[Ads-l] burner account

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

Wiktionary has entries for burner phone, burn phone, and burner, but
no dated citations are provided. I did not see these terms in the OED.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/burner
burner
Noun
burner (plural burners)
(slang) A mobile phone used for only a short time and then thrown away
so that the owner cannot be traced.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/burner_phone
Noun
burner phone (plural burner phones)
    Alternative spelling of burn phone

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/burn_phone
Noun
burn phone (plural burn phones)
    (informal, US) a cell phone bought anonymously with cash, usually
used as a means of conducting illegal business or harassment.

Garson

On Tue, Sep 19, 2017 at 11:49 AM, Barretts Mail <mail.barretts at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think that must be the key. I don’t think the fake account created in this case necessarily had a robust backstory, but it was created with the intention of deception (pretending to be someone else), not merely being anonymous.
>
> “fake burner account” gets only nine Googits, including two that are “fake / burner account”.
>
> BTW, I should make note that I mistakenly referred to the writer as just Los Santos instead of de Los Santos.
>
> BB
>
>> On 19 Sep 2017, at 07:05, Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
>>
>> Is there a difference between adopting a fake identity, with a robust
>> back-story, and simply using a fake account to remain anonymous?
>>
>> On Sep 18, 2017 7:03 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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