![]() Together, the IMSI swapping and Relay provide a set of tools that will generally increase users’ privacy on the internet to some degree. With Relay we wanted to make something that just works and can be used by anyone and provides more protection than a VPN (since VPNs are architecturally centralized, not decoupled, so they are controlled by a single company with a single point of observation),” he added. “Like Apple, we partner with Fastly for the second hop that egresses onto the Internet. PGPP’s Relay meanwhile “provides whole-phone two-hop IP privacy,” Schmitt said. The iCloud Private Relay is only for when users browse the web in Safari and, obviously, only applies to Apple devices. Motherboard successfully downloaded and had multiple voice calls on Wickr, another encrypted app now owned by Amazon.īeyond the protections PGPP offers around IMSI swapping, the service is bundled with a second part which INVISV calls “Relay.” This is closer to something like Apple’s recently announced “iCloud Private Relay,” which sends users’ internet traffic through two points before reaching the wider internet, hiding the users’ IP address and some other information from third-parties. Since phones on the PGPP network don’t technically have phone numbers, users would need to find another way to sign up to Signal on such a device (Raghavan said INVISV is going to add an inbound-only SMS service for this sort of verification). When Motherboard started the signup process for Signal, the app autopopulated the number to receive a verification code with the Polish +48 country prefix. Telna, for example, receives a pool of IMSIs from the Polish telecom Play. INVISV buys eSIMS from Telna, a telecommunications service provider based in Canada, which in turn has agreements with mobile operators in various countries, Schmitt explained. Many Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNO) exist, which are companies which sell telecommunications service but use the infrastructure in place of more traditional mobile network operators. That’s it, you don’t pay a more traditional carrier on top of that. The Pro plan is $90 a month and includes 30 IMSI swaps per month with unlimited data, and the Core plan costs $40 which includes 8 IMSI swaps and 9GB of data. From there, the user is connected to the PGPP network and can change their IMSI as they please in the app a certain number of times every month, depending on their subscription. An eSim is a digital SIM card instead of having to place a physical card inside the phone, the device downloads all the necessary information online. A user downloads it, pays for a subscription, and then runs through a mostly automated setup process which downloads an eSim to their phone. On the user side, PGPP comes in the form of an app. The pair are offering PGPP under the company name INVISV. “We believe that PGPP raises the bar significantly for mobile privacy,” Schmitt added. The pair presented research on PGPP at the respected Usenix Security Symposium last year and have now rolled out PGPP as a beta. ![]() Using a non-work phone or computer, you can contact Joseph Cox securely on Signal on +44 20 8133 5190, Wickr on josephcox, or aim is to thwart current bulk data collection in the network, which have centered around IMSIs and IPs,” Paul Schmitt, a researcher from Princeton University and who is behind PGPP along with Barath Raghavan from the University of Southern California. But if you want something that lets you use phone networks a little more comfortably, PGPP could be an interesting, if still in early stages and sometimes buggy, option.ĭo you know about any other privacy focused phones, or new methods of phone tracking? We'd love to hear from you. ![]() PGPP probably won’t help entirely against targeted attacks-the developers are clear in that this is not the intent. In my testing it seems the service might be suited to those who want to add an extra layer or two of protection to their data and identity when using mobile phone networks. The tool certainly does not solve the issue of privacy on phones as a whole-that problem is complex, with multiple parts such as the operating system, the hardware, and more-but it could help protect against the sort of persistent surveillance that everyone is subjected to by simply being connected to a phone network. This is PGPP, or Pretty Good Phone Privacy, a new pseudo-phone network that aims to add an additional layer of privacy on top of traditional and surveillance heavy telecommunications networks.
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