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Comment by im3w1l | Hacker News Reader

Your assumption is that a phone must present a permanent identifier to the network on the physical layer but I don't think that is true. You could have temporary identifiers instead. If you have multiple concurrent ones and stagger their renewals, and proxy all traffic over tor then it seems like goal would be accomplished.

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Well, the operator has to be able to link that temporary physical layer ID to some permanent billing ID, otherwise they will refuse your connection to their network.

I can see two ways around it. If you have a free data/calls/texts, you could use a zero knowledge proof of having a free-data secret. If you have pay-as-you-go you could spend tokens each of which are unique and anonymous.

Edit: I think the first approach may not work, as the secret could be duplicated..

That's something which requires cooperation from the operator, and they have zero interest in it at best, and more likely a strong negative interest on allowing anonymous devices on their phone network, in some countries even a legal prohibition to do so.

You just explained the TMSI - something that was used since GSM networks in the early 90s

Good guess, but tmsi is to protect you from eavesdroppers, not from the mobile tower.

Well, you're invited to join research on network ... because it's impossible to hide your ID from your access network. Tor and similar can hide your ID in transport, but that's no option in RAN.

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