Phones are an important part of every operation. They hold abundant amounts of sensitive information and can be the nail in your coffin when done improperly. I'll be going over a few things here but is by no means a definitive list. I will be writing this to be as scale-able as possible. There's a multiple ways to use these devices, the way you want to do this is dependent on how you want to use the phone. I personally do not set up google accounts on my devices as I have no need too. I may start to explore the option more as at first I was adverse to the topic and ill informed, that has since changed. This site shows a great example that introduced me to it which was first posted here by u/al_eberia. I've been vetting it and it's sound, if you have info stating otherwise please let me know as I am not perfect. For this post I will be doing my method.
Picking your device
Having your name on a phone is a bad idea and nothing that we can condone for business purposes. If you're just moving a few quarters to your friends and don't give a shit then by all means use your personal phone that is on contract in your name, you'll be fine, but you'll also be fucked if you ever run into some bad luck. If you're serious about moving some weight then get a separate device.
Old school cells work fine but are becoming more outdated as time goes on. With the rise of Stingray and now the Stingray 2 it's imperative to encrypt your activities now more then ever and with the wide spread availability and ease of use encryption has achieved it would be stupid not to.
It would be beneficial to do a little research on what models of burner androids (for this I'll be focusing on androids but other methods exists). are available in your area. Going for the lowest end model will leave you under powered and lagging, you need a phone that can keep up and when dealing with lots of texts a slow or unresponsive phone is unbelievably frustrating. Not to mention the battery will be fucked in a month which can leave you in some bad situations. Spend the little extra buck and get something half decent with a recent OS for longest chance of continued support in case of super critical bugs which is something we've seen from android. Where you buy it is up to you but it doesn't hurt to travel some distance
Initial Setup
You will need another android device, whether or not it is tied on you is irrelevant as we only need this device to acquire legitimate apks and optionally add F-droid. Whats matters is what version of the apps the device is downloading as they will need to be compatible with the device they're being transferred to so keep that in mind. If you choose to download apk's from sites be aware you may be exposing your device to unnecessary harm.
Set up your drug phone and skip everything possible except for locking and encryption options (if they appear), do not create a google account and deselect any permissions it asks for like locations, data/bug/app reporting, weather, auto updates, etc.
Go into setting and ensure location services, gps, wifi and mobile data are shutoff.
Enable encryption from your settings under security and wait for the process to finish when your device is finished encrypting enable a lock screen. It should be noted that anything other than pins and passwords are considered insecure.
Download the apps you want on clean phone, as well as the app SD Maid or any app capable of exporting apk's.
Once you're done turn on bluetooth on both phones and pair them. On your drug phone enable installing apps from unknown sources under security in settings.
On your clean phone open up SD Maid and navigate to app control in the menu. Scroll to your app of choosing and select it. In the preceding menu select export the apk. When it's finished a little pop up from the bottom should appear which will take you to the directory the apk was stored in. Select the apk by holding down and from the menu in the top right corner select share>bluetooth>the device you're sharing too.
On your drug phone you will have a notification to accept the incoming transfer, click yes and await the download. Once done select the download and install the app.
Optional Install F-Droid by first downloading and installing through the web browser of your clear phone (you will need to enable install from unknown sources). Open F-Droid and from the top right menu select share F-droid by bluetooth and repeat the step above. Make sure to turn on the Guardian Project repo. F-Droid is a collection of open source apps from messaging solutions to encryption options and IMSI catchers. You do not need a Google Account to download from F-Droid
You can update any app by repeating the steps above providing the phone can handle the next version. Make sure to disable install from unknown sources, unpair the devices (disconnecting is not the same thing as unpairing) and turn off bluetooth.
You can also turn on wifi at this point and connect, although you don't necessarily need too. If you want to use a VPN use one from www.privacytools.io
You may now activate your phone, don't start texting yet though!
I would never recommend rooting a device. You completely compromise your devices encryption standards and open yourself up to possible device corruption and data loss.
Messaging Options
As said before, don't do plain text. This goes for storing the messages too. Using a combination of Signal and Silence (a texting fork of Signal before it went internal) you can keep communications across all mediums secured. Both of these apps utilize the Signal Protocol to keep your messages safe. They also feature password protection for securing your messages locally, timed storage limit and in the case of Signal, ephemeral messages (self destructing messages). The first thing you should do after installing these apps is set a password. Remember you are only as secure as you want to be so take advantage of all the features!
Signal should be your first choice as it exchanges the keys through it's own systems, leaves no trace of your messages when used properly as the team behind signal is not keeping your messages and also allows for encrypted calling but since it is a data only app it has limitations and is beneficial to round it out with its SMS counterpart. This will allow you to remain active when there is no wifi around which will be essential for most operations.
To set up these apps together:
First set up Signal and allow the key exchange to complete
Second set up Silence and set as your default messaging app (this is important) and complete the key exchange by tapping the lock up top. All Signal messages will now go through Signal and SMS will go through Silence. A little lock will indicate whether your messages are secured and should always be looked for when sending a message. Do not set Signal as your default messaging app, it'll screw everything up.
Another option I should mention that doesn't even need phone number is Conversations which is available for free on F-Droid but costs like 1$ or 2$ on Google Play. Conversations is a Jabber/XMPP client with either OTR, OMEMO or Open PGP encryption. This is a much more cost effective and simpler way to set up messaging even after accidental destruction.
That's all I got I think but I may think of more! It's hard to write out stuff like this so I'll pick at it more as time goes on! If you notice any mistakes please let me know! If you wanna tear it up like the piece of shit it is please do!
Why I Don't Want a Google Account
Because then you're gunna start building a profile if you do. If law enforcement finds your device and finds out your google account they may be able to extract some data from it, if you ever accidentally turned on location without realizing it may have been logged by google among other things. For this reason I prefer to go without one.
Are you doing meth now?