As of right now, Nexus Mods and Reddit are enforcing these new laws. I don’t use either site very often (the latter not since the API exodus). My understanding is that it’s mandatory for platforms of a certain size in the UK after the 25th of July.

The UK is kind of a perfect exit node country (everything is in English!)

What kind of device are you using? There was recently there was a leak that Meta is using technology to have web browsers talk to the Facebook and Instagram apps on your phone without your permission and link your identity to every website you visit that has any Meta plugins. I'm sure other companies are doing the same or similar like Amazon and Google. I've been using GrapheneOS on my Android Pixel phone which isolates apps. There are other ways to do this as well if your phone is unlockable. And I use IronFox web browser wherever possible to reduce the capabilities of the browser to do things without my knowledge. And use ReThink and a pihole to reduce the cross site communication where possible. I also left all Meta platforms, but still am migrating away from Google, Amazon, and some other platforms. And make sure your advertising ID is disabled at the OS level.

Those are where I've found most of the targeted ads were coming from. Not from the IP address alone.

I agree it's not only the IP because there are other people on it.

I don't have any meta apps or google accounts for years. I buy on amazon very rarely. I have no apps of any of that type installed. 98% of my apps are f-droid and I flashed a rom. I use tracker blocker to sift through all traffic and limit to only what seems required.

I think it's very difficult to control what the phone is doing. Using the tracker blocker app has made me aware of how much data is flying all around at all times.

I should set up a pihole. It's been on my list of 5 or 6 years.

Finding a unicorn country where everything works and all traffic is routed is getting increasingly difficult. For example, if a US news site didn’t want to implement GDPR, it geolocates all users outside the US and blocks them, whilst other US services start to require ID/age verification to post content for non-US users so accessing both easily requires switching location.

You've hit the nail on the head, my own post is a bit meandering and this is what I was going for. I hate how many hoops one needs to jump through for basic anonymity online nowadays.

OpenWRT has a package called mwan3 that in tandem with dnsmasq can allow you set the IP addresses associated with a DNS entry to a particular VPN/country.

I think this would be infeasible outside of very narrow use cases, but I don't know. I don't have an advanced networking setup, but the way I see it, if I, say, route service A and B to connection 1 and service C to connection 2, I only have control over individual IP ranges/DNS entries. So if my bank IP is routed to connection 1 and one new security background service their app/site uses goes to connection 2, something can get flagged, and I could face an unpleasant with the bank/law. I've been trying to avoid things like this. (I have a very rudimentary understanding of networking, I'm not super comfortable doing all of this manually).

I feel as though the most logical way about it would be to compartmentalize connections by application, but I wasn't able to find an easy way to do this. For example, splitting off a browser window and having that exit from somewhere else. I know split tunneling exists in the basic Mullvad client, and I guess I can just throw my whole network on Connection 1 and route Connection 2 through it (meaning when I split tunnel I find myself on connection 1) but in that scenario I'm doing myself even less favors re: latency and headroom and all that good stuff.

And that's just the computers. I use a phone as well.

It would be the first ever telecom honeypot. Even if it was a honeypot, nothing sufficient can be collected and it would not make sense to waste so much resources on an entire telecom company for no info. Just does not make sense

Don't be paranoid whenever you stumble upon a privacy company because If everybody doesn't trust a decent privacy focused company like you, the company will fall. You can't just assume something is a honeypot because of small details.

I'd guess they would give the data to government agencies as it comes in through backdoors that most communication companies have these days. Likely they just don't store the data for future requests and don't have your data stored to sell. That's about the only way I could see it working without them getting shut down.

But that's assuming they're being truthful at all. Only way to be confident would be if someone can trace the money used to make the company to see what their possible business plans are and wait and see. Based on the current government, I'd be more likely yo assume they're actually just a government agency doing a sting operation for which they aren't legally required to tell any truth at all, but time will tell.

The coverage is only in America, I guess it doesn't need to be collected over there

They use Digital Signatures instead of usernames and passwords. Cape employees don't port out numbers and only you can with a 24 word seedphrase you can read more about it here so I guess they are more secure compared to others.

This has to be a joke, what do you mean "just use signal" and "open source" ???

Stripe handles the actual card details, while Cape only receives the token, which cannot be mapped to your real credit card number.
Stripe generates a token that is stored on cape's systems to confirm a payment has been made. Cape does not store your credit card number. Cape does not associate tokens to subscribers

Product Feature: SIM Swap Protection - Cape

Traditional carriers rely on insecure and hackable usernames and passwords. Cape replaces them with digital signatures, providing advanced cryptographic authentication to protect you from SIM swaps.

^www.cape.co

We secure your account against SIM swaps…with modern cryptography protocols.

This just dosent make ANY sense. Sim swaps are done via social engeneering.

See this for details. Their tech support people do not have the access necessary to move a line so there’s nobody to social engineer. Only the customer can start the process to move a line after cryptographic authentication using BIP-39.

proprietary signaling protection

If they wanted to be private, it would be Open source.

I’m really tired of this trope in the privacy community. Open source does not mean private. Nobody is capable of reviewing the massive amount of code used by a modern system as complex as a phone operating system and cellular network. There’s no way to audit the network to know that it’s all running the reciewed open source code either.

Voicemails can hold sensitive information like 2FA codes.

Since when do people send 2fa codes via voicemail? The fuck? Just use signal.

There are many 2FA systems that offer to call your number so the system can tell you your 2FA code.

The part where I share your reaction to Cape is about identifying customers. This page goes into detail about these aspects, and it has a lot of things that are indeed better than any other carrier out there.

But it’s a long distance short of being private. They’re a “heavy MVNO”. This means their customers’ phones are still using other carriers’ cell towers, and those can still collect and log IMSI and device location information. Privacy researchers have demonstrated that it is quite easy to deanonymize someone with very little location information.

On top of that, every call or text goes to another device. If it goes through another core network, most call metadata is still collected, logged, and sold.

If we accept all of Cape’s claims, it’s significantly better than any other carrier I’m aware of, but it’s still far from what most people in this community would consider private.

Product Feature: SIM Swap Protection - Cape

Traditional carriers rely on insecure and hackable usernames and passwords. Cape replaces them with digital signatures, providing advanced cryptographic authentication to protect you from SIM swaps.

^www.cape.co

They have a special option called Obscura but it is only available via contact

One of Cape Obscura’s key features is identifier rotation. By regularly changing the identifiers your phone transmits—like IMSI, IMEI, and AdID—Cape makes it nearly impossible for trackers or malicious actors to follow your digital footprint. Source

Obscura - Cape

Cape is premium wireless coverage with an added layer of personal security. Talk, text, and live with the confidence that you’re protected.

^www.cape.co