Normie-friendly alternatives to cell phones

[Daddy's Little Kitten]

Mail or carrier pigeon. Could also try smoke signals and telegraphs.
How about fax?

 

[Nick Bockwinkel's Belt]

You can definitely still get old-style flip phones from Consumer Cellular or some other shit marketed to boomers and the few remaining Greatest Generation.

But if you're talking about SMS messaging when you refer to "texting", that shit is not encrypted no matter what device you use.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

Time to go back to beepers.

Right, and the lot of them got intercepted by Jews to have them explode instead. Sure, the victims were terrorists, but would you trust them not to do the same to you?

It's about staying in contact, not the texting. I made this post looking for an alternative way to do that, but I think my original conclusion may have been right: there's nothing. I still think this sort of lifestyle would be the best for me, I just wanted to know if it was possible to do both. I suppose I can't have my cake and eat it too, but it's not a deal breaker.

Text telephones have been around for years (they were invented in the 1960s for the deaf--and not by AT&T, which despite its legacy to Bell's studies for the deaf including FREE licensing for transistors for hearing aids, was not part of the project at all), I wouldn't be surprised if there was a way to get a landline to take text calls...but landlines are weird, I know that touch-tone dialing was an optional feature in phones but my grandfather eschewed it because it was incompatible with rotary telephones and he wanted to use rotary telephones.

I mean, it's possible to route these things through various proxy devices, I suppose, that's how AT&T made the Bell System work. I think at this point the entire phone infrastructure is modern technology built on dark arts that no one understands anymore.

 

[Fag Alert Major Fag Alert]

Well you can always create your own phone from the ground up. I know one guy did.

 

[dick brain]

The number I give to friends and family is a Google Voice number that I can check from any device. For a period in the 2010s I didn't pay for cell service, I would just connect to public wifi and check my texts the same way you'd check emails. It wasn't a bad way to live, I really only stopped because unlimited data plans got a lot cheaper. I could cancel my cell service today and go back to that if I felt like it, or throw my phone in a river and just check my texts on my laptop.

If I were to do it now I would pick something other than Jewgle obviously, but I'm in too deep now. I assume there are a plethora of comparable services by now.

Anyway it's best to just assume all telecommunications are being intercepted and divest from them as much as possible. I can't even get my normies to install adblockers, there's no fucking way they'd be willing to use a Scary Deep Web Alt Right Hacker App, I'll settle for making my own experience less dystopian.

I've been looking at the Librem 5 which has a physical switch to disconnect the modem, GPS etc. and a removable battery but I really don't know much about it beyond that.

 

[Boggy B]

I don't believe so. Majority of the time people text me, not call.

Well, that would have to change if you're ditching texting programs, you numpty. You'll have plenty more time to take a call if you're not tapslopping anyway.

Your only off-grid solution for sending text that don't border on shitpost is writing letters. I'm not even sure the discord-addled left side of the bell curve has legible handwriting anymore, but there you go.

If you do that, get yourself some sketch pencils too and you can have some analog image-generation thrown in while you're in the same ballpark! And you can send those in the mail too! Wow!

 

[The ATF Disliked That]

Has anyone here found a decent alternative that isn't impossible to get everyone you know on board with?

GrapheneOS without a simcard shrimple as

Naomi Brockwell Video on No SIM card.

My plan is eventually to live off the grid,

You'll never achieve this with everything relying on the modern internet that tracks every little detail. You just have to minimize how much you're on it.

 

[Sooty Soot]

I think the only thing you'd need is something that doesn't automatically ping cellphone towers when not in use. Logic would dictate that dumbphones only do it when you're receiving a call or sending one out, as for SMS/messages I'd assume they also run off cell towers but I'm not sure.

 

[myhairisonfire]

Logic would dictate that dumbphones only do it when you're receiving a call or sending one out

Incorrect. All modern cellphones, smart or dumb, are constantly pinging towers. This is how they know to display the correct quantity of signal bars, which tower to talk to when they need to transmit data, check when they need to swap to a tower with a better signal, etc.

There is no avoiding it. I suspect removing a SIM card doesn't stop them from pinging either. You can still make emergency calls without a SIM right? The card is just your authorization for bona fide transit across their data network.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

Well you can always create your own phone from the ground up. I know one guy did.

That's not exactly the same thing, he just used off-the-shelf parts and still ended up using the same OS anyway. Just a more complicated version of what some people were doing 35 years ago.

 

[Sooty Soot]

Incorrect. All modern cellphones, smart or dumb, are constantly pinging towers. This is how they know to display the correct quantity of signal bars, which tower to talk to when they need to transmit data, check when they need to swap to a tower with a better signal, etc.

There is no avoiding it. I suspect removing a SIM card doesn't stop them from pinging either. You can still make emergency calls without a SIM right? The card is just your authorization for bona fide transit across their data network.

Well, at that point you might as well get a smartphone and flash LineageOS/GrapheneOS to it and leave it at home. Still, a dumb phone doesn't have the datamining capabilities of a fresh off the shelf phone made for niggercattle to consoom, all that the cell tower would know is that "This is a phone, this is the approximate location, and this is the phone number attached to the SIM within it", meanwhile a smart phone would give out your social security number, mother's maiden name, and anal circumference.

 

[888Flux]

OP, I think you want an analog landline.

unfortunately most households almost everywhere in the US no longer even have hookups for a copper / POTS landline. home phone services these days are just routed through the Internet. POTS doesn't make telcom companies any money and therefore goyinsects are not allowed to have it.

 

[herefortheactualthreads]

Ohhhh yeah. One of those chinese ebook readers that you can put a bunch of pdfs and .epub on, unlike the amazon one which is tied to their store.

you can jailbreak amazon kindles as well nowadays.

 

[Jump]

Every cellphone has GPS in it. Even "dumb phones". It is part of the E911 spec and built in to the baseband cellular modem. Its a blackbox you have no control over. The GPS that the end user uses for maps and app is a completely separate radio. Even if you build some autistic raspberrypi phone out of lego's your still going to have to use a cellular modem you have zero control over.

When you first turn on a phone the modem it gets a rough GPS location and reports that to the network to help registration along. So if your near the Canadian boarder but standing in the USA the network knows to register you to a US tower over a Canadian one both sides hear your phone.

When you call 911 your phone reports a position to the network so the network knows which PSAP (911 center) to route the call to. And when the call comes in to a E911 compliant call center it should show on the call takers screen a dispatchable location before they even pick up the call.
PSAP's and the police also have the power to interrogate (ping) a phone to get a exact location with out you knowing with nothing but a cell number. So if you call 911 and say your kidnapped or lost in the woods they can ping the phone and get a location to send help. You have zero control over this or even a way to tell its happening..

If you want a way to get calls/SMS with out a cellphone or googlebotnet then just roll your own SIP setup with something like https://www.callcentric.com/ or https://www.anveo.com/
Anveno lets you pick numbers from a list so you can pick out some nice dubs or trips. Callcentric has a nicer website you can get/send SMS from.
You can setup a softphone/ATA and connect via a VPN. You manually enter your 911 address or just lie and say your not in the USA.

 

[Fag Alert Major Fag Alert]

you can jailbreak amazon kindles as well nowadays. https://youtube.com/watch?v=Qtk7ERwlIAk

Finally, something useful. I also know that years ago, people jailbroke their iPhones.

 

[Will Mackenzie]

Could you just not buy a dumbed-down flip phone from amazon?

Otherwise, do what everyone else is saying: use a landline, or jailbreak a "normal" phone, or regress to dots and dashes.

 

[dick brain]

Every cellphone has GPS in it. Even "dumb phones". It is part of the E911 spec and built in to the baseband cellular modem. Its a blackbox you have no control over. The GPS that the end user uses for maps and app is a completely separate radio. Even if you build some autistic raspberrypi phone out of lego's your still going to have to use a cellular modem you have zero control over.

Thoughts on the Librem 5? It has a physical switch to disconnect the modem, among other things.

Re: Graphene / Lineage / Calyx / flashing roms / """jailbreaking""", I switched to Graphene a couple months ago and my general impression is that if you're using it like a normal person and not the way Daniel McKay wants you to, it's really not appreciably more "secure" or "private" than Android except in the sense that it's not sending as much telemetry to google. It does nothing to address the issue of your modem contantly being pinged and thus triangulated, nothing can except shutting off the modem afaik, and you're still susceptible to other forms of tracking like browser fingerprinting unless you take steps to prevent them, which are the same steps you'd take on Android. Imagine an Android phone with all the Google bloatware/spyware removed and that's basically Graphene. It's not some black magic secret hacker OS, it has all the same downsides as a stock Android smartphone minus one. I only switched to it to ensure that Google can't fuck me out of """""""sideloading""""""" in the future. I'm comfortable recommending it for that use case but that's about it.

Data scraping/data broking is a six gorillian dollar industry, there's not a product or service you can pay for to protect yourself from it that interested parties don't already have an answer for, the only way to reduce your vulnerability is to divest from the "services" they use to spy on you in exchange for a drip feed of meaningless bullshit between ads.

 

[Taser Confetti]

Finally, something useful. I also know that years ago, people jailbroke their iPhones.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=_N1L72rx6QI

Honestly can't believe people thought it was a good idea to run closed-source, kernel modules made in China on the device that manages most peoples banking and 2A authentication just because BiteSMS was neat.

 

[Legalize Asbestos]

Has anyone here found a decent alternative that isn't impossible to get everyone you know on board with?

Just buy a Nokia dumbphone, they're like... idk $70 now? People are going to think you're an insufferable wad if you suggest that they should change their phone habits for you. Yes, even if they're just downloading a new app with one button press.

 

[Taser Confetti]

if you're using it like a normal person and not the way Daniel McKay wants you to, it's really not appreciably more "secure" or "private" than Android except in the sense that it's not sending as much telemetry to google. It does nothing to address the issue of your modem contantly being pinged and thus triangulated, nothing can except shutting off the modem afaik, and you're still susceptible to other forms of tracking like browser fingerprinting unless you take steps to prevent them, which are the same steps you'd take on Android. Imagine an Android phone with all the Google bloatware/spyware removed and that's basically Graphene. It's not some black magic secret hacker OS, it has all the same downsides as a stock Android smartphone minus one. I only switched to it to ensure that Google can't fuck me out of """""""sideloading""""""" in the future. I'm comfortable recommending it for that use case but that's about it.

Exactly what is your threat model? Are you hiding in an off-grid cabin in West Virginia from the Feds? I'm not gonna dog someone for having autistic interests but some of the these "privacy enjoyers" need to admit they're not Jason Bourne/James Reece from Terminal List.