Burner Phones: Are They Really Untraceable?

If you ’ve ever watchedThe Wire , Breaking Bad , or have simply pay heed around with some interesting the great unwashed during your time on Earth , you have probably come across the full term " burner phones " .

Burner phones are loosely limn as being used by drug dealer , or others essay to keep their activities a secret , commonly for nefarious purposes . But the earpiece themselves are not particular , and in fact , were in somewhat received use around 20 years ago , sell as " yield - as - you - go " handsets . All they really are is old handsets with pay - as - you - go sim cards inside . What makes them " burner " headphone is the willingness of the owner to " burn " them at a consequence ’s notice , ruin either the sim card , phone , or both .

Why do drug dealer use them ? One grounds is simply that they are preferred to the alternative . If you are going to use a phone to dress drug softwood and then be beguile by law enforcement , it ’s best if you do n’t have a contract bridge with a phone company linking that phone to you and your address . See also : why drug dealers ( loosely ) do n’t insist on bank transference over untraceable cash .

That does n’t mean that burner phones are untraceable to legal philosophy enforcement . If they were to get ahold of a burner phone , law could have access to the textual matter messages and call records salt away on it . associate it to drug dealer might be more difficult , however , unless they were silly enough to have bought it using a card , or were caught on CCTV buying the phone in question , ortopping it up . This was how law enforcement caught up with Rex Heuermann , currentlyon trialaccused of mangle three woman found dead on the Long Island beachfront in 2010 . According to the law , part of the grounds against him is that a burner phone used to reach out to the victim was purchased by Heuermann using hisAmerican Express card .

" While burner phones put up a high degree of namelessness compare to regular headphone , they are not completely untraceable , " cyber expert Shanal Aggarwal toldHow Stuff Works . " Burner phones can be traced by law of nature enforcement agencies using various methods , such as call point records ( CDRs ) , location trailing , surveillance and Stingray devices . "

Of course , there are other ways to keep your selective information secure ( there are legitimate reasons to do this ) without anything as striking as countersink your speech sound on fervidness every few workweek , includingencryptionand VPNs . Burners , when multitude using them take care not to connect to the Internet , and toss them apace before moving onto the next burner , can ply mass with supererogatory namelessness . But if the phone is retrieve , there are still ways it can be traced back to its owner .

“ Your sound is a tracking gimmick , ” cybersecurity expert Jake Moore toldThe Guardian . “ If you are move around with a burner headphone and you ’ve still catch your other phone with you , then law enforcement can do some triangulation on where you were . ”