The FCC's proposal to require telecom companies to store extensive personal data about all phone users will significantly impact privacy by making it harder to purchase burner phones.

https://www.404media.co/fcc-wants-to-kill-burner-phones-by-forcing-telecoms-to-get-all-customers-ids/ The FCC wants to make it impossible to buy "burner" phones, such as pre-paid phones not linked to your identity. They plan to do this by forcing all companies to store a ton of data about ALL phone users, including Copy of ID, and Verified address and a ton more info for both new & existing phone users, regardless of company or phone. #FCC #Privacy #Security

"The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) wants to make it effectively impossible for people to buy what many call burner phones—a phone not explicitly linked to your identity at the point of purchase—which would impact privacy-conscious people, to domestic abuse survivors, to journalists, and many more. The FCC plans to do this by legally forcing the country’s telecoms to store a wealth of personal information about essentially all phone customers, including a government issued identification number and their physical address, alarming privacy advocates and civil rights activists who compare the measures to those from authoritarian countries where it can be difficult to buy a mobile phone plan without giving up your identity. The proposed change would drastically shake up how people obtain phone plans in the U.S., and have all sorts of privacy and cybersecurity knock-on effects. The FCC is proposing the data collection partly as a way to combat scammers, with telecoms being required to collect other information on business and foreign customers like the intended use case of their bulk phone plan purchase and their IP address. But the changes would mean telecoms collect data on all new and renewing customers, and the FCC provides a long list of other things that the collected data could help authorities with." https://www.404media.co/fcc-wants-to-kill-burner-phones-by-forcing-telecoms-to-get-all-customers-ids/ #USA #FCC #BurnerPhones #Privacy #Surveillance