But, if the bad guys are just using (and later discarding) a bunch of burner phones to talk (no text) to each other, all the authorities have is a big circle that goes nowhere. Assume paid cash, no image on store cameras, no fingerprints…what do the cops really have? Nothing.
You can dump them in a river, the desert, or mail them to the cops.
That works until one person in the circle fucks up or becomes a snitch for whatever reason. Both of these are common enough.
I’d just put the phone under water somewhere. A toilet or a lake or whatever is convenient.
Well, yeah, but that’s because you’re no longer using the iMessage system. The “About iMessage and FaceTime & Privacy” page in the settings for Messages says “You can sign in to iMessage using your Apple ID, or just your phone number.” What happens when your colleague goes to Settings > Messages? Is the iMessage toggle not available because there is no Apple ID set up?
I just tested 2 iPhones that were both completely logged out of their Apple IDs system wide and iMessage worked fine. Blue bubbles, typing indicators, etc all showed up. No yucky green bubbles.
But then again, I just took a look at the iPhone user guide which says you need an Apple ID to use iMessage (which is a little weird because the Messages app set up guide doesn’t explicitly say you need an Apple ID to use iMessage). Does entering an Apple ID just once associate the phone with iMessage in perpetuity, even if you log out of that Apple ID? That doesn’t seem likely. Or what am I missing?
And sorry to everyone else for this tangent.
I’m thinking it could be a good idea to break the burner in half because it guarantees you won’t ever use it again. It’s sort of a Cortes-burning-his-ships type deal. And that would be especially good if you’re a particularly lazy or cheap bad guy who’s like “Fuck, I don’t want to go all the way down to Dog House to get more burners. Maybe I’ll just squeeze one more call out of this old one. What’s the worst that could happen?”
Yes, once the phone number is associated with an Apple ID, then they can both be used pretty much interchangeably. You can Facetime a phone number, or text an Apple ID. Even if the Apple ID is logged out, messages will still arrive at the right place.
This can be a problem when migrating away from an iphone. Apple knows the phone number is associated with an Apple ID, so it tries to use iMessage to send texts from other iPhones to the appropriate Apple ID, but the ID is obviously not active on the new Android phone using that phone number, so no message is ever received. For a while this was a big problem, but several years ago Apple setup a site to deregister a phone number from an Apple ID.
Wow, that’s interesting.
So to turn this back around to burner phones, I guess Francis_Vaughan’s colleague could create a burner Apple ID — use it to sign in once, then log out of the ID and never use it again, but still get all the benefits of the iMessage system. It could be the best of both worlds for him. Unless he trusts carriers more than Apple for some reason.
But they have times, dates of calls; which cell towers they were nearest, and when. Where they were bought. Not hard facts, but point toward certain people. “That wasn’t Bob, he was in Toledo when that phone was calling from Chicago.” And so on. On one show it was “all these burners mostly call this one - that must be the boss.” and narrow down where the boss is found. Who would be in place A and place B habitually? etc.
why wpuld police need a burner phone?
Because sometimes an investigator needs to be able to talk to subjects with a phone that is showing a number and not blocked. Using their regular phone is too dangerous as it is too easy to trace the number back and find out who the person actually is via programs like Spydialer and such.
But to create the Apple ID you need an email (AFAIK) which then can track back to an IP address etc. There are obviously ways to cover your tracks (VPN?) but the path is not simple, and again leaves clues.
“Aha, based on the IP, they used NordVPN. Get a warrant to see if NordVPN has Joe Schmoe as a customer” And how was it paid for by that customer? Obviously, there are always ways to hide things, but again, too many threads to be properly covered. And it depends what resources the government is spending. If Schmoe is the corner drug dealer, that’s a bit different than the live/dead cat who supplying the entire southwest with millions of dollars of blue meth.