"Cape runs its own mobile core, all of the software necessary to route messages, authenticate users, and basically be a telecom. Ultimately, this gives Cape the control to do more privacy-enhancing things, such as periodically give its phones a new IMEI—a unique identifier for the phone—and new IMSI—a similar identifier but one attached to the SIM card (or eSIM in Cape’s case). The phone can also give itself a new mobile advertising identifier (MAID), which is an identifier advertising ecosystems and apps use to track peoples’ web browsing activity and is sometimes linked to their physical movement data. Cape said the IMEI and MAID rotation is handled by the custom Cape handset, which runs standard up-to-date Android.

Cape lets users create bundles of these identifiers, called “personas,” then cycle through them at different points. This means that during some attacks, a Cape phone may look like a different phone each time. The device can do this in a few ways. In the first, users can set geofences around a particular area, meaning that when they enter that location—such as their home, place of work, or commute—the device automatically switches to a particular IMSI, IMEI, and MAID. Secondly, users can set it to switch between these sets of identifiers after an approximate period of time has passed, between one hour and one day, with an option to add some percentage of variation between each rotation."

https://www.404media.co/i-dont-own-a-cellphone-can-this-privacy-focused-network-change-that/

#CyberSecurity #Mobile #Privacy #Cellphones #MobileSecurity #Cape