[Ads-l] burner account

Tue Sep 19 19:59:09 UTC 2017

The device-user connection is Messina’s fungibility test. BB

> On 19 Sep 2017, at 12:11, Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> It strikes me that one similarity between the burner phone and the burner
> device is the inability to connect the phone or device to the user.
> 
> This becomes clearer if the phone can be "recharged" by buying a prepaid
> SIM card, the kind tourists use. You can keep your expensive phone, as you
> would a laptop, but have no account info on it.
> 
> DanG
> 
> On Tue, Sep 19, 2017 at 2:53 PM, Barretts Mail <mail.barretts at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> 
>> Nice work, Garson, for finding those additional Wiktionary entries.
>> 
>> Since last night, I’ve run been thinking about Chris’s example.
>> 
>> Messina’s fungibility test says that the attribute tying the device to the
>> user has to be fungible in order for the device to be a burner. Trying to
>> apply that to a computer involves various technological considerations
>> (such as whether a VPN or canvas fingerprinting faker is used) that goes
>> beyond what can be reasonably subjected to that test.
>> 
>> What Chris’s friends are talking about is simply having a computer without
>> personal information that border agents can find if they search the device.
>> So I think this has a meaning beyond the throw-away non-identifiable cell
>> phone (the laptop isn’t disposable, so the owner will retain it for at
>> least a year) and different from the anonymous burner user account on
>> Kinja/Twitter.
>> 
>> Benjamin Barrett
>> Formerly of Seattle, WA
>> 
>>> On 18 Sep 2017, at 16:45, Chris Waigl <chris at LASCRIBE.NET> wrote:
>>> 
>>> My friends frequently talk about the option or advisability of carrying a
>>> burner laptop or burner phone (or general a burner device) on travels
>>> outside the US, for the eventuality of intrusive scrutiny from customs
>> and
>>> border control officers. (This would imply leaving their real phones,
>>> laptop and/or devices at home.)
>>> 
>>> Chris
>>> 
>>> On Mon, Sep 18, 2017 at 3:03 PM, Barretts Mail <mail.barretts at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> In an Mashable article today, I ran into the expression “burner
>> account”.
>>>> 
>>>> Please, good lord, tell me Kevin Durant is arguing with trolls on secret
>>>> social media accounts
>>>> http://mashable.com/2017/09/18/kevin-durant-secret-twitter/ <
>>>> http://mashable.com/2017/09/18/kevin-durant-secret-twitter/>
>>>> Brian de Los Santos
>>>> 
>>>> —
>>>> Internet inspectors connected the dots on Reddit and claimed that Durant
>>>> meant to reply to @ColeCashwell using a fake burner account to defend
>> his
>>>> own honor, thus hiding his identity when engaging in Twitter
>> schadenfreude.
>>>> —
>>>> 
>>>> The Oxford Living Dictionaries (https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/
>>>> definition/burner <https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/burner
>>> )
>>>> say that a “burner” is "A cheap mobile phone paid for in advance”, a
>>>> definition that Wiktionary (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/burner <
>>>> https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/burner>) narrows slightly: "A mobile
>> phone
>>>> used for only a short time and then thrown away so that the owner
>> cannot be
>>>> traced.”
>>>> 
>>>> In 2014, Chris Messina discussed this term in "Adding ‘unlisted' and
>>>> ‘burner' to the modern lexicon” (https://medium.com/chris-
>>>> messina/unlisted-and-burner-two-new-terms-to-learn-78d3a2c17f5a <
>>>> https://medium.com/chris-messina/unlisted-and-burner-
>>>> two-new-terms-to-learn-78d3a2c17f5a>).
>>>> 
>>>> Messina provides a YouTube video that is evidently from “The Wire” as an
>>>> example of the sort of burner phone that the OLD and Wiktionary talk
>> about.
>>>> He argues that the key element in this use of “burner” is that the item
>>>> being described has an attribute that can be replaced, such as a phone
>>>> number. In other words, a burner (phone) is a burner because the phone
>>>> number can be discarded without a connection to the owner, as opposed
>> to a
>>>> landline or social security number which cannot.
>>>> 
>>>> Messina also mentions the use of burner accounts on Kinja (
>>>> https://kinja.desk.com/customer/en/portal/articles/
>>>> 1192515-what-is-a-burner-account- <https://kinja.desk.com/
>>>> customer/en/portal/articles/1192515-what-is-a-burner-account->), which
>>>> makes explicit the use of an account that does not identify the owner.
>>>> 
>>>> It’s not completely clear to me, but I think Los Santos’s use of “fake
>> in
>>>> “fake burner account” is redundant, but perhaps you can argue that since
>>>> Durant was faking being someone else, the word “fake” adds semantic
>> meaning.
>>>> 
>>>> Benjamin Barrett
>>>> Formerly of Seattle, WA
>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>>> 
>> 
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org