Happy to see a privacy-focused carrier, and it has better policies than any other carrier out there. But founder is formerly from Palantir and there’s a lot of VC money behind it (not inherently a problem, just flagging).
Thoughts?
Just use Airalo.
Cell providers such as Telekom, Verizon, Yettel etc. have to provide Lawful Interception support for countries’ law enforcement agencies, and these are implemented in a way, that not even the cell providers is aware when a said subscriber / user is being listened on.
Otherwise I would guess a cell provider can’t operate in that country if it isn’t willing to provide this support?
And almost every cell provider that is small is only piggybacking of one of the big 3.
Palantir, end of discussion.
It’s also like $100 a month.
True, expensive. Prosper to offset no selling customer data.
I refuse to believe they didn’t do this for their benefit. Especially at the price tag. I feel the same about Proton. The minute the government knocks without a warrant they’ll still turn you over.
I think their tech works, they’re used by the army. The founder was the cofounder of Palantir, which I think is worth noting. Their focus is on US government use first and the average consumer second.
Yeah it looks like the cell network is the consumer facing product
It looks like a honeypot, and wtf is a “private cell network”? How are they gonna do that? SMS and phone calls aren’t E2EE
It’s private because it’s yours /s
This is probably a question for the Graphene forums
Previously discussed three months ago at lemmy.ml/post/33176527. Not sure how to format that link correctly though…
Gonna guess a company that has no problem engaging with Reddit’s invasive targeted ad system is not that privacy conscious.
The cynic in me immediately thinks it’s a honeypot to trap privacy-conscious individuals.
I’ll look it up. But I suspect it’ll be just another case of a company pinky-swearing to respect your privacy, like Apple.
100% honeypot
Big encrochat vibes
What makes you think encrochat was a honeypot? Am I missing something?
Because they literally operated it as a honeypot and gave police full access to chats while advertising to criminals that it was safe.
EncroChat first came to the attention of the media when it was revealed that high-profile criminals Mark Fellows and Steven Boyle had been using the encrypted devices to communicate during the May 2018 gangland murder of John Kinsella in Rainhill, England.[16][9][17] The service resurfaced in the media during the summer of 2020 after law enforcement agencies announced that they had infiltrated the encrypted network and investigative journalist Joseph Cox, who had been reviewing EncroChat for months, published an exposé in Vice Motherboard
Where did you read that they gave police full access? I thought they were hacked.
That’s even worse then because they didn’t even have a secure network from start. Be it willful ignorance or intentional assistance, its still a honeypot. This was a huge “I told you so” by a lot of the dark net community when it happened, a lot of people called it WAY ahead of time.
Encrochat isn’t the only example, so i may have conflated it with one of these other Honeypot operations: ANOM, Phantom Secure , Ghost , SkyECC
You might be able to see a pattern here. People who actually want security and anonymity know that you can’t trust those things over to a corporation or a bunch of tech broligarchs, they will either betray you intentionally or due to their incompetence.
I don’t see how being hacked make it “still a honeypot”.
Something can’t be both “100%” and vibes based lol
Unless you mean “I am 100% basing the following opinion on vibes”.
I am sure it is a honeypot, they will work with feds. I base that on the people behind it.
Also it reminds me a lot of encrochat which had similar vibes about it.
This is ridiculous.
Im not basing anything on vibes, this is how venture capital funded operations work.
If you expect some rich assholes to keep your chats secure and not cave after the slightest preasure, you’re going to get taken for a ride.
Could be a honeypot.
That’s always the concern with privacy-focused services, especially if they’re not open source or audited.
But if we think about the practical application – who needs a honeypot for cell phone services? Carriers already collect so much data (location, telemetry, payment, government-issued ID, etc) and sell it willingly to whoever wants to buy. How could Cape be any worse? lol. If they adhere to any of their stated policies it seems like a plus, no?
Additionally, at least to me, Cape is not marketing the way the Anom phone did, where it trying to gain adopting by nefarious users. That’s my take - I’m not advocating for Cape since I don’t really know much about them, but I’m trying to put things in context.
The way anti-fingerprinting techniques work is by making you as much of a background digital character as possible. A privacy conscious user spoofing location and network traffic data on AT&T, Verizon, or T-Mobile is going to be far less likely to be singled out compared to customers on some bespoke cell network.
You should try to fake your traffic on a standard phone network (Using something like GrapheneOS with more granular control) to simply appear like another faceless data point rather than a “paranoid privacy user who bought this subscription for the privacy people”, because that traffic will raise eyebrows much quicker.
Fair points. Different strategies for different threat models I assume. Anonymity through hardening (if we take Cape at their word, big if) or security through obscurity.
https://cyberscoop.com/cape-phone-privacy-calea-tracking/
Good article which points to a few promising aspects. They seem to have their own phones (as of Nov 24) as part of this. Second, that their market is “high risk” individuals. So people with money, it sounds like. If the pricing reflects a market for governments, celebs, and crypto bros trying to not get SIM swap attacked, then it’s not likely a honeypot for Feds. Maybe.
I hate the idea of only being allowed to use their phones, but that might just be their “easy mode” for idiot celebrities or government contracts. If they can give me a physical SIM, I’m interested.
I would not be an early adopter. Hang and see who isn’t a plant that joins.
The best answer
So, they have their own phone that is for high risk individuals and is not available to the general public. Then, separately they have their own mobile network that you can use with any regular phone and they sell Pixels on their website (for $50, you can have them pre-load GraphineOS). The AD i posted is for their cellular network, which is not related to their own first-party device.
You should not use a phone with preloaded graphene without first checking the hash. It’s also kind of insane to charge $50 for it, when Graphene’s web installer just has you click buttons to install. You can even use another phone to do it.
100% agree. I would definitely not have them install graphene for you. Do it yourself so you know what’s in the installation
It’s a good call to post, but waaay too soon IMO too bother with it. It might simply be flash in the pan marketing for VC funding and not work. It might be a total scam. It might be legit and poorly run. It might be the real deal. It’s hard to say without more data.
The feds have already pulled a similar stunt with another manufacturer+software combo. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Trojan_Shield#Distribution_and_usage)
The only thing that makes this smell legit is the fact that it is a provider and probably only eSIMs. But even then, this is not very good opsec to be deliberately using a marketed product that will likely have an identifier for their cell traffic. Graphene works as well as it does because it runs of pre-existing hardware to be more inconspicuous.
they contracted with the AFP to run the first node of the server and process the data. (Australian law does not provide the same protections as U.S. law for its citizens.)
Thanks for that link. I didn’t know that. We are below the US in privacy laws! Is there any first world country worst than Australia?
They said all users were criminals, but who knows what they are calling a crime, specially with the retarded laws down here…
It shows what I suspected, that Australian software and servers must be avoided even more than Americans.
Well, opsec can only go so far. At some point you need data packets traveling over real wires, and it’s a question of who do you trust with unencrypted data like SMS? Using a data only VPN is “clunky” for wealthy manbabies, who demand less friction in everything they do.
Simply having your data going to their service is immaterial since it’s likely the phone number also indicates it’s a Cape carrier phone, and the IMEI of the phone doesn’t ping for any other carrier.
It’s a strong “ugh…maybe, we’ll see” from me, but I wouldn’t bother with it for another 6 months and see if it ends up one of those super elitist things wealthy people talk about only to each other.
How would this be private? Wouldn’t they be using other providers cell network? I doubt they have put out enough or their own towers.
Also how do I pay for it they never now my name or address to I have to put cash in an envelope and drop it somewhere? Ah they don’t store the data on your payment but Stripe does.
Private Payment. Zero Personal Info.
Your payment information goes directly from here to Stripe (our payment processor). This allows Cape to charge your card for future payments without storing your card details.
I saw this video on YouTube with a rep from the company and while there were some positive things put forward, the biggest red flag to me was when he wouldn’t disclose what networks they partner with. They are a virtual network so they don’t own the cell towers, and that means they’re running off someone else’s. Why can’t you say who? Other virtual carriers have no problem saying that they run on Verizon or T-Mobile.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1C-bR728ro interview for Cape starts at about 30 minutes in. Ironically, the podcast is called “Snake Oilers” and it’s a paid-promotion thing, sooooo take this with a grain of salt.
I just assume every ad on reddit is a scam. Seems to be the trend over there.
Hell half of the front page posts seem to be ads anymore
