Burner Phone 101

Summary

Hosted by the Brooklyn Public Library, this Burner Phone 101 workshop introduced participants to phone-related risk modeling, privacy-protective smartphone practices, the full spectrum of burner phone options, and when to leave phones behind entirely. In August 2025, I hosted a Burner Phone 101 Workshop at the Brooklyn Public Library. Below is a summary of the workshop with key points in bold and additional resources that participants helped crowdsource.Secret GoalsBefore the workshop began, we set the collective tone by sharing the goals, secret goals, and anti-goals. This helped participants know what to expect, created space for deeper learning, and reinforced the boundaries that kept the workshop safe and supportive. The goals were to learn about burner phones and have fun. The secret goals were to learn the limits of burner phones, connect them to broader digital privacy practices, and build confidence to share these lessons with loved ones. The anti-goals were just as important: do not share sensitive personal information and avoid framing these tools in ways that promote harm, harassment, or abuse.Know Your RisksMany people carry a general sense of feeling unsafe, but it can be hard to name the specific fears or what those fears would affectuate if realized. That is why we framed risk modeling as the foundation for using a burner phone, built on three core questions:What are you trying to protect?Who are you protecting it from?What happens if it fails?Without this clarity, it is easy to end up applying a laundry list of privacy best practices that do not fit your needs and to miss the protections that actually matter. We applied the framework to four scenarios: attending a protest, being present at an ICE raid, facing harassment, and even protecting yourself from yourself in cases like phone addiction (which is also valid). We emphasized the need to work backwards from what you are protecting and from whom, and we also stressed considering the risks to others...