im sure if a major crimes unit wanted to tap into my phone or figure out my ID they still can but my setup compared to say an apple phone with sim card sub... the privacy difference is immense and we cant let perfect be the enemy of better. i bought the phone with cash and have never done anything to identify my real life identity with it. one funny benefit of a phone# without id is i never, ever get spam calls anymore. so much to the point that i was unsure it was working for a while. i point to that as a relative privacy gain.