[Ads-l] burner account

[Dan Goncharoff]

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
>

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