[Ads-l] burner account

Tue Sep 19 20:26:03 UTC 2017

Reading back through the thread, I'm not sure what you mean by "fake"
exactly. For me, there's a difference between a fake account and a burner
account, even though in a more general sense both involve faking something:

   - If I open an account in the name of an invented ID, that would be a
   fake account. (Possible legitimate purpose: leave pseudonymous comment,
   adopt a literary pseudonym, correspond semi-anonymously with a journalist
   if I am a whistleblower.)
   - If I open an account in my own name, but one that is not the one I'm
   using for my serious day-to-day business (even though I might temporarily
   conduct SOME limited business on it) and can be abandoned and deleted at
   any time with no significant harm to me, that would be a burner account.
   (Possible legitimate use: hiding confidential documents or messages from a
   cursory inspection, corresponding with others on a high-risk project or
   from a high-risk place.)

Of course there is no rule that I HAVE to use an ID that is recognizably
linked to my name when opening a burner account, and that's I think where
the overlap happens. Also, the same account can fulfill both purposes, so I
could call it either.

Chris

On Tue, Sep 19, 2017 at 11:59 AM, Barretts Mail <mail.barretts at gmail.com>
wrote:

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

-- 
Chris Waigl . chris.waigl at gmail.com . chris at lascribe.net
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net . http://chryss.eu

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