[Ads-l] burner account

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

Benjamin already pointed to the Wiktionary entry for burner. Sorry I
missed that.
Garson

On Tue, Sep 19, 2017 at 1:48 PM, ADSGarson O'Toole
<adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org