How a Bitcoin Evangelist Made Himself Vanish, in 15 Not So Easy Steps

Re:How a Bitcoin Evangelist Made Himself Vanish, in 15 Not S... by chris_va on Tuesday March 12, 2019 @12:29PM (#19369921)

> To make sure his phone wasn’t keeping a record of everywhere he’d been — and potentially transmitting it to apps he was using — he turned off all its geolocation services.

... Of course, IMEI tracking (from tower registration) can get you pretty much all of this data anyway. This article is more about how to partially obfuscate your identity to private actors.

It would be interesting to know how fast a professional could unravel all of this. Minutes? Hours?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:How a Bitcoin Evangelist Made Himself Vanish, in 15 Not S... by user9182031 on Tuesday March 12, 2019 @12:38PM (#19370040)

It looks like $300 is enough to buy the IMEI data.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-29/seems-you...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:How a Bitcoin Evangelist Made Himself Vanish, in 15 Not S... by runjake on Tuesday March 12, 2019 @02:10PM (#19371197)

If you could determine the name of the LLC or the IMEI, a possible attack vectoris to social engineer/flat out bribe Cellco reps into giving you more data.

This is not that hard and there are private web forums where cellco reps surreptitiously offer their services for money/bitcoin/

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:How a Bitcoin Evangelist Made Himself Vanish, in 15 Not S... by gumby on Tuesday March 12, 2019 @01:49PM (#19370963)

But private actors can't easily map IMEI to user. Law enforcement typically can but the article doesn't suggest he's trying to defend against them, just private actors.

Sure, individuals in law enforcement or the phone companies can be suborned (i.e. bribed) but all the procedures procedures described in the article are part of "defense in depth". And in fact some of the others make it harder to even know which IMEI to track. I don't know the IMEIs of the handsets of any of my friends -- or even my own, though I could look it up.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:How a Bitcoin Evangelist Made Himself Vanish, in 15 Not S... by 0xCMP on Tuesday March 12, 2019 @01:13PM (#19370507)

You'd need the IMEI from either knowing the LLC or knowing his location and successfully recording it, no?

So maybe, like parent said, track him at an in-person conference appearance?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:How a Bitcoin Evangelist Made Himself Vanish, in 15 Not S... by mLuby on Tuesday March 12, 2019 @01:16PM (#19370545)

Satellite phone + satellite GPS would be better, right? Since money is apparently no object…

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:How a Bitcoin Evangelist Made Himself Vanish, in 15 Not S... by compuguy on Tuesday March 12, 2019 @03:47PM (#19372191)

Satellite phones can be tracked..

[ Parent | on HN ]