I know police departments have an anonymouse tip phone line, but are they really just confidential? Seems like you’d have to call from a street phone to be anon. Right? What of email? Is there a way to be sure an email with attachments that I send to the police is completely anon? Just have some possible disturbing email that I would like to pass on to the police force in another city. No lives at risk, or anything…
Thanks.
You could fool around with proxies and the like, but the best and most reliable way would be to use a public computer like the ones at the library, college computer lab, internet cafe, etc. If you are forwarding an email, be sure the headers have been stripped of any information that could identify you. Better yet, just cut and paste the body of the email.
I’d print out everything and mail it to them with no return address. A little bit slower, but if there is no major crime involved I doubt they’d act very quickly on an an anonymous e-mail anyway.
The Crimestoppers phone tip line out here is run by a separate organization from the police, so I’d be reasonably confident of anonymity if I used that (note I said reasonably confident - depending on the circumstances there might be situations where I’d still use a pay phone).
There’d be one thing to consider: you have no way of knowing if the communication was effective (no ACK to your ENQ).
Suppose the matter wasn’t police jurisdiction (it was county and should have gone to the sheriff instead, or it was federal and should have gone to the FBI, or the FCC, or the FAA…). Or it fell into a bureaucratic crack. Or they get too many anonymous reports to follow up on, and the clerk reading the mail didn’t take it seriously.
Then of course you could send it to multiple jurisdictions, or wait a certain period and take it to the newspapers, or call them and ask if you could bring it it with an assurance of anonymity (dunno if they could really commit to that if they need you as a witness later). The press can give you a better commitment to anonymity.
Just sayin’.
But if you do that, wear gloves while handling everything, don’t lick the stamp or the envelope, and mail your message from a posting box that’s nowhere near where you live and isn’t under video surveillance.
And, finally, don’t use your own printer. From this page
But by stripping the headers and such, aren’t you removing the information they would need to be able to investigate it? I mean, if the email contains a description of a plan or discussion that’s one thing, but if the email is just a threat or an admission of a crime or something without tells as to the source, then the way to investigate is to trace the email routing information and such to find the origin. But if you delete that to protect your information as an intermediary, then you cut off their ability to investigate.
I guess I was thinking of the first. You want to make an anonymous “phonecall” but not get traced.
Use a throwaway phone. Walmart sells them.
Now we’re heading into mafia tv land, but what the heck…so, those phone numbers cannot be traced back to the phone’s internal ID and from there to the credit card that bought them. I guess you can buy them with cash.
Do they still have pay phones?
Use cash and don’t buy from Wal-mart. Wal-mart has survellience cameras everywhere. They trace the purchase to Wal-mart during a particular time, then scan the cameras at all the registers to ID who is getting a phone.
Remember that really good episode of SVU about 2 or 3 years ago where Robin Williams played a lone nutcase who was recreating Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiments? He tried to conceal his identity by using a disposable phone, but they tracked it to the dollar store where he bought it by doing just that. They showed exactly the steps they took to successfully identify him, despite the fact that he (IIRC) paid cash for the phone.
They removed all of them from my area about a year ago, and I live in a fairly backward part of the country. I doubt it.
Go to Walmart to buy your prepaid phone, but wear a ski mask and dark sunglasses. Have a convincing fake beard sticking out from underneath the ski mask. The fake beard should, obviously, be a different colour than your real beard colour. Pay cash. Make sure you wear latex gloves and don’t touch anything with your bare hands. Don’t talk to the cashier, have a digital voice recorder with pre-recorded snippets that you can use for conversation snippets such as “Nothing else thank you”, “Have a nice day”, and “Hello, how are you?” Preferrably the recordings will be in the voice of a person having a different gender and a different accent than yours.
Don’t drive to Walmart. Walk there. The Walmart should be in a location that is not close to where you live. Don’t fly to the town where the other Walmart is, take a Greyhound bus. Pay cash for the bus ticket etc…
Make your purchase at a time when they don’t have a lot of customers, like 11:37 PM.
Carry a little broom and sweep the floor behind you as you walk in the store. Also have a dustbuster and vaccum up the pile of dust every few steps.
I think you would be OK if you follow these elementary precautions.
P.S. I think it’s pretty cool that in this zombie thread, the OP returned to make an appearance! Congratulations drhess. Glad to see you’re still around.
Yeah, and while you’re at it be sure to pick up a box of 9mm ammo for your friendly neighborhood teenaged nutjob. Chances are he gets turned away at about half the Wally Worlds he tries to buy it at.
Given that it’s been almost 6 years, drhess, do you mind if I ask what you ended up doing? And if you think you accomplished what you hoped to do by bringing the matter to the authorities’ attention?
Please feel free to tell me that neither answer is any of my business.
Some interstate rest stops have them. Unfortunately it’s an awful long drive to go between cities just to make a phone call.
This entire thread sounds like a Dwight Shrute bit.
Wearing latex gloves, make a letter using clipped words and phrases out of newspapers and magazines, using a glue stick. Affix a self-stick stamp. Drop in a mailbox. This should be cheaper and faster than fooling around with cell phones and other peoples printers. As long as you don’t touch anything with your fingers, what could go wrong?