[Ads-l] burner account

Tue Sep 19 20:38:16 UTC 2017

My question boils down to whether de Los Santos’s use of “fake burner account” is redundant. BB

> On 19 Sep 2017, at 13:26, Chris Waigl <chris at LASCRIBE.NET> wrote:
> 
> 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
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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