July 10, 2016 catherinetownsend

Afraid to text your drug dealer? Try a ‘Dumb Phone’

New York yuppie party people are reportedly freaking out following a rash of high profile drug busts that included a Merrill Lynch associate and a millionaire Chipotle exec, the New York Post reports. From the article: ‘A Manhattan publicist who considers herself a weekend indulger admits the headline-grabbing arrests serve as a wake-up call. “This is actually terrifying. Everybody is scared,” says the 30-something, adding that she intends to curb her cocaine use. After all, if you get arrested, “your face is all of a sudden all over the world. Your career is over.”’

The paranoid partiers are afraid to text their dealers. Some are using services that delete messages after a day, while others have resorted to buying through third parties. As they hunt for high tech solutions, my question is: Why don’t they use burner phones? Anyone can walk into a phone store, put ‘Mickey Mouse’ down as your name and pay cash for a phone that is virtually untraceable.

Smart phone technology is great for many things: Swiping to find a love interest, checking out Yelp reviews of a new Thai place or figuring out how to walk to the nearest 24-hour CVS – NOT for putting ‘Coke Dealer’ in your contacts.