technology can only get usso far if we don't choose to.
Enact any of these approaches wherewe're not going to be able to take
back any of our self sufficiency, selfsovereignty and dignity in computing.
Stephen DeLorme (38:00):
That sounds good.
And that sounds easier than I thought.
So I'm curious to startplaying around with JMP now.
Jordan Bravo (38:07):
Let's go to boosts.
Do we have any boost today?
Stephen DeLorme (38:10):
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 isquite 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 needto go back to a couple of episodes here.
(38:34):
So I think we already read the boostsfrom episode one, reclaiming your
digital freedom, let me double checkif any materialized on episode 2
mastering calendars and contacts.
We did get one boost.
Jordan Bravo (38:49):
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 alink to the Fountain FM
Stephen DeLorme (39:04):
I think that's the episode we're on.
Ah, okay.
He just wanted to make sure we knewwhat episode we were saying was,
he was saying was good content.
Sweet.
Thanks, Keith.
Jordan Bravo (39:10):
Yes.
Thank you, Keith, for your boost.
And thank you for those ofyou who streamed in as well.
Boost in and let us know, what didyou think about today's episode?
What do you think about the topic?
Are you interested in moving to a moredecoupled phone number experience?
Are you going to try any ofthese self sovereign steps?
Does it seem like too much work?
Does it seem too confusing?
(39:32):
Boost in and let us know.
You can do that again on fountain.
fm and search for the ATL BitLabpodcast, 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 (39:47):
Awesome.
Anything else any final closingthoughts before we wrap up or.
Jordan Bravo (39:51):
That's it.
Thanks everybody.
See you next time.
Stay sovereign.
Stephen DeLorme (39:55):
Yup, later.
Hey, thanks for listening.
I hope you enjoyed this episode.
If you want to learn more aboutanything that we discussed, you can
look for links in the show notesthat should be in your podcast
player, or you can go to atlbitlab.
com slash podcast.
On a final note, if you foundthis information useful and you
(40:15):
want to help support us, you canalways send us a tip in Bitcoin.
Your support really helps us so that wecan keep bringing you content like this.
All right.
Catch you later.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!