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Comment by burningChrome | Hacker News Reader

Trying to fight it takes an enormous amount of time and energy. I carry two phones now - since I have my "privacy" enabled phone that basically has nothing on it. Email, messages, weather app and a few privacy enabled browsers. My other phone has all my "faux" google stuff on it. Maps, gmail, banking apps, my authenticator apps, music apps, etc.

Even then, these can all be tied together fairly easy, but just trying to make it harder to keep my data private is such a battle; and friends always ask me why I spend so much time trying to keep myself anonymous when in 2026 its virtually impossible to do so.

I always tell them: “Bene vixit, bene qui latuit.” (To live well is to live concealed.)

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If two phones both carry enabled GPS and/or have NFC or bluetooth switched on then it is very easy to match them.

Nothing like that is required, if you see them on same mobile tower or wifi networks often enough you can say with huge certainty they are owned by same individual.

Basically any piece of information that can be correlated is enough once you have enough data points. Hell, you could probably figure out a way to correlate it by temperature sensor readings

Not even that is required, you just need one other person that has both numbers linked to the same contact on their phone.

This all sounds completely sensible. And yet, being caught by the police with two phones would probably be a big stupid red flag for them.

Having two phones is more common than you think, and has a very plausible explanation even if it's not true for the particular individual: One is my work phone, issued by my company, other one is mine

That happens all the time

Unless you’re clever about setting up the phones to match your excuse, you are now lying to the police as well.

Follow the usernames in the response chain. I have two phones for the exact same reason as well: work issued & personal. It would hold up just because it’s actually true. There’s no need to arrange anything beyond how they are naturally arranged.

It's crazy that the police can lie to you.

By rights the simple comeback is they can lie to you so F'em.

The real answer is you don't offer any explaination because it's not something you need to explain or get anyone's permission for.

Feel free to wonder. Give me a hard time and I'll just do my best to give you a hard time back. After you confiscate my stuff and detain me and I turn out not to have broken any laws, I'll do everything I can think of to extract an apology and compensation and penalty. Afro Man is my hero. You will become my new career.

That's my little fantasy anyway but I do see it as a duty to at least resist a little. In reality I'll fold pretty easy but I will be as much sand in the gears as I can.

whatever compensation you're going to extract, if any, is almost certainly coming out of taxpayer pockets - the cop couldn't care less about it.

Then the taxpayers should probably object to how the police behave. I mean WTF is the damned perpetrator supposedly costing the taxpayers here? Why in the world even offer an argument like this?

When you object to being punched in the face, the problem is the punching in the face not the objection! If the bystanders don't like the fallout, "accept your punching more quietly and without spilling my drink" is not among the valid responses.

Incorporate and have the phone be owned by your corporation. You're a contractor who separates business from pleasure.

depending on where you are it may be legal to lie to the police.

I think this is the time to share this classic PSA about why you should always exercise your right to silence:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE

You're not lying to the police in this situation if you've ever done anything ever remotely related to work on the "faux" phone only. That is still considered the "whole truth" in that scenario and would be easy to defend. It's absolutely absurd we need to even think ahead like this, but cops are (mostly) dumb enforcement. They don't actually know the laws in-depth and in many cases do not abide by them - which is the root of labeling them as such. Beating a cop at the game they're playing is not hard, you just have to know every question they ask is loaded and for a reason.

Separation of church and state goes way back, maybe before the iphone.

I feel like BYOD was when the disease accelerated. It was the coup excuse for everybody and their mother to own a piece of your personal phone. Bank apps not working with rooted phones is pretty much BYOD 2.0.

Some bank apps refuse to work if your Android phone has developer mode on.

One of my bank apps had a time where it refused to work if I wasn't using the default system keyboard. Luckily they rolled that back.

The times of actually owning your hardware are long over.

That annoying. Don't have android as my daily driver anymore but for many years the first thing I did was enable developer or debug or whatever (by tapping the build number over and over) so you can disable all system animations to speed things up. And enable the "show touches" feature which I found super useful

Many professional service firms do not allow BYOD. Depending on your job, you may end up with per-mandate phones.

I once had to take four phones with me for a short while and ended up looking like an absolute clown, stacking them on the restaurant table.

Not having to do that is a privilege.

Why did you stack your phones on the table?

I thought it was funny putting the camera stickers on multiple phones at a nightclub entrance.

nfc or qi attack available through stacking, not a good idea.

or even speaker to mic data exfiltration.

or screen flickering against another light sensor in a dark space.

In Uganda carrying two phones is completely normal. Many people have one for work and one for personal use, or simply because they can afford a second phone. Police wouldn't think twice about it.

40 minutes, and not a single ‘I’m moving to Uganda’ message.

Why don't you go first?

Waiting for you

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