I'm starting a position with a new company next week. I'll be working remotely, which
means I'll be depending on my personal mobile phone for voice calls. Not that I mind
that so much, but over the past few years I've learned the value of keeping my private
number private. So I thought back to the days of Google Phone, and wondered whether
a present-day app could do the same.
I'm considering two apps - Burner and Hushed. I'm reading reviews
of both, and I'm leaning toward Burner. But then it hit me — these apps
provide exactly the same kind of service that keeping multiple addresses does for e-mail:
lets you quickly separate "spam" and solicitations from content you actually want.
This was sort of a bellwether moment for me — the idea that as communications
technologies emerge, we'll always develop a need to fight unwanted traffic. It didn't
take too long to catch onto the idea that you should have two email accounts: one for
transactional use — buying stuff online, for example, because you're going to get
spammed the moment your purchase is made — and one for personal use. Fast-forward to
the smartphone era, when early adopters got onto apps like these to separate their personal
line from whatever else they were doing (one reviewer of Hushed identified as running
a "strictly-platonic cuddle business"). These apps must be becoming more popular —
within the past couple of months I saw some press on the mobile phone carriers being
given the authority to crack down on robocallers.
The same is obviously true for social media — Facebook got called on the carpet
for not doing enough to combat the emergence of accounts spreading Russian propaganda
in advance of the 2016 presidential election, and still gets blasted at the federal
government level for leaks of private information (think Cambridge Analytica).
Tumblr, another social media platform, saw a huge percentage of its user base leave
late last year because Verizon was having trouble monetizing the platform. Put simply,
Verizon updated its acceptable use policy to drive out the porn communities so they
could sell ads; but then they found they didn't really have anybody left to sell ads to!
It seems that in the digital age, regardless of the platform, somebody always
has to be the reason we can't have nice things. PCs got viruses. Email has spam. And
phishing. And spear phishing. Voicemail? "Vishing." Phones? Robocalls and other assholes
out to trick the elderly, and people "calling from Microsoft because my computer has a
virus." It's just absurd, the shit people do.
People get new technology, and then they have to think of ways to protect themselves
while using that new technology. Protect themselves from everything from invasive
advertising to bad actors. In a world where YouTube actually interrupts a video to
show you an ad, I'm afraid that's just how it's going to be. Forever.
And the "bad actors" thing brings me back around to burner phone apps. You know, with
GMail, all of the data you receive and send via GMail is available for them to do whatever
they want with: 1
When you upload, submit, store, send or receive content to or through our
Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store,
reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations,
adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services),
communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content.
Personal assistants monitor you all the time. And anything that gets recorded is stored
and tagged and analyzed by a legion of linguists who will do who knows what with the data
they capture. So as I think about something like a burner phone app, I have to wonder:
who owns the data?
Who Owns the Data?
Ad Hoc Labs is the maker of Burner. Their privacy policy, dated 2015, explains that they do collect
personal data "when you use certain services" (which they do not identify), and that they
will "use your Personal Data to provide you with access to such services and to monitor
your use of such services." In short, whatever you're saying over that line or text is being
captured on your phone, sent to Ad Hoc Labs, and shared with other companies:
By voluntarily providing us with [personally identifiable data, aka]
Personal Data, you are consenting to our use of it ... you acknowledge
and agree that such Personal Data may be transferred from your current location to the offices and
servers of Ad Hoc Labs and the authorized third parties referred to herein located in the
United States.
Interestingly enough, the privacy policy says that you can use the app without providing
any personal data, but that you may not be able to use "certain services" as a result.
Try Before You Buy
I have decided to try Burner.
After reading some of the reviews, I was a little worried that the app would try to
trick me into signing up for some sort of premium service, but I found the setup to be
pretty straightforward. I'm on a two-week trial that has limited services — 20 minutes
of phone time and a maximum of 40 texts. I chose the number from lists of about ten
numbers associated each area code I selected.
One thing I'm really excited about is that the Burner app appears to interface with
Nomorobo, a subscription service I have that notifies me in real time of calls from
numbers reported to be bad guys.
Burner also reports it integrates with other serivces. For example, Burner shows how
I can use its Developer connection to integrate with IFTTT and Zapier. But when I tried
the IFTTT integration, it appeared that IFTTT had no idea what Burner is, and had no
intention of connecting with it. Granted, this is nerdy advanced stuff that isn't critical,
but, if it SAYS it can connect with IFTTT, I expect it will connect with IFTTT. Burner
will actually integrate with Dropbox, which I think is a very nice plus.
So I'm going to publish the Burner number on my outgoing messages, for the client
to use. So far, I've received no robocalls, no texts, no messages, which is a great sign --
I interpret the silence as the line has probably not been cloned or the target of
suspicious campaigns.
Tempus Fugit
So, it's Monday, and Burner is already trying to tell me my trial expires tomorrow:
For reference, when I created the number on Saturday, the app showed that it expires
the following Saturday. The app still shows the number expires in five days, regardless of
their poorly-implemented popup message.
Things like this are irksome. I don't tolerate them well. Maybe I'm predisposed to be aloof
because of the reviews I read, but telling me two days into a 7-day free trial that my trial
expires TOMORROW certainly doesn't read like an honest mistake.
Not cool, Burner.
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I'll update this post as warranted.